We can disagree, but I’m not all that interested in getting scholarly about it - the writing’s on the wall, we have real - not theoretical - fascism headed our way within this 4 year presidency and we’d better be ready to fight.

1. Scholarly: you brought scholarship into this by invoking paradox of tolerance. I had to point out that people whose vocation is to think harder & longer than you on this have drawn conclusions at odds with yours. Therefore, your reasoning is not on firm, settled ground.
2. Realism: your conclusion is not only theoretically challenged. Cracking open a history book reveals it’s unnecessary & ill-advised in practice.

The civil rights movement overturned defacto ethno-fascism & advanced equality by using & promoting civil liberties, not opposing them. Freedom of expression & the free speech movement were instrumental.

Even when the threat is real, compromising civil rights to combat it spills beyond the threat & backfires. Read about the Red Scare & McCarthyism to see government restrict civil liberties in the name of security (the Soviets were spying in the Manhattan Project & Federal government), Congress seize the chance to wield a partisan weapon against anyone they flimsily accuse of “Un-American” activities, the lives ruined through rights abuses, the work it took to wind back those laws. Truman criticized those restrictions as a “mockery of the Bill of Rights” and a “long step toward totalitarianism”. For his reckless witch hunt against communists, Joseph McCarthy was criticized as “the greatest asset the Kremlin has”. Persecution ultimately harmed anti-communist efforts more than help them, and critics argued it distracted from the “real (but limited) extent of Soviet espionage in America”.

Read about how basic freedoms like speech & assembly were indispensable for disenfranchised activists to advance universal suffrage as they fought to lift restrictions due to property ownership, race, poll taxes, tests, sex, age.

Read about the considerable work those activists performed using their civil liberties to organize, picket, resist, & act in civil disobedience to gain the expanded freedoms you take for granted today. Look at their work & struggles from the abolitionist movement to black lives matter, and look at the work the activists of today are not doing. Notice how they didn’t organize to weaken basic protections whereas people who think like you argue we should.

Arguing to squander basic protections with some wishful thinking that elected authority will reliably fight your causes for you without as easily turning against you

1. is a lazy failure to understand the limitations of authority & its risks for abuse when you tear down protections against it
2. spits in the face of everything past generations of activists fought for.

Like you, I oppose fascists and (more generally) authoritarians, but I’m very clear about why. Authoritarians don’t respect limits to authority: they would tear down those pesky rights & liberties that protect free society & stand in their way, and they would readily crush people & everything we hold dear for their unworthy cause.

“Resisting” authoritarians chipping away at free society by chipping away even more is exactly what authoritarians would want. How thinkers like you don’t see that is beyond me.

Your prescription is wrong & serves authoritarians: I cannot abide it.

it would be a paradox because this tolerance ultimately ensures the unbridled spread of intolerance. Folks weakly on the left have misunderstood this forever.

While I can’t read what you’re responding to, that doesn’t follow (it can be ignored or protested) & no, they haven’t.

The paradox of tolerance doesn’t lead to a unique conclusion. Philosophers drew all kinds of conclusions. I favor John Rawls’:

Either way, philosopher John Rawls concludes differently in his 1971 A Theory of Justice, stating that a just society must tolerate the intolerant, for otherwise, the society would then itself be intolerant, and thus unjust. However, Rawls qualifies this assertion, conceding that under extraordinary circumstances, if constitutional safeguards do not suffice to ensure the security of the tolerant and the institutions of liberty, a tolerant society has a reasonable right to self-preservation to act against intolerance if it would limit the liberty of others under a just constitution. Rawls emphasizes that the liberties of the intolerant should be constrained only insofar as they demonstrably affect the liberties of others: “While an intolerant sect does not itself have title to complain of intolerance, its freedom should be restricted only when the tolerant sincerely and with reason believe that their own security and that of the institutions of liberty are in danger.”

