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Idiocy of the Week: Stanford Launches Guide Against ‘Harmful Language’

Idiotez de la Semana: Stanford lanza guía contra "lenguaje hiriente", El American

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The guide against harmful language released by Stanford University wins El American’s Idiocy of the Week award, although if we were to follow their guidelines, we should rename it “El U.S. Citizen’s Idiocy of The Week,” or “El UnitedStatesian’s Idiocy of the Week’ since the word “American” is among the banned words.

According to Stanford, saying American as a synonym for U.S. citizen can be offensive, “insinuating that the US is the most important country in the Americas,” a continent with 42 countries from north to south.

Apparently, this prevents Argentinians from referring to themselves as Americans, or Bolivians, or Canadians, who would be willing to stop using their proper demonym so that they can say they are Americans. Is Stanford implying that being able to call oneself an American is the most important thing for everyone on the continent?  

The woke obsession with altering the language, in the purest Orwellian IngSoc style, borders insanity in this Stanford guide. Another of the gems he proposes is to replace the word “immigrant” with “person who has immigrated.” Stanford does not differentiate between whether the person who immigrates does so legally or illegally, which would be the same as when a “visitor” is a “person who visits”, or a “person who visits without notice and does not leave when becomes annoying.”

Interestingly, they must have thought about this from visitors, as they also suggest changing the term “walk-in hours” to “open hours”. The reason? That the former is offensive to people who can’t walk. With its “open hours” proposal Stanford doesn’t seem to care about agoraphobics, i.e., people with a fear of open spaces, nor does it seem to care about those who suffer from chronophobia, i.e., irrational fear of time. Too bad Stanford. That guide needs to be polished up further.

Sounds insane, doesn’t it? Well, Stanford has a problem with that too, as this expression, according to them, “trivializes the experiences of people living with mental health conditions.”

All these suggestions can be found on a Stanford website where we are taught to speak harmlessly. The page groups problematic words into several categories which, paradoxically, they say can be expanded and reduced by clicking on the buttons “expand all categories” and, attention, “collapse all categories.”  

As a person who has lost loved ones due to collapses, seeing this word on the Stanford website has caused me immeasurable distress. One can no longer feel safe even on the homepage of a university as committed and empathetic as Stanford.

Writing about Stanford’s nonsense is like beating a dead horse, but this expression has also been banned because they say it is cruel to animals and normalizes violence against them.

All of these suggestions from Stanford are meant for the greater glory of woke ideology, which seeks to limit language so as to draw the line on what you can and cannot think about. Of course, the reference to LGBTQ+ pronouns of preference could not be missed, nor could the substitution of “abort” for “cancel” or ” end.”

A conversation according to Stanford University

-“Hello! Happy Holidays. I’m a non-binary person and you can address me by the pronoun they. Where are you heading to, gestating person?”

-“Happy Holidays, non-binary person. I’m heading out to cancel the set of cells inside me, even though I go without an appointment.”

-“Don’t worry, I’m sure they have open hours, so be on your way… Although this is not meant to sound offensive to people who can’t walk, but to empathetically share my happiness at your ability to walk to a Planned Parenthood clinic.”

-“Thank you, non-binary person. Godspeed.”

-What do you mean “godspeed”?! You damned religious extremist!

-“I’m sorry, I’m an immigrant so I’m not fluent in the language, that’s why I said ‘godspeed’.

-“I am sorry, gestating person who has immigrated. It was not my intention, as a citizen of the United States, to disrespect you for your lack of knowledge of the language.”

-“It’s okay, non-binary person. I don’t want to beat a dead horse, but my pronoun of preference is ‘they’. So in the future, I would appreciate it if you would refer to my lack of knowledge as ‘their, theirs’ lack of knowledge.”

-“All right, gestating person who has immigrated. But I must point out that the expression ‘to beat a dead horse’ is specist and denotes their lack of sensitivity towards animals”.

-“I’m sorry. As a person who has immigrated, the difficulty of this non-offensive language seems insane to me.”

-Do you have no sensitivity to people living with mental health problems? Police! Stop them!”

Ignacio Manuel García Medina, Business Management teacher. Artist and lecturer specialized in Popular Culture for various platforms. Presenter of the program "Pop Libertario" for the Juan de Mariana Institute. Lives in the Canary Islands, Spain // Ignacio M. García Medina es profesor de Gestión de Empresas. Es miembro del Instituto Juan de Mariana y conferenciante especializado en Cultura Popular e ideas de la Libertad.

Social Networks: @ignaciomgm

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