"Black supremacy is as dangerous as white supremacy, and God is not interested merely in the freedom of black men and brown men and yellow men, God is interested in the freedom of the whole human race and the creation of a society where all men will live together as brothers, and all men will respect the dignity and the worth of all human personality."
- MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.

Also sorry for the political rant, just really liked this quote 😬

@12bitfloat It is sad when the concept of human rights is considered to be political now. Tells you how fucked society is.

No women around back then?

@spongegeoff they were making samiches. I have to chalk language usage up to being imprecise.

"yellow men" wtf 😆

And yeah, God wants this, God wants that, bla bla, sure…

@spongegeoff here it is again. I didn't considered women excluded until you said that. Because, as it turns out, the opression of women isn't my priority and single life goal. Funny how that works

@spongegeoff "men" means all humans, kinda weird of you

@spongegeoff depends on the context.

@spongegeoff No, historically it means all humankind

@12bitfloat Does it hell. It comes from a time when women were disregarded, which in some places, and some mindsets, they still are.

@Demolishun men can make sammiches too!

You know in France there was actually a period where they banned women from the kitchen.

And seeing started out as a male profession.

@Hazarth "the oppression of women isnt my priority or single life goal."

But that would imply that it *is* at least *one* of your goals. Lol.

@Wisecrack "sewing" not "seeing" ffs.

Today I learned in ye-olde-days-of-yore only men had vision. Women were blind. Blind I fell ya!

did he really say that? i searched a bit and didn't find this out of "facebook inspirational quote" format

@darksideofyay ddg gave me this for the first sentence and the name:

https://depauw.edu/news-media/...

@Wisecrack well english isn't my first language, so I probably read it differently, thanks!

But you understood what I meant. Just because the article says "men" it doesn't mean women are disregarded. That's some new-age bs where we started butchering languages because some people lack imagination apparently.

@Hazarth We'll have to disagree. I'm not one for letting everyone choose their own pronouns - far from - but the word 'men' refers to men. 'People' would refer to people.

@spongegeoff Doesn't matter if you personally disagree, the etymology of the word is clear and was known for a long time. Comes from the ancient Germanic "Mann" meant as "Person" or "Human". In fact, the usage of "man" as an adult male was adapted much later. Before that the words were used with female AND male prefixes to distinguish adult female person and adult male person.

A lot of languages still make this distinction like the "Men-" in modern german "Mensch", "Män-" in modern swedish "Människa" or "men-" in modern Dutch "mens". All of these mean "people" or "persons"

The way english speaking countries currently view the word is twisted by modern propaganda and politics, but that doesn't mean old quotes (or for that matter, even new quotes) that use "men" for "people" are wrong or somehow discriminating.

If anthropology and the etymology of languages specifically was a mandatory school subject, we wouldn't be having this discussion at all :)

*crawls out of cave, having finished a Factorio modpack*

Ah yeah the world is still having polarizing arguments about about race, sex, gender, religion -- and all the semantics, intentions and assumed powerplays related to those topics...

*crawls back into cave to start a new Cities skylines game*

@Hazarth Irrelevant, given that MLK lived in the 20th century and was speaking English.

@spongegeoff uuuh, no, not irrelevant, given that people still use the term like that right now...

proof? Everyone in this damn thread except for a few. It's beyond clear that people, even new generations, are still using the proper definition.

more proof? It's still a definition in the Cambridge english dictionary:

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/di...

man noun (PERSON) :

the human race, or any member or group of it:

It's a normal word with multiple definitions, like Crane (bird vs machine)... well you have man (single male vs humankind)

It's really not rocket science. People that automatically assume the word is sexist are projecting their own sexism on the world for some reason. Once again, it wasn't me who made this about sex, it was you who brought it up. I understood what the word meant and felt everyone was included, then you came in and made women feel not-included. Why?!

btw "Sex" also has multiple meanings, please assume the right one

@Hazarth So significant 'men' of the the twentieth century would include Marilyn Monroe, Rosa Parks and Eleanor Roosevelt? Because when we say 'men', we are including women? Nope, not in my opinion.

@spongegeoff @Hazarth

I think it's important to interpret it with nuance.

In the past, men did all the important things (not factually, but in terms of contemporary perception). So the word man was a synonym for the whole species.

That means it's rooted in sexism.

That doesn't mean that every historical figure with a quote about "men" or "man(kind)" had sexist intentions.

Just that society excluded women, and so colloquial language followed suit.

Does that mean we should ridicule or "cancel" people who have used outdated notions? Or censor historical content?

No, of course not.

Does that mean we should change, append and "footnote" the language we use?

Yes, absolutely.

@spongegeoff

That's as if you asked what are the "humankind" of the twentieth century

Your example doesn't work, because the sentence you created is nonsense.

A correct example would be "some of the greatest among men are Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, King Richard Lion Heart..."

@bittersweet I think I made a pretty clear case that this is not outdated, and secondary, that the origin of the word wasn't sexist. You have it backwards, men didn't start calling everyone men because they felt they are the better sex. It was the other way around. Mann first meant "everyone" and slowly, out of convenience we used the generic "everyone" out of convenience. Same as we address someone as "man" right now in informal discussion like "hey man". In fact the word for "queen" for example is a descendant of words like Kván, kwēniz or gwen, which all used to be words for women or in some cases wife.