Accordingly, constraining some liberties such as freedom of speech is unnecessary for self-preservation in extraordinary circumstances as speaking one’s mind is not an act that directly & demonstrably harms/threatens security or liberty. However, violence or violations of rights & regulations could justifiably be constrained.

A point of clarification: tolerance has a number of paradoxes identified in the SEP, and the paradox in discussion is more precisely called the paradox of drawing the limits.

Opposing basic civil liberties like freedom of expression is very authoritarian & small-minded. Basic rule on policymaking: don’t give yourself powers you wouldn’t want your opponents to have.

Quoting A Man of All Seasons

Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law for my own safety’s sake!

Sacrificing basic civil liberties when they don’t suit you is a threat to everyone. Their willingness to do that is why everyone hates authoritarians. It’s cutting off your nose to spite your face.

There are better ways to beat these shitheads, and it’s been done before. Contrary to what you wrote, defending civil liberties regardless of whose is high-minded & defends everyone.

registry and gpedit

They’re still around and the various configuration technologies tap into them.

Most of us are pissed that all of those methods half work or are depreciating away for no reason other than some UIx twat couldn’t be bothered to hook something properly so they just reskin an element and misplaced half the functions.

Pretty much the case here, too. It mostly works, and the parts that don’t are super annoying & require ad hoc script-fu.

it blows my mind why this has not been resolved

Yep, configuring Microsoft has sucked incredibly hard compared to free OSs. Managing plain text configuration files in /etc & ~/.config is refreshingly nice compared to the bolt-on weirdness hidden behind various interfaces in Windows. It’s cute getting an error to contact your administrator when you’re the administrator.

Attention in that area is extremely late & overdue, so I was happy to see something like configuration.dsc.yaml.

I see AI mostly as an assistant whose work I review. I might give it a fully written text, tell it to clean up my clunky language, then review it. Or I might ask it to provide some answers with references & review those references.

AI won’t fix broken foundations.

I’m sure we can ride out 11 on 10 … right?

I try to avoid Windows altogether if I can & confine it to less serious work.

What if we had all these configuration knobs & switches controlled by a plaintext configuration file, and to replicate the configuration, we could just share the file? Maybe we could call it declarative configuration management?

Wouldn’t that be cool? We already have it (partially)?

Maybe an AI could guide us in preparing that file?

Centralized social media is an advertisement platform that targets advertisements according to information & conduct users feed the platform, and some of those users are teenagers?

They’re advertising cosmetics to teenagers unlike ever before in the history of teen-centric media?

Humans should not be on social media.

Fixed.

Welcome to the internet? Learn skepticism?

Critics warn that cutting Narcan funding could reverse life-saving progress, especially as fentanyl-related overdoses persist.

Isn’t that the idea?

A not-insignificant amount of women think using the term “female” is derogatory.

many anglophones disagree with you

And a nonsignificant amount don’t. That doesn’t establish a generally accepted convention of the language community.

Language is alive - it evolves, it changes.

True: still not a conventional definition per earlier remarks.

English words are based on common usage.

Exactly: convention.

Women who feel that way are part of the “language community.”

Incomplete evidence or composition fallacy.

whose use of English is less valid than yours.

Nope, not implied & it’s not about my use, either. It’s about observed, established convention: see earlier remarks (notice a pattern yet?). The lack of consistency across usages indicates that derogatory meaning is not a convention.

all we’re doing is pointing out that it’s used in this way

And plenty of innocuous instances exist as discussed before. That doesn’t make a word itself derogatory:

If a word requires a particular message to be derogatory, then the message (not the word) is responsible.

I don’t deny derogatory instances. Do you deny nonderogatory instances?

Just because you don’t feel a derogatory sense from a given word doesn’t mean those that experience it that way are wrong.

It’s simple overgeneralization: people can draw wrong conclusions about their observations, especially if they disregard conflicting observations (incomplete evidence fallacy). Observing derogatory uses while disregarding nonderogatory uses doesn’t justify any conclusion about a word’s conventional definition.

