Note: You only really have to read one of these paragraphs plus the final bit.
When it comes to emotionally charged issues, people have a tendency to fail to distinguish their feelings, their value judgments, from the categories that the issue involves. Relevant to this site we've seen it happen in the casual gaming debate. After many hardcore gamers began hating on causal gamers a backlash arose. That's good as the opposing side is, in fact, correct but what wasn't good is when they failed to distinguish the categorical statement "hardcore gamer" with their value judgment "elitist prick". People got it into their heads that the terms themselves were bad instead of the way they were being used. "Hardcore gamer" and "casual gamer" are mere category statements, not value judgments.
That's the issue that got me thinking about this but I observed another example recently in this MLP thread. The question was if MLP could be considered a girl's show when so many men liked it. It was a genuinely good question that merits debate. However, many people answered defensively stating that it didn't matter and no one should care, an opinion also mirrored in the poll. Emotions rose because our culture thinks "girl's show" means "boy's shouldn't watch" and people basically scoffed at the very idea of the term "girl's/boy's show". But there's nothing in the terms themselves that carry this value judgment, not necessarily anyway. If you think there is, that "girl's show" should be interpreted as meaning "girls only, boys stay away!" instead of "girls are the primary demographic" or some other innocuous statement along those lines you have to argue your case.
It quite bugs me. I agree there are real issues here but by attacking the terminology itself you're expending effort that could have been spent tackling the actual issue. You're not helping.
When it comes to emotionally charged issues, people have a tendency to fail to distinguish their feelings, their value judgments, from the categories that the issue involves. Relevant to this site we've seen it happen in the casual gaming debate. After many hardcore gamers began hating on causal gamers a backlash arose. That's good as the opposing side is, in fact, correct but what wasn't good is when they failed to distinguish the categorical statement "hardcore gamer" with their value judgment "elitist prick". People got it into their heads that the terms themselves were bad instead of the way they were being used. "Hardcore gamer" and "casual gamer" are mere category statements, not value judgments.
That's the issue that got me thinking about this but I observed another example recently in this MLP thread. The question was if MLP could be considered a girl's show when so many men liked it. It was a genuinely good question that merits debate. However, many people answered defensively stating that it didn't matter and no one should care, an opinion also mirrored in the poll. Emotions rose because our culture thinks "girl's show" means "boy's shouldn't watch" and people basically scoffed at the very idea of the term "girl's/boy's show". But there's nothing in the terms themselves that carry this value judgment, not necessarily anyway. If you think there is, that "girl's show" should be interpreted as meaning "girls only, boys stay away!" instead of "girls are the primary demographic" or some other innocuous statement along those lines you have to argue your case.
It quite bugs me. I agree there are real issues here but by attacking the terminology itself you're expending effort that could have been spent tackling the actual issue. You're not helping.