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Re: IESG Statement On Oppressive or Exclusionary Language

Stephane Bortzmeyer <bortzmeyer@nic.fr> Wed, 29 July 2020 09:11 UTC

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Date: Wed, 29 Jul 2020 11:11:53 +0200
From: Stephane Bortzmeyer <bortzmeyer@nic.fr>
To: Nico Williams <nico@cryptonector.com>
Cc: ietf@ietf.org
Subject: Re: IESG Statement On Oppressive or Exclusionary Language
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On Tue, Jul 28, 2020 at 11:00:35AM -0500,
 Nico Williams <nico@cryptonector.com> wrote 
 a message of 17 lines which said:

> I'm surprised not to find there anything like a survey of RFCs,
> current I-Ds, and maybe even expired I-Ds, of problematic
> language. [...]  Can we ask the author, and/or maybe the RPC, to
> perform such a survey?

It would require a definition of "problematic language", something
that the discussion proved next to impossible. (I enjoyed the long
discussion about "folks", I learned a lot of things about the english
language and about the english-speaking societies, I didn't know that
this term was so polysemic).

My favorite example is RFC 6350 which uses the example "Chief vCard
Evangelist" since apparently chief is "Oppressive or Exclusionary
Language"
<https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-why-i-decided-to-take-the-word-chief-out-of-my-ceo-title-to-respect/>

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