I know what you mean but it’s hard to talk about these things without generalizing, since we can’t ask everyone on the planet how they feel.
It’s super easy actually! You just qualify your statements. For example:
-
I don’t like how some people…
-
I’ve noticed that a lot of people…
-
There’s quite a few people that…
-
The majority of people seem to…
This language avoid assumptions about how everyone else feels and leaves the reader an out to say to themselves, “I’m not in that group and they acknowledge that I am an exception.” It avoids the trap of over generalization and doesn’t put the reader on the defensive. Language like “all people” and “allistic people” (meaning all non-autistic people) only work to alienate. Ironically it demonstrates the same behavior they appear to be complaining about…
Ok sure, but another way would be to realize that when me or someone else says “autistic people”, we mean “my experience with autistic people”.
Since obviously I haven’t met all autistic people in the world, and obviously I don’t speak for all. I have an opinion based in my experience. In fact, everything I write is based on my personal experience.
When you write something to me here on Lemmy, I read it as “your opinion about x” without you have to tell me that in every single post. It’s a bit smarter to think about posts that way I believe.
Maybe don’t generalize a group of people without careful thought and appropriate caveats then? Seems pretty easy to me. You even admit that you are writing from personal experience, and don’t have perfect information, so why not include precise language to reflect that? Seems pretty simple and way more inclusive.
Like I said previously, using precise language simply avoids putting readers that are a part of whatever group on the automatic defensive. Why not just take the extra couple of a seconds to avoid that miscommunication? If you don’t care to do that, then that’s fine, but over generalization is going to automatically alienate some readers that you perhaps didn’t mean to offend.
Yeah I don’t want to offend anyone but at the same time, I don’t want to go through the steps you mentioned in every single post where I express an opinion.
So I think I will have to be OK with some people being offended by me not specifically explaining that I don’t speak for everyone.
Maybe we should take a step back. Your original statement was that it’s hard to have these conversations without generalization. I tried to explain simple ways to avoid the trap of over generalization. Your response appears to be, “I don’t care to put forth the tiny amount of effort to avoid miscommunication.”
So is it actually quite easy and you don’t care? Why say it was hard to begin with then? I’m just kind of confused at this point.
Yeah I don’t think the effort you described is worth it. But thanks for your ideas how to solve this problem. I just don’t want to apply them to every single post.
It’s not even about inclusivity man, it’s just good writing and communication skills to say what you mean.
You don’t have to make the effort to include people who might be offended, but you should make the effort to be a stronger communicator if you value discourse and want to discuss your thoughts and ideas in a public forum.
Otherwise you’re just the online equivalent of a guy shouting his opinions to nobody in particular on a street corner.
-
deleted by creator
That is literally everyone. Everyone’s brain runs on assumptions. Every model is wrong, but some are useful.
