Hmm, this is an interesting line of thought. I’ve always thought these movements are dominated by left leaning people and the left usually understands the importance of inclusive wording. So why do they use such exclusive labels?
Surely many people do try to jump at that low hanging fruit and adopt more inclusive labels. But, I guess it’s not an idea that spreads so easily? These movements must rely on people with strong feelings on specific issues and have to target them with a label they can identify with. I guess the more moderate majority would associate with other terms, but don’t have the motivation to take much action in the name of it.
I suspect that all these slogans originated in more radical far left circles where extremism and purity testing are more rampant. Meaning that the face value meaning of the slogans is the intent. As the slogans became more mainstream, the moderate left tried to damage control by introducing alternate meanings to appeal to the public. However, that hasn’t really worked out because the average person doesn’t care about the extra nuance. They’ll just see the slogan and take the face value meaning as the intention. At face value, a lot of these terms are just bad and people rightfully oppose them. Having someone try to explain to them something along the lines of “ackhsually the slogan doesn’t actually mean what it says” doesn’t sound very convincing. Bad optics is a really a big problem on the left, and the crazy thing is that there’s a good chunk of the left that sees no issue with it.
Hmm, this is an interesting line of thought. I’ve always thought these movements are dominated by left leaning people and the left usually understands the importance of inclusive wording. So why do they use such exclusive labels?
Surely many people do try to jump at that low hanging fruit and adopt more inclusive labels. But, I guess it’s not an idea that spreads so easily? These movements must rely on people with strong feelings on specific issues and have to target them with a label they can identify with. I guess the more moderate majority would associate with other terms, but don’t have the motivation to take much action in the name of it.
I suspect that all these slogans originated in more radical far left circles where extremism and purity testing are more rampant. Meaning that the face value meaning of the slogans is the intent. As the slogans became more mainstream, the moderate left tried to damage control by introducing alternate meanings to appeal to the public. However, that hasn’t really worked out because the average person doesn’t care about the extra nuance. They’ll just see the slogan and take the face value meaning as the intention. At face value, a lot of these terms are just bad and people rightfully oppose them. Having someone try to explain to them something along the lines of “ackhsually the slogan doesn’t actually mean what it says” doesn’t sound very convincing. Bad optics is a really a big problem on the left, and the crazy thing is that there’s a good chunk of the left that sees no issue with it.