Responding in here about the reaction to Sounesses comments over the weekend
True. People who are not excluded by the use of exclusionary language often underestimate the problem with it. By the same token though, as we’ve seen in this situation, people who speak out about it are also often really counter-productive in their attack on it. People rarely do something like out of malice, and far more out of a reflex of leaning on language tropes they have used for years. These are habits that take work to break, and often guidance to know what alternatives are preferable. For something that seems so trivial, it is often not easy. Our company has adopted AI in our internal messaging systems that identifies possible male focused language and gives you alternatives to replace it with before you send the message (consider trying “hi team” instead of “hi guys”) and it’s really amazing how often it pings me, correctly I might add.
What isn’t going to help is calling a 70 year old man a disgrace for not having adapted to a more modern language, especially when he’s otherwise made a valid point. All that ever does is make someone retreat back to their corner and double down on not changing. If we take the specific issue he was addressing I genuinely cannot think of a good alternative for succinctly describing the thing he was trying to express. And that is often part of the problem. If do not know what the alternative stock phrase for the concept he was describing how would he. And where does that leave him? Refusing to make any sort of comment about a valid observation again or doubling down? And so maybe we’d all have been better off if the response was “you made a valid point about the game, but in future please consider describing the type of game as xxx”