Posted by greenman on August 22, 2025, 2:11 pm Valued Poster
A lot of us have been complaining about this crap for some time, and at least one source agrees. Telling people how to 'talk woke' is telling them how to think; a lot of us are tired of that.
In a new memo, shared exclusively with POLITICO, the center-left think tank Third Way is circulating a list of 45 words and phrases they want Democrats to avoid using, alleging the terms put “a wall between us and everyday people of all races, religions, and ethnicities.” It’s a set of words that Third Way suggests “people simply do not say, yet they hear them from Democrats.” They span six categories — from “therapy speak” to “explaining away crime” — and put in sharp relief a party that authors say makes Democrats “sound like the extreme, divisive, elitist, and obfuscatory, enforcers of wokeness.” In the document, titled “Was It Something I Said?” Third Way argues that to “please the few, we have alienated the many — especially on culture issues, where our language sounds superior, haughty and arrogant,” according to the memo.
Among the blacklisted terms: privilege … violence (as in “environmental violence”) … dialoguing … triggering … othering … microaggression … holding space … body shaming … subverting norms … systems of oppression … cultural appropriation … Overton window … existential threat to [the climate, democracy, economy] … radical transparency … stakeholders … the unhoused … food insecurity … housing insecurity … person who immigrated … birthing person … cisgender … deadnaming … heteronormative … patriarchy … LGBTQIA+ … BIPOC … allyship … incarcerated people … involuntary confinement.
“We are doing our best to get Democrats to talk like normal people and stop talking like they’re leading a seminar at Antioch,” says Matt Bennett, Third Way’s executive vice president of public affairs.
Amen!-greenman
Yeah, some PC language is helpful in stopping discrimination or cultural shaming, BUT
much of it only belongs in an OT evaluation or in lecture halls teaching grad students in the public service and mental health fields.
Some of it is pure BS from git to go!
Example: "birthing person". Repeat after me: Female. That's the correct word. Biology sorts us into male and female, with the occasional human born with more than one expression of genitals. Still, their DNA will reveal which sex they were assigned at conception. That is biology.
FACT: Only human females can give birth to human infants, SO WHY USE A SILLY TERM like "birthing person"?
Male and female are biological terms, not to be confused with GENDER terms like man, woman, s/he, her, him, and so on.
I'm okay with "mail delivery person" and the like simply because all mail delivery folks are not mail-men. Many are women.
Congressman is no longer the catch all term because some are congresswoman.
That kind of thing is cool. But it seems like the ultra-woke sit up at night looking for terms and labels to get all asqueal over.
on August 22, 2025, 2:11 pm
