The Los Angeles County Council has, according to Canutseon, requested the removal of several potentially offensive technological terms. Among them are the adjectives ‘master’/’slave’ (used in conjunction), to signal the mode of accessing an IDE device affixed to a computer. If this is true, it is indeed a feat of mind-boggling ignominiousness. Perhaps the Californian government ought to address more pressing matters.
Finding a discriminatory cultural narrative in a term which denotes the command response priorities of internal electronic devices is unfortunate – and far more telling than the terms themselves.
Perhaps more worrying is this call by the Chicago Centre of Gender Studies to abolish the ‘arbitrary’ separation of public toilets into male and female segments, which it claims discriminates against trans-gendered persons. No doubt unisex toilets would generate just as many complaints (though perhaps of a slightly different nature).
At any rate, the Los Angeles County Council seems to be forgetting other contingent terms, none of which seem to raise any eyebrows. After all, how else could one describe male or female audio leads? I’ve yet to meet someone – male, female, or otherwise – who fails to see the analogy.
What seems to be forgotten in all this is that the formation of a great deal of seemingly politically incorrect terminology is purely pragmatic, and has no political subtext. In this way, many computer terms are simply a result of continual abbreviation and optimisation – and probably devised by geeks who gave the matter no particular thought. Depoliticising these commands would almost invariably make them longer, placing an onerous burden upon computer users to type ever-increasing wads of text – all to placate a bunch of oversensitive, overblown egos.
For example, one would hardly propose altering the Unix manual command from “man” to “person.” Equally ridiculous it would be to claim that the term “daemon” (a memory resident system process) perpetuates the hegemony of Judeo-Christian norms. Perhaps sillier still, “rich text files” could be more transparently denoted as “exploitive capitalist texts.”
But why stop there! The command line program “kill” should be termed “euthanise.” Internet Explorer’s “history” feature must renounce its implicit patriarchal values and be replaced by “herstory.” Blacklists? Exclusion lists! Floppy drive? Tensile challenged. Where does the madness end? (Post more examples in the comments section.)
My analysis? This attempt to subvert such accepted, relatively neutral, and foundational words as master and slave is the result of its initiator’s own guilt. By perceiving themselves as indebted to others, the Politically Correct individual seeks, above all else, validation and acceptance. To this end, he (notice your reaction) adopts language that seeks not to cause offence to anyone (well, except those of us who dislike overt gypping). The individual restricted by norms of political correctness is, ironically, submissive to them – a linguistic slave. Such persons need, basically, to overcome their own, limited conception of themselves and others. Doubleplusgood.
