If the issue is truthfulness, then they should complain about that instead of labeling things as "problematic". The word is terminally underspecified, and its usage should be avoided for that reason.
The fact that it's so popular is a sign people using it are not used to articulating their objections concretely, which is a red flag.
the term is old relative to the subject and the participants. it is misused, misunderstood, misheard, misrepresented, etc. it is loaded, tainted, so much so that someone is going to pop up and derail things.
the author even took the time to acknowledge that there were several valid complaints. before decreeing them unhelpful.
is this not a tremendous amount of effort spent on insisting words be used?
It's a straight-up terrible misappropriation of the term, and it's clearly done for marketing purposes. Taking a word that the public thinks means one thing, then telling them that technically, they're wrong in what they think... that's just terrible.
It's not a matter of 'educating people', merely so they can use a popular term. It's just plain the wrong thing to do.
OTOH I’ve literally never seen someone using that phrase but obviously YMMV. It’s useful as a teaching aid and that’s about it. It’s easy to come up with examples of bad nomenclature used in the wild so I’m not sure what your point is. If you think it’s fine, then, more power to you. It wasn’t about that.
Appreciate that this can be a reasonable conversation.
It’s important to note that there is a significant portion of the people employing this term in bad faith who are doing now intentionally and to cause confusion. The problem with a new term is that it will, almost inherently, be co-opted by these same groups.
The attempts to mislabel are intentional and coordinated. I think you are coming from a good hearted place, and it’s nice to be able to have this convo, but a new label won’t fix it because the label isn’t the problem the use is.
>However, we are still discussing the subject matter that things like Women's Studies and Sociology deal with, so using the terminology makes more sense than not using the terminology
No, it doesn't. The vast majority of people do not recognize the other meaning of the word. So in a discussion among ordinary people, like the one here, using the ordinary word's ordinary meaning is appropriate. The response from SJWs that everyone is wrong for using the word correctly is not reasonable.
I agree that a word is just a word and it can easily be changed. That's why I called it a minor issue. I think my issue is more that if we have a framework where part of the framework is named after something that is not unsustainable long term, it makes me question the goals and intent of the people who created it. I have to ask myself, "are we using this in an unintended way".
It's like if you came to my house and asked for a towel and I went, "oh yeah, use my butt towel". Just because it's called a butt towel doesn't mean it's actually got anything to do with a butt, but you're probably going to be a bit uncomfortable until you understand why I'm calling it that.
I think there's a valid argument to be made that it is at least poorly named, and that naming has resulted in people using it wrong, including among people who teach the language and so compound the problem.
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