Don't call me "old": Avoiding ageism when writing about aging
nia.nih.gov
nia.nih.gov
She's old. As hell.
The minds of people who spend time writing things like this article are so foreign to me that they are incomprehensible.
Be clear, precise, and pedantic about your terminology – don't use words to describe groups just because everybody else does – and you will automatically satisfy most inclusivity guidance. To write respectively, have enough respect to know what you're talking about, or consult those who do. To avoid harmful stereotypes, don't use them: think about what category of people you're really talking about, and use that (instead of a proxy category). Some people aren't very good at this, though, and these checklists can help them.
What? Arriving on shared definition of terms carries enormous cultural benefits. The world is vastly more complex than language, so language will always fall short.
> have enough respect to know what you're talking about
Who decides this? How is one supposed to know this?
> or consult those who do
Taken with the prior statement, this seems very similar to an abusive relationship. This kind of consultation would require enormous amounts of trust. How does one know if a person is trustworthy?
> harmful stereotypes
Who decides if a stereotype is harmful? I'm not sure how to act on this in a way that's not susceptible to being abused.
> what category of people you're really talking about
This is pretty good advice, but again shared cultural definitions are extremely powerful and valuable, so it will likely be in adequate.
To give an example from the article, “boomers” is a term referring to a specific American demographic group, usually from a sociocultural perspective. (It's actually a bit more complicated than this: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_boom for details.) If you're trying to classify humans by age, e.g. in a medical context, the term is not appropriate.
I can't tell you how to know whether you know what you're talking about: that's difficult. A good rule of thumb is that you're aware of contradictory viewpoints, and understand why those people disagree with you (and why they're wrong, if they are), but this only works if you don't force it (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart's_law).
Finding experts is a difficult problem, but in this case it's easy: picking a member of the demographic group at random, then randomly picking one of their friends (also in the demographic group), will probably give you someone who can tell you how members of that group will react to various terms, what the preferred terminology is, and why it's not about the words you use. (Because it isn't. Never has been, never will be. Even https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derry/Londonderry_name_dispute isn't about the name.)
Stereotypes are harmful if they cause harm, which is most of them. There's no arbiter except reality. If it's easier for you, avoid stereotypes that are inaccurate: which is, again, most of them. If you don't know that either, just use one of these irritating checklists of prescribed and proscribed terms: that's why they exist.
Unfortunately, in healthcare contexts this language will most likely be less clear.
Here's an excellent, well-sourced paper which argues, amongst other things, that avoiding sex-based language with regards to female reproduction is problematic because it works against the plain language principle of health communications, and therefore can actually reduce inclusivity for vulnerable groups by making communications more difficult to understand: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fgwh.2022.81885...
Describing the wrong groups, and being misleading, are exactly what I am not advocating for. I have, sadly, seen people advocate find-and-replacing in a document to make it “more inclusive”, and that never ends well. (See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem) The majority of phrases criticised by that article are… awful. (Seriously, “gestational carrier”? “Pregnant” is already a noun.)
> “8 in 10 people” will get pregnant after having unprotected sex
Obviously you don't use clunky language constructions, and you certainly don't do that. (If you are, I dare say that's not the only problem with your writing.) But one doesn't stop being a woman at menopause: this ambiguity might cause clear communication for some, but it comes at the expense of unclear communication for others.
For accessibility, you can't have a one-size-fits-all text.[0] There's a reason we have separate easy-read versions.[1] Provide an imprecise, oversimplified summary if it improves outcomes, but don't make that the only version.
> They may not know, for example, that “a person with a cervix” is a woman and refers to them
If people don't know what the cervix is, explain what the cervix is, probably in parentheses. Rather than constructing an artificial example, I'll quote the World Health Organisation (https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/cervical-ca...):
> Persistent HPV infection of the cervix (the lower part of the uterus or womb, which opens into the vagina – also called the birth canal) if left untreated, causes 95% of cervical cancers.
This sentence could do with some work, but it demonstrates the point. A skilled writer can be clear and correct: it's not either-or.
[0]: https://indoxicate.me/text-accessibility-requires-multiple-f...
[1]: https://designnotes.blog.gov.uk/2021/10/11/easy-read-is-hard...
ageism isn't about what it's called or some kind of implied "shame". it's about assuming things based on it, like competence, employ-ability, etc. that's ugly, and fwiw the industry that hn serves, could really stand to learn a thing or two about it.
i'm not as eloquent as miss manners, but she's right.
Getting old kind of sucks. While with fortune you’ll have gained some wisdom and assets, your body and mind are noticeably deteriorating by the time you hit 40 and it just gets worse from there. You get uglier, weaker, slower physically and mentally, more forgetful, and less healthy with every passing year. The only thing getting old has going for it is it feels like it beats the alternative. And no amount of euphemism is ever going to change that.
I am old.
However, like everything else, language is a practice, and it can't hurt to practice your awareness of what might constitute impolite vs formally appropriate speech, even if you consciously choose to ignore it in casual conversation.