It's what languages do. The word for man in the past used to be "wer" for example (which is now preserved in the word were-wolf -> man-wolf)

Nothing sexist to see here, and definitely nothing to do with the 20th century, the first recorded use of "man" for a human male goes back to 1000 AD

@spongegeoff

@bittersweet

I fully realize that I'm annoying and autistic as fuck. But to me definitions matter. If we all use the same words with vastly different definitions then we're in big fucking trouble.

Without proper and common understanding of the language we speak with each other we're going to get into misunderstanding and arguments all the damn time, because ofc we will.

That's why I absolutely and strictly care about how words are used, what they mean and where they came from. I don't deny that languages evolve, in fact, I only ask that everyone understands, that words have always evolved and that the language we use today is nothing like we think it is and that's why saying that the word "men" meaning "humankind" is somehow sexist just grinds against my brain strings in the most awful cacophony.

@Hazarth There are political groups that purposely have different definitions of words in order to confuse and conflate. This is a direct assault on civilization.

@Hazarth

You could very well be technically correct ("the best kind of correct"?).

But the reality is that hearing a quote like "It's man's destiny to travel to the stars" might feel jarring to a woman.

Yeah, sure humankind... but the word "man" carries a pretty strong penis-flavored bias.

You could explain to that eyebrow-raising woman that it's all her own fault that she's wrongly interpreting the word man, and go off on a tangent about etymology.

And you could be technically correct.

But are you emotionally correct?

As one autist to another: We don't do well approaching matters of race, gender, religion, etc with impeccable reasoning skills and a "be enlightened by truth" approach.

I felt pretty strong about NOT renaming "master" branch to "main" (because "the origin of the word master is not exclusively used for topics about slavery", etc)

Sometimes you can argue for 10 hours and "win the argument".

But is THAT kind of victory all that matters?

@bittersweet

Eh, I disagree. I absolutely believe that the people you're trying to protect by the "emotionally correct" argument are the loud minority, not the majority.

I don't buy that everyone always 100% of the time think about gender or racism or whatever else. I'm pretty sure your average family has plenty more important issues to attend to than this bs. Everytime we start changing we're the privileged people making changes because it makes us feel fuzzy on the inside (that's what the concept of 'emotional victory' is).

Maybe someone or something will convince me of your point in 5, 10 or 20 years. But man, I don't respect emotions when making decisions at all. Doing the emotional thing instead of the correct thing is the proverbial path of good intentions paving the way to hell imo :/

@Hazarth Emotional arguments cloud reason. It is also a form of conversational hypnosis. I see this used in the news media.

One hypnosis technique is this:

1. Posit a question or make a statement.

2. Inject an emotionally charged topic. Like children killed by something. Or a fear argument.

3. Make a statement you want the audience to remember. Not always consciously.

This is a way to insert information into the subconscious. Once you see this pattern you can recognize it is a manipulation technique. I saw this pattern over 20 years ago on CNN. I didn't know what it was at the time, but I knew it was manipulation. Years later I learned about hypnosis techniques I could use on myself for self improvement. Then I realized this his how they get people to believe this stupidest shit.

@Demolishun lol yeah, I have a lot of experience with manipulation and later with self-improvement and autosuggestion as well. Really people are just big neural network meat sacks and the sooner one recognizes that the better xD

Also the years old "think of the children" argument is made fun of for decades now.

@Hazarth

I'm absolutely not suggesting: "bend to manipulation".

Just: "listen to how statements affect people" —and consider that sometimes, you don't reach your goals by only smacking people in the face with technical truths.

Example: If a "black" person is distrustful of "white" people because of a negative experience (Ugh, words. as "mixed" person I hate these color labels)—you're technically correct in calling that person out as a racist.

That distrust is a form of racist bias.

But is it effective to just point out "SEE! YOU'RE RACIST TOO!"?

Eh, not really.

It's more effective to listen to that person's POV, show some understanding, prove your argument through reflection and relationships instead of having arguments about semantics of words.

I'm not saying: compromise on your core truths —just that there are moments when a stretched out hand is more effective than a drawn sword.

@spongegeoff

Unironically, accidentally transphobic. Lol, why couldnt rosa parks be a man?

@bittersweet

Oh yeah, absolutely. I wouldn't jump in a sharp argument like this if this wasn't devRant specifically. I think devRant on average is pretty open and even if we get to fights it doesn't necessarily drift us apart, you know what I mean?

Actually I had to do a lot of research on my own to confirm that I'm right and it moves me forward. If I were to explain this to a complete stranger I wouldn't go out sword drawn. I would never compromise my own morals or beliefs unless actual facts and sources were presented, but I also wouldn't say sacrifice a friendship over my beliefs

I also get that you inserted into the discussion to mediate the conversation ;) @bittersweet. To be fair, every good discourse needs a mediator, which is hard to achieve online :c

for what it's worth, @spongegeoff I respect you as a fellow dev no matter how much our opinions might differ on this particular topic.

@Wisecrack All three lived their lives as women. So far as I know, they were happy with that and with their biology; whatever choice they 'might' have made to live differently, they chose to live as non-trans and thought of themselves as women. If anyone asked "all the men" to put their hands up, they would have kept their hands down.