I was going to say "the equivalent of heteronormative but for mental illness" but I thought that anyone that understood what I was saying might have just let me have that one slip and interpreted the meaning rather than focus on its strict representation.
It wasn't a joke as such, at least its intention wasn't primarily humour. Just highlighting the fact that nearly everything everyone says is offensive or exclusionary to someone and that if we adopt the universal application of the principles of extreme gender-neutral language that we've seen advocated on HN and elsewhere, equally for every issue, we end up with lobotomised language†.
I think the use of 'insane' is fine. And I think the use of gendered pronouns is fine. But I am neither insane nor of a gender that is under-represented in the pronoun
This article has no relevance to gender-neutral language and no one other than yourself is discussing this. It would be better to address this issue in a relevant thread instead of hijacking a random one.
Specifically the casual use of the word 'insane'. I don't think it's unreasonable to discuss the contents of the page and make references to things not contained on the page.
I think you're thinking of the word "retarded". You might as well be arguing against using the word "crazy". Insane and crazy have identical meaning in most contexts.
It wasn't a joke as such, at least its intention wasn't primarily humour. Just highlighting the fact that nearly everything everyone says is offensive or exclusionary to someone and that if we adopt the universal application of the principles of extreme gender-neutral language that we've seen advocated on HN and elsewhere, equally for every issue, we end up with lobotomised language†.
I think the use of 'insane' is fine. And I think the use of gendered pronouns is fine. But I am neither insane nor of a gender that is under-represented in the pronoun
† oh never mind