Let’s read BC’s guide to “inclusive” coronavirus language
Episode Stats
Words per minute
150.60588
Harmful content
Hate speech
3
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Summary
The BC Centre for Disease Control has released the COVID19 Language Guide, Guidelines for Inclusive Language for Written and Digital Content. In this episode, we look at some of the highlights of this new guide, including the use of pronouns and gender inclusive language.
Transcript
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Hi everyone! The BC Centre for Disease Control has just released the COVID-19 Language Guide,
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Guidelines for Inclusive Language for Written and Digital Content. The purpose of this new
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language guide is to destigmatize COVID-19, and it is brought to you by the same people who
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advised us all to start using glory holes to avoid spreading the coronavirus. So let's look
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through some of the highlights of this new guide. It starts out by telling us not to say COVID-19
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infection because that carries a connotation of being unclean, and they instead suggest that we
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say COVID-19 virus or COVID-19 virus transmissions. And I was thinking that I have mostly heard people
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say COVID-19 cases. That has been much more common than saying COVID-19 infections, but nevertheless
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most of the language suggestions follow this line of thought, so say transmit virus instead of infect.
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We are also told to avoid using terms like fight, battle, or attack the virus, or the war on coronavirus,
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or crisis, because battle and war references can evoke images of violence and panic.
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Now, references to war and fighting against something are overused in general, with all diseases
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and undesirable social phenomena. So I don't know about you, but I've never heard anyone complain
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about those references or assert that they feel emotionally disturbed by them.
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Now, after these two pages of COVID-19 language suggestions, COVID-19 specifically is never mentioned
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again for the remaining 25 pages of the guide, and instead the guide takes a radical shift to talking
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about issues of race, gender identity, substance use, and other topics. In the section on substance
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use, for example, they say instead of saying drug addict or drug user, you should try person who
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injects drugs slash substances, person who smokes drugs slash substances, person who uses drugs slash
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substances, or person with lived slash living experience of substance use.
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And that is because person-first language emphasizes humanity. Person-first or people-first language
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has been a thing since the 60s, so in many ways this discussion right now is a continuation of the
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discussion we've been having for decades. There's always been some people saying people-first language
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is dignifying, and others saying it's too politically correct and unnatural. But people-first language used
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to be pretty much limited to the realm of disabilities, and then it started gradually branching out into
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race, and just overall life circumstances. Also on the topic of substance use, the guide says to avoid
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using the word clean as a way of indicating someone is sober, because labeling the use of drugs as dirty
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and the absence of drug use as clean invites a value judgment that stigmatizes people who use drugs
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that does not accurately reflect the complexities of substance use and decisions not to use substances.
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Then, of course, they move on to pronouns, because we always have to talk about pronouns,
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which I actually find an interesting issue because it's continuously evolving. For instance,
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we learn in this guide that, though exceptions exist, for example, someone who does not use pronouns and
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only uses their name, as a general rule, use pronouns that correspond to a person's gender identity.
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So, I mean, this was new to me. Someone who does not use pronouns and uses only their name. So now you can
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elect to not even have pronouns and just use your name, which, I mean, that was new for me.
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Next, they tell us, a good practice when introducing yourself or even as part of your email signature
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is as follows. Nice to meet you, blank. My name is blank. I use she slash her pronouns. What's your name
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and what pronouns do you go by? Or you can put in your email signature, John Smith, PhD, he, his, him,
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program director. I think it's safe to say that I will actually never do that. Next, we move on to
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gender inclusive language. Shift to the use of people, everyone, folks or folks with an X to avoid
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use of the phrases men and women, you guys or guys. Why? The phrase men and women excludes non-binary
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people and it is unclear whether it includes trans men and women. They're trying to push this folks
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with an X on us. And this folks is really only used by one subset of people. And that is the campus
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activists who work at the LGBTQ center. So it's interesting that they want this folks with an X
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to permeate into mainstream culture. This next one is kind of painful. I'm just going to try to
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get this over with. So we shouldn't say men who have sex or women who have sex,
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because that is assuming that men are always insertive and women are always vaginally receptive.
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And this makes assumptions about sexual behavior based on gender and anatomy that may not be at play
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for people along the sexuality and gender spectrums. So instead, this guide is suggesting that we say
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engage in insertive sex and engage in receptive sex. So I'm just going to leave that one there.
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Then we can see that they're still trying to push chest feeding and pregnant person and people of a
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childbearing age on us. So, you know, this, this just hasn't really caught on yet. And so they're
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still trying. They're still trying. It keeps then going on to other topics. There's a little section
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about sex work or prostitution, where they suggest instead of prostitution, they like the term
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transactional sex. In regards to overweight people, they say to use non weight based indicators to
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assess health, such as biochemical markers, such as blood pressure, behaviors like physical activity,
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and mental health like screening for depression. They say, do not use the term people who are overweight,
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even though that is people first language. Anyways, I think we've had enough of all this for today.
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What do you think about all this COVID-19 language stuff that had basically nothing to do with COVID-19?
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Do you think any of these suggestions are justified? Or do you see it as a form of manipulation or just
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plain silliness? Let us know in the comments. I'm Lindsay Shepard with True North. Thanks so much for