It varies by message, so it’s not the word itself.

get to the point you’re really saying, which is that women’s experiences and opinions are somehow worth less than yours.

Straw man fallacy. Not implied.

Maybe you follow the logic I wrote, but the conclusion still feels wrong, so you’re unwilling to accept it. Let’s unpack that feeling.

The conventional definition that the noun “female” isn’t derogatory feels wrong, because sexists use that word in an ugly way, and opposing that would feel relieving. What can we do with these feelings? Here’s one idea: even though it’s not generally accepted, let’s make the noun “female” an official dirty word. Let’s accept the premise of their sexism that “females” are lesser and take it further than they did: spread it to the broader community, normalize it into the official language so everyone accepts the noun for an entire gender is a dirty word. The sexists might even be grateful.

Would that feel better? If so, then extraterrestrial anthropologists studying you might reasonably conclude you’re a misogynist. Otherwise, you might want to tell your feelings “Fuck you, feelings! Stop making me do stupid shit!”. Alternatively, understand your feelings & guide them better.

But we can’t pretend we’ve lived in a world of equal opportunity that treats men and women, males and females, equally

in trying to make that point.

While I agree with the first part, that is not implied or necessary to refute the argument as presented.

They argued the same reasoning applies to “male” (literally). It clearly doesn’t.

Therefore, whatever the reasoning could be, their argument isn’t it. Basic logic.

If a sound argument exists, we should present that. Otherwise, we’re pretending to reason.

Well done: that’s the way you defend a thesis. Sources & supported reason. Not whatever nonsense you were doing.

I upvoted your comment, too.

What makes you the ultimate authority

Where do you get the power to decide

What makes your opinion about it more valid

I don’t need to be or decide it and it’s not my opinion: the language community is the ultimate authority of their language. Their collective choices establish observable conventions. Linguistics is dedicated to that approach.

What makes your opinion about it more valid than those of others?

Have you considered that the same word can make two different people feel two different ways?

Subjectivist fallacy: your opinion/feelings don’t make claims true. Up doesn’t mean down because someone feels that way.

Language has conventional, established meanings.

Another comment fully argues, explains, & criticizes your argument, which I won’t bother to rehash here.

I think we grasp cognitive meaning & emotive force in language. I think we also understand the concept of twisting words, have likely rolled our eyes witnessing it, and generally agree that a fair, reasonable person should resist it.

The claim is the word itself is derogatory. It’s an argument roughly of the form:

1. Someone mentioned female humans.
2. They used the noun “female”.
3. The noun “female” is derogatory.
4. Therefore, their statement (regardless of message) is derogatory.

These look like errors of reasoning: a persuasive definition (a definition biased in favor of a particular conclusion or point of view) and a type of straw man fallacy. While it can be used in a derogatory way, that’s not the general, conventional meaning.

Language isn’t always about logic.

Yet you attempt to defend the claim by a (specious) logic language doesn’t follow, either. Language does follow a standard (of sorts): convention. By that standard, the claim is false.

Natural language gains conventional meaning through collective choices of the language community. This general acceptance is reflected in responses of native speakers (not niche online opinions who don’t decide for the entire language community).

If (as reported) native speakers require frequent “correction” on a word’s meaning, that indicates the proposed meaning isn’t generally accepted. A longstanding definition (like “female” as a nonderogatory noun) holds more weight than a novel reinterpretation recognized by fewer.

If the “corrections” aren’t, then what are they? At best, a proposed language change—an attempt to push the idea that the noun “female” is derogatory and change the way allies speak.

Is it a good proposal?

Would defining the noun “female” as derogatory weaken sexist ideologies? Unlikely: extremists like Andrew Tate wouldn’t adjust their rhetoric because of a vocabulary. They wouldn’t need to adjust a single word.

Is it just? Justice requires targeting wrongdoers narrowly—discrediting problematic messages, condemning extremist ideologies, promoting deradicalization. Blanket condemnation based on a word punishes nonoffenders instead of actual wrongdoers. Antagonizing nonoffending parties alienates potential allies rather than foster change.

