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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 24, 2023

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I got an automatic red

Rule Violation: Warning for Promoting Hate

The Reddit admin team has been alerted that you’ve violated Reddit’s rule against promoting hate.

Reddit is a place for creating community and belonging, not for attacking marginalized or vulnerable groups of people. We don’t tolerate promoting hate based on identity or vulnerability, and any communities or people that encourage or incite violence or hate towards marginalized or vulnerable groups will be banned.

for using the word "faggot" on /r/4chan , which a few years ago was considered a brotherly greeting. What do regular people think when they get these notices? I remember when the 'wokest' subs like Shitredditsays started enforcing such rules, it was widely mocked. Now the entire site is an experiment in social control. I don't know what happened that we handed these mediocrities the keys to the castle.

I saw a bunch of people there substituting 'this guy is regarded' for 'he's retarded' the other day, there had been some ban on that word. Maybe it was since rescinded.

I had a bot tell me not to use the word 'mankind' at one point since it wasn't gender-neutral. God Emperor of humanity doesn't fit quite so well, it's not the correct title: https://old.reddit.com/user/GenderNeutralBot#res:ner-page=2

And people were censoring out 'nigger' from screenshots of text. Is there some busybody image recognition bot that goes after this stuff?

It's Orwellian.

I had a bot tell me not to use the word 'mankind' at one point since it wasn't gender-neutral.

That's not just annoying, it's factually incorrect. Mankind is gender neutral! It really makes you wonder if some people actually paid attention in school.

I tried googling keywords involving "mankind" and "woman" and "gender neutral" to see what people were saying about this. Surely any argument from words or morphemes that mankind is exclusionary also applies to woman? One link that caught my eye

They prefer "humanity" or "humankind"

Really crystalizes a conflict theory point here to me: this isn't about getting rid of the man morpheme. But somehow adding extra syllables to take the focus off man makes it better? Really feels to me like this is about breaking people down, and not building them up. To the extent that people argue that this builds up inclusion and good-vibes for women, it just goes to show that it's all zero-sum IMO.