June 2015 Newsletter

February 10, 2016

A Retreat for LGBTQ Writers

I’m at an exceptional writers retreat where one of the first things the organizers did was ask for our pronoun preferences. With she/they on my name tag, I was gratified to meet quite a few others who used theyexclusively or in concert with the usual gendered pronouns.

Gender-free pronouns make so much sense even when the person’s identity is known to be male or female. Newsroom style guides prohibit the mention of details such as ethnicity or sexual orientation when they are irrelevant to the story. The intention is to be accurate while avoiding bias. For example, same-sex marriage is simply marriage unless gender identity is part of the story. By always using gendered pronouns, we make biological sex matter when it doesn’t. Can you imagine how racist racialized pronouns would be?

Thank you, Lambda Literary Foundation for the intensely inclusive, welcoming, and safe Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices.

If you’re in the Los Angeles area this weekend, please come to the reading series, starting tonight, Friday, June 26. You can catch me in the lineup on Saturday.

In unity,

Karen YinFounder

“I’d argue that finding a single word to describe discrimination against people with mental illness helps put it on par with similar forms of bigotry, including racism and sexism.”

“Each time we choose to elect our own names and references we are empowered.”

“Some Native Hawaiians have taken issue with the title of Cameron Crowe’s new film, ‘Aloha,’ because the movie appears to lack any connection to the history and culture behind that meaningful word.”

When headline writers don’t read the article.

The problems with replacing “BME” and “BAME” with “people of color.”

“It’s she, not he. Thanks!”

 Imagining God as a Woman? | The Telegraph

“I have made a concerted effort to think about God using either gender-neutral or expansive language. I confess it feels quite peculiar, and sometimes impersonal, but perhaps this inaccessibility is simply due to lack of practice.”

“Miscarriage is confounding. Our cultural silence surrounding pregnancy loss makes matters worse.”

On the intentional absence of profanity and the N-word on “Empire.”

A call for responsible and professional coverage of Serena Williams.

“Lorraine Bellamy, a spokesperson at Mencap, who herself has a learning disability, said: ‘It is unacceptable that a toy company like Lego have used a term that offends people with a disability such as this, especially as the toy is aimed at children.'”

“To share a video of someone signing with the caption ‘look how cool this is!’ perpetuates the misconception that sign languages are somehow different, a kind of sideshow novelty at which to marvel.”

“[W]hat if I told you there is one word you can add to your vocabulary that will help set your kids up for success for the rest of their lives?”

Alternatives to saying “guys.”

“‘It’s such an encapsulation of how Target (and many other retailers) persistently genders toys that don’t need to be gendered,’ [Abi] Bechtel told the Daily Dot.”

“Used by both men and women, these words are the linguistic equivalents of wolves in sheep’s clothing, often disguised as flattery while used to subtly undermine the woman being described.”

 John Green Regrets Using the “R-Word” in “Paper Towns” | Entertainment Weekly

“At the time, I thought an author’s responsibility was to reflect language as I found it, but now . . . eight years later, I don’t feel like a book about humanizing the other benefited from dehumanizing language.”—John Green

“In the current model, the census differentiates between ‘race’ and ‘origin,’ and does not consider Hispanic to be a race. Many people have found phrasing of the questions to be confusing.”

“I generally favor not running photographs of mass killers, as well as not publishing their names or the diatribes they sometimes leave, expressing their hate and amplifying their plea for attention.”

“Millennials are an open-minded and accepting group, and they don’t want their children to feel pressured to conform to stereotypes that might be restrictive.”—Linda Murray, BabyCenter’s global editor in chief

The Conscious Style Guide newsletter rounds up the best news and blog posts from the world of kind, compassionate, mindful, empowering, respectful, and inclusive language. Note: Spotlighting an opinion is not intended as an endorsement. Please send news tips to [email protected].

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