The result? A reductive purity test that challenges & penalizes allies instead of challenge wrongdoers. That is neither right nor beneficial.

Would making the noun “female” a dysphemism suggest to society that femaleness is wrong/taboo? That seems misguided.

Why that word? The assumption appears to be that usage by sexist extremists taints the word itself as if the word is to blame for their rhetoric. It’s roughly an argument of the form

1. Sexist extremists use the noun “female”.
2. Sexist extremists derogate female humans.
3. Therefore, the noun “female” is inherently derogatory: anyone who uses it derogates female humans.

First, is premise 1 true: do figures like Andrew Tate even use the noun “female” disproportionately? I’ve only seen it among socially awkward individuals: not the same crowd.

More crucially, this argument is invalid: it’s a genetic fallacy (guilt by association).

Thus, the proposal doesn’t advance (and may undermine) a good cause, is unjust, may rely on incorrect premises, and is poorly reasoned: it’s not good in any sense.

often done when discussing science or medical topics

or legal or technical or any context for impersonal abstraction. Such language has appeared in classified ads for apartment rentals: there’s even a movie about it. Not derogatory. Context matters.

It’s also used in situations where people are deliberately ‘othering’ people. Watch any police bodycam footage and you’ll see that cops frequently say “male/female” when discussing non-police individuals.

While US policing has serious issues, this claim seems forced: impersonal terms are standard in legal settings.

Assholes like Tate push a twist in this dynamic so that men are called men but women are called females

Recalling an earlier question: do they?

Though interesting if so, that alone doesn’t make the word in general derogatory. Nonderogatory instances are common (as you’ve identified). If a word requires a particular message to be derogatory, then the message (not the word) is responsible.

The use of a word in a derogatory message doesn’t make it derogatory. That would require an unattainable level of purity (ie, never appear in derogatory messages) for nonderogatory words.

Your argument really shows the people who “consider it derogatory” misattribute an entire rhetoric to a word.

Final thought: humans don’t need constant reassurance that they’re humans to know they aren’t being demeaned (unless they’re painfully insecure).

tl;dr The claim that noun “female” is derogatory is false according to conventional meaning established by the language’s community, corroborated by the frequent need to “correct” native speakers. Moreover, the claim doesn’t advance (and may undermine) a good cause, is unjust, may rely on incorrect premises, and is poorly reasoned.

if you say “man” and “female” instead of “male” and “female”.

That’s extra cringe if they do: that person needs to sort out their words. Is it not derogatory if they say “male” and “female”?

Notice how calling someone “a black” is kinda icky?

It’s hard cringe & awkward: certain to provoke odd looks.

Referring to someone as an instance of their gender could be icky & cringe. That it’s also derogatory doesn’t follow: the easiest counterexample is “a male”.

It’s a news article in their news section, not a scientific study, Nature’s domain of prestige/authority. In the hierarchy of evidence, this ranks at the bottom as background information.

The previous comment stands: it’s an isolated claim lacking independent, impartial corroboration.

it’s still derogatory

It logically isn’t. While you think that, and anyone spending their future with you should mind it, it doesn’t make it true.

If there are factors that are keeping him celibate, they are entirely his own.

Though not entirely, that’s no reason to become an incel, either. No girl got to hop on anyone’s D ever.

Is the pope even supposed to mind death?

He holy ghosted?

A YouTube video and an opinion piece lol.

News investigation & report quoting correspondence between biosafety experts/researchers & their letters to journals?

a Nature article

Paywalled & also in the news section?

It’s possible despite lax biosafety, they didn’t leak the virus & didn’t have it. Based on what little I can read of the article: the word of a person at the center of the matter may be true; however, that’s considerable weight for their word to carry that leaves doubt over impartiality & independence. Findings of an independent monitor/investigation would be more convincing.