Juno News - August 17, 2020


Let’s read BC’s guide to “inclusive” coronavirus language


Episode Stats

Length

6 minutes

Words per Minute

150.60588

Word Count

1,044

Sentence Count

52

Hate Speech Sentences

3


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Hi everyone! The BC Centre for Disease Control has just released the COVID-19 Language Guide,
00:00:11.440 Guidelines for Inclusive Language for Written and Digital Content. The purpose of this new
00:00:16.800 language guide is to destigmatize COVID-19, and it is brought to you by the same people who
00:00:22.320 advised us all to start using glory holes to avoid spreading the coronavirus. So let's look
00:00:28.320 through some of the highlights of this new guide. It starts out by telling us not to say COVID-19
00:00:34.560 infection because that carries a connotation of being unclean, and they instead suggest that we
00:00:40.080 say COVID-19 virus or COVID-19 virus transmissions. And I was thinking that I have mostly heard people
00:00:47.040 say COVID-19 cases. That has been much more common than saying COVID-19 infections, but nevertheless
00:00:55.280 most of the language suggestions follow this line of thought, so say transmit virus instead of infect.
00:01:02.560 We are also told to avoid using terms like fight, battle, or attack the virus, or the war on coronavirus,
00:01:10.240 or crisis, because battle and war references can evoke images of violence and panic.
00:01:16.800 Now, references to war and fighting against something are overused in general, with all diseases
00:01:23.360 and undesirable social phenomena. So I don't know about you, but I've never heard anyone complain
00:01:28.800 about those references or assert that they feel emotionally disturbed by them.
00:01:34.560 Now, after these two pages of COVID-19 language suggestions, COVID-19 specifically is never mentioned
00:01:41.760 again for the remaining 25 pages of the guide, and instead the guide takes a radical shift to talking
00:01:48.320 about issues of race, gender identity, substance use, and other topics. In the section on substance
00:01:55.200 use, for example, they say instead of saying drug addict or drug user, you should try person who
00:02:02.880 injects drugs slash substances, person who smokes drugs slash substances, person who uses drugs slash
00:02:10.880 substances, or person with lived slash living experience of substance use.
00:02:16.640 And that is because person-first language emphasizes humanity. Person-first or people-first language
00:02:22.560 has been a thing since the 60s, so in many ways this discussion right now is a continuation of the
00:02:28.080 discussion we've been having for decades. There's always been some people saying people-first language
00:02:33.040 is dignifying, and others saying it's too politically correct and unnatural. But people-first language used
00:02:39.040 to be pretty much limited to the realm of disabilities, and then it started gradually branching out into
00:02:45.680 race, and just overall life circumstances. Also on the topic of substance use, the guide says to avoid
00:02:54.080 using the word clean as a way of indicating someone is sober, because labeling the use of drugs as dirty
00:03:01.280 and the absence of drug use as clean invites a value judgment that stigmatizes people who use drugs
00:03:07.280 that does not accurately reflect the complexities of substance use and decisions not to use substances.
00:03:12.800 Then, of course, they move on to pronouns, because we always have to talk about pronouns,
00:03:19.680 which I actually find an interesting issue because it's continuously evolving. For instance,
00:03:24.320 we learn in this guide that, though exceptions exist, for example, someone who does not use pronouns and
00:03:31.520 only uses their name, as a general rule, use pronouns that correspond to a person's gender identity.
00:03:37.040 So, I mean, this was new to me. Someone who does not use pronouns and uses only their name. So now you can
00:03:43.760 elect to not even have pronouns and just use your name, which, I mean, that was new for me.
00:03:51.360 Next, they tell us, a good practice when introducing yourself or even as part of your email signature
00:03:57.120 is as follows. Nice to meet you, blank. My name is blank. I use she slash her pronouns. What's your name
00:04:04.400 and what pronouns do you go by? Or you can put in your email signature, John Smith, PhD, he, his, him,
00:04:12.720 program director. I think it's safe to say that I will actually never do that. Next, we move on to
00:04:20.880 gender inclusive language. Shift to the use of people, everyone, folks or folks with an X to avoid
00:04:28.160 use of the phrases men and women, you guys or guys. Why? The phrase men and women excludes non-binary
00:04:35.760 people and it is unclear whether it includes trans men and women. They're trying to push this folks
00:04:42.480 with an X on us. And this folks is really only used by one subset of people. And that is the campus
00:04:51.520 activists who work at the LGBTQ center. So it's interesting that they want this folks with an X
00:04:58.560 to permeate into mainstream culture. This next one is kind of painful. I'm just going to try to
00:05:06.320 get this over with. So we shouldn't say men who have sex or women who have sex,
00:05:12.560 because that is assuming that men are always insertive and women are always vaginally receptive.
00:05:18.800 And this makes assumptions about sexual behavior based on gender and anatomy that may not be at play
00:05:24.400 for people along the sexuality and gender spectrums. So instead, this guide is suggesting that we say
00:05:30.960 engage in insertive sex and engage in receptive sex. So I'm just going to leave that one there.
00:05:38.640 Then we can see that they're still trying to push chest feeding and pregnant person and people of a
00:05:45.280 childbearing age on us. So, you know, this, this just hasn't really caught on yet. And so they're
00:05:50.640 still trying. They're still trying. It keeps then going on to other topics. There's a little section
00:05:57.120 about sex work or prostitution, where they suggest instead of prostitution, they like the term
00:06:03.680 transactional sex. In regards to overweight people, they say to use non weight based indicators to
00:06:11.520 assess health, such as biochemical markers, such as blood pressure, behaviors like physical activity,
00:06:18.560 and mental health like screening for depression. They say, do not use the term people who are overweight,
00:06:25.760 even though that is people first language. Anyways, I think we've had enough of all this for today.
00:06:32.560 What do you think about all this COVID-19 language stuff that had basically nothing to do with COVID-19?
00:06:37.920 Do you think any of these suggestions are justified? Or do you see it as a form of manipulation or just
00:06:43.760 plain silliness? Let us know in the comments. I'm Lindsay Shepard with True North. Thanks so much for
00:06:49.120 watching.