alt Hacker NewsI am not aware of actual code removal but skirting in that direction there was a movement, just a couple years back, to replace words that had become more offensive than they were in the recent past. One example is renaming master to main.
I am not stating any opinion for or against any words or terms in this context.
Replies
augusto-moura • today at 12:58 AM
Renaming things to better names happens all the time, selectively removing something is much worse. Especially for a reference book like Gray's Anatomy
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bigstrat2003 • today at 4:51 AM
It's not even "was", that movement still exists. People are still out there trying to remove terms of art on the basis of the theoretical offense felt by an extreme minority of people. It's ridiculous.
wat10000 • today at 1:04 AM
That's not even remotely similar.
Somewhat on a tangent, but when people talk about offensive language in the context of cultural criticism they don't mean terms that cause the people who hear them to be offended but things that may diminish the value of some people in the eyes of the people who hear them. I.e. something is offensive, in this sense, to some group X not if people in group X are offended when they themselves are exposed to it but if people who hear it may come to devalue people in group X. Whether it actually does or does not is another matter. In that sense, the discussion of the clitoris in an anatomy book is not offensive in the same way as the term master, but its absence is. Its inclusion could be offensive in the sense of scandalising some people who see it, but it's not the same sense.