I don’t know what Chemists are on these days - but it’s powerful stuff that seems to be producing a range of largely psychotic and delusional thinking.
If you want a more scholarly (and broad) exposition of today’s topic, then try here :
Read it and weep for the once proud and magnificent thing we used to call science.
I am, of course, not going to be at all scholarly about things. You didn’t really expect me to be, did you?
I’m just going to focus on the inanity and insanity of the 2023 version of the Inclusivity Style Guide published by the ACS (American Chemical Society). Read it and be amazed. Lots of discussion of how to be a good anti-ist and be actively anti-ism, but nothing about how best to describe something like antioxidants, for example.
This is all part and parcel of the notion that if we continue to use harmful language then everyone is going to have some kind of mental breakdown and there simply aren’t enough mental health professionals around to deal with the subsequent trauma. It is estimated that if this continues, then by the year 2037 over half the population1 in the US will need to be professionally trained counsellors.
These are dark not so light times in which we live. It’s important to maintain a blacklist manual of hurty words to avoid; we should not use words that might cause offence and trigger a catastrophic mental breakdown.
The guide starts off by telling us where science has been going wrong all these years. Not enough diversity. We are told that “diverse teams produce higher-quality work” because they just do. We are told to
Whenever possible, strive for a team of collaborators that reflects diverse perspectives and lived experiences regarding gender, race and ethnicity, age, and geographic location, among other factors.
I now know why my last paper got rejected; it would have been much better if I’d had a furry as a co-author instead of that sodding useless white bloke with an h-index of 45. It’s very fortunate indeed that my own field practicum2 of quantum mechanics was sorted out by a well-known furry
The general guidelines section, which contains these recommendations about the importance of diversity for high-quality research, also gives us examples including a warning not to use the phrase “normal, healthy lives” which is not-inclusive and also demeaning. Although perhaps one might suggest that being offended by the use of the word normal in this context is not a normal reaction.
Of course, it’s really hard not to get tripped up by all of these new rules and so it’s recommended that one hire sensitivity readers
Especially when writing about a group that is not represented on your writing and editing teams, consider consulting or hiring a sensitivity reader who does represent that group
Over 75% of my last research budget went on hiring sensitivity readers to check that we’d not been offensive to the vast (and diverse) array of marginalized people out there. Intersectionality is a bitch difficult thing.
Being a bit of a blob myself, I was particularly interested to read the section on how to talk about land whales people with beautiful rolls of lard fat. I am oppressed, it seems. All of those health complications are NOT caused by an overabundance of lipids. No, they are entirely due to weight-stigma and lack of accommodation.
When someone says ‘the woman affected by obesity,’ it suggests that the problem is her body size, and not the weight-stigma and lack of accommodation that is actually harming her.
Fat people don’t have more heart attacks because their heart has been struggling to pump blood round a system that wasn’t designed around having more fat than muscle, they have more heart attacks because people say hurty things and get a bit snotty when they have to sit next to an enormous in-flight pillow they never bought.
The style guide helpfully tells us that
There are several names for movements related to fighting antifat oppression
I looked for the movement known as exercise on that list, but it wasn’t included.
Apparently, I should avoid the phrase “I feel fat” in favour of I feel uncomfortable in my skin. I do feel uncomfortable in my skin, but that’s because I’ve too much fucking fat contained within it.
Instead of talking about things like “how to prevent obesity” we should be talking about how to end anti-fat discrimination. Because that, like magic, will make everything all right again and people will be healthy once more, whatever their size.
We also learn in this section that obesity, it seems, is not a “public health crisis”, anti-fat bias and discrimination are public health crises. It’s amazing how many difficult to treat health issues can be simply resolved by just being kind.
My favourite was the helpful advice to blame the nasty people who were always out to get you when they designed technology. Instead of saying “you are too big for this MRI machine” one should say
I am so sorry that the MRI wasn’t built to accommodate you, let’s look at other options for getting the information we need
Translation: we couldn’t use the entire budget on buying a warehouse equipped with an MRI machine the size of a battleship. We also didn’t want to blow our entire electricity budget for the year. I’m so sorry.
When my mum was working at a hospital (in a non-medical capacity) she told me about the unfortunate seal soul who had died from complications caused by obesity anti-fat discrimination and had to be hacked into a few pieces in order to get him into several mortuary shelves. That mortuary certainly wasn’t built to accommodate him.
I do feel sorry for this poor guy; it’s very sad that he wasn’t able to get his eating under control and be able to live a normal, healthy life life free from discrimination. And as much as it’s dark off-colour twisted humour that finds a laugh at the notion of him being hacked to bits in order to be squeezed into the mortuary shelves, it is a bit of a sadly necessary indignity. But hey, I’m being inclusive here in finding both humour and genuine tragedy.
Of course the big bad boggart of race gets a fair deal of ‘analysis’. The usual tiresome stuff and also the expected extreme reaction to the use of any word containing the term master, because, as we know, the only possible context and usage of this word harks back to slavery.
But consider, for example, the cumulative effect on the language when such a masculine and slavery-related word as master is encountered in so many everyday ways: master bedroom, master builder, master class, masterful, master hand, master key, master list, mastermind, masterpiece, master plan, master stroke, master switch, master tape, master teacher, masterwork, mastery, overmaster, past master, postmaster, prizemaster, self-mastery.
Does this mean I’m not allowed to masterbate any more?
I had more or less lost the will to live at the section on how to be nice to the blobs like me, so I only skimmed through the rest of this dirge-like drear-fest of virtue.
The thing that struck me, and it’s something I’ve noted about a lot of ‘woke’ thought and, erm, “analysis”, is just how childish and infantilizing it all is.
This style guide wasn’t written by grown-ups. It seems more about perpetuating emotional insecurities and victimhood than anything else. It’s very depressing and would be mind-bogglingly dreary and dull if it wasn’t so unintentionally hilarious.
In a world where things like colour are everything, it’s amazing just how much colour from the language they want to remove.
It’s at times like these I need to retreat to my garden and find peace in the lovely coloured flowers flowers of colour. Here’s the first rose of summer; the first rose I’ve grown in over 12 years.
Source : The Ferguson Handbook of Utterly True and Meaningful Predictions
The word “field” is offensive now, because black slaves worked in fields. I really am not making this up. Oh how I fucking wish I was.
I wonder if the infantilisation of society is because too many parents spend far too much time playing with their children these days.
As for the obesity problem, more shaming would be a good a thing (speaking as someone who is by no means sylph like). More shaming on an awful lot of fronts would be good for society, for that matter. Perhaps we could start by shaming the people putting out all this trivia that they aren't doing something more productive with their lives.
"There are several names for movements related to fighting antifat oppression"? The antifat antifa?