I actually agree that Democrats should refrain from using most of these. And they already do! When was the last time a Senator said 'heteronormative'? The bigger problem is that orgs like Third Way are reinforcing this false, right-wing narrative. Dems can't stop doing something they're not doing!
Reactionary centrists do literally anything other than punch hippies challenge
What did you do in the civil war, daddy? Why I made sure that when the center left was inevitably returned to power the left left would continue to be marginalized and unable to raise taxes on our donor friends, pumpkin. K. Can I have your maggoty gruel, daddy? When do we get to leave the gulag?
Third Way is worse than useless
How dare we refer to the very real existential threat of climate change as an existential threat! We need to mealymouth pussyfoot our way into the apocalypse so we don't upset anyone's delicate sensibilities about hearing the truth!
Right on the heels of the DNC forcing Cracker Barrel to change their logo, and that time you saw somebody with handicap plates WALK to the grocery store entrance with barely even a limp! The woke is everywhere once you start to look for it!
They really give the game away when all the words that show up are words that they just saw random people on the internet say.
Hopefully, no one listens to 3rd Way, anyway. They don't represent actual human beings, just corporate interests.
I disagree I don’t think it has much at all to do with why people don’t like the Democratic Party
reminds me of the yard signs I see saying "jewish students should be safe on campus" as if they already aren't
also, this is sort of admitting that the specific language isn’t their issue.
This paragraph is stupefying. To "run on" a position is to communicate about it. The author thus admits that Ds don't communicate using lefty language, then asserts that they do. Which is it? (I know which it is)
Um, almost no national Dems are using these words anyway, so where is this coming from? Is Third Way a Republican op?
It always has been. That's why it's the 'Third Way'.
Honestly wild to me that no one asked Third Way to present examples of elected or other major dem figures using any of this language, let alone party communications, media, etc. the laziness of the reporter and bad faith of the org are a true match made in heaven.
"Overton window" is a tell
Indeed. Don’t believe your own lying eyes. Don’t label a window. And be “Reason”able. It’s a pendulum not a window.
I hate these people so very much I really don't have the words to describe it.
The memo isn't about @democrats.org not using language (that they already don't use) it's about telling them to not even discuss those terms and telling them to say that "The Right" is correct on all of them.
The good faith point is that for good or ill, jargon—especially humanities academic jargon—obscures more than enlightens, and is easily caricatured by, well, by the Third Way, and it’s much better to just use easy to understand words to explain concepts to voters who are not exactly literate.
But of course that’s not the point they’re making.
Next thing you know, we can't say "straw man" ... !
pretending that every democrat has been saying the most outlandish and therapy-speak-addled versions of whatever internet poisoned discourse the online right stumbles upon or makes up is an important part of Third Way's tireless work collaborating with the fascists
it’s really just them being vaguely mad at The Left on twitter for having more followers than them - it must mean they’re receiving institutional support
It's like they spent some time on Tumblr and decided that was actually the DNC.
I wonder if third way could have done more good for the world if they had instead made a list of terms that republicans should stop using.
Always enjoy when elderly Senators try to come up with LGBTQIA+, it always sounds so forced
They can usually get the L and the G out, and sometimes the B, but after that it's stumbling, mumbling, and vague hand gestures.
What the fuck is wrong with using the terms 'housing/food insecurity'?
The problem ironically isn't actual Democratic Party leaders or figures but "your annoying small-town neighbor/cousin who polices your language + gets into arguments on social media because they have no other outlet for their politics."
It’s just Dems saying they’d rather be right wing than actually represent their own base. That’s fine, but don’t expect me to show up for you. If it’s two right wing parties, then I don’t vote. Why would I vote for you? What are you worth if you’re just going to talk down to me?
When they say "Democrats" they just mean everybody. What they want is for use of these words to be entirely proscribed for everyone.
And how much did they bill for this malarkey?
Nope. Don't agree at all. This is bowing down to Republicans. Republicans have successfully used hateful language to encourage their base. Dems NEED to use better descriptors to help their base feel empowered and included. Rather than- try so effing hard to "turn" an R.
There is no third way in politics right now, there’s only one way, and that’s Trump’s way. Dems need to focus on both policy, and fighting back.
I just can’t get over “food insecurity”. It’s a useful way to talk about a big problem like here www.thirdway.org/memo/its-tim...
Overton Window is a bit of low-trust metaphysics invented by a Libertarian think-tank and nobody should use it
It is an accurate description of the center right over the last 30 years.
This is obvious, but if you make big public proclamations saying “stop saying chest feeding” you are intentionally implying that many ppl are doing this. These ppl are disingenuous at best, and saboteurs at worst.
bsky.app/profile/mekk...
They're not Democratic. Third Way specifically tries to appeal to Republicans; they only have more traction with Democrats because Democratic voters have (in the past) valued compromise over other things.
Here’s the words: FUCK THIRD WAY! Damned right-wing scam organization.
I am familiar with certain left wing institutions. They very infrequently use this language to discuss issues. Like if Third Way wanted to show up at such a meeting they'd hardly hear any of those terms being used because they aren't relevant. "Privilege" and "cisgender" I do use frequently.
Those words are actually very important for us to use because they describe a highly influential difference within the community that has real life implications for what we do. To censor them would be some real Stalinist bullshit.
Reminder to people in the replies: Politico is a MAGA owned outlet and loves to platform the furthest right fringe of the Democratic party. Don't assume any this is going to be taken up en masse. It'll be Gavin Newsom and Seth Moulton.
This is bullshit. Dems must speak to voters how they speak in a dialogue, not talk code at them. Dems must look to speak in public gatherings at local parks, bars, schools, etc. Ex: Bernie Sanders doesnt speak in code! Get real.
Their circulating memo needs to end up in the circular file. And the Third Way needs to get together in a circular firing squad for even thinking about such utter bullshit.
Propaganda much? 3rd way funding should be investigated
These are definitely terms people use to designate they are in a particular community, but the politicians aren’t using them. Meanwhile the leadership of the conservative political party and entire right wing media have their language and it’s never posed as a problem.
Stephen Miller can tell people to go home and have a nap because they’re too old to have a an opinion and I haven’t seen any centrists say that’s turning off voters.
"Food insecurity" seems fine though, is there an explanation for why this is a problem?
It implies caring about the problem instead of blaming the hungry people for not working a 3rd job
Looking forward to derailing the next UN summit on sustainable development with a long argument over whether to call it "hunger" or "food insecurity" in the press release, like normal people do
Yeah some of these are genuinely baffling
Sure seems like they're just reactionary concern trolls!
I think they should say whatever they fucking want to. If something is heteronormative, say it. Similarly, if Trump's problem is that he fucks around and pays off the women he fucks, use the word "fucks". Use the available vernacular. And not some DC pointyhead's idea of vernacular.
isn't "triggering" just part of the lexicon now (i agree with your larger point)
also these guys clearly do not mean “oh hey make sure electeds don’t use impenetrable activist and academic language or they’ll seem out of touch”, not least because half of these are not those terms. They want activists, academics, and above all *Democratic voters* to stop saying these things.
I'd say about half of these are words they should never use and half are words they should be using all the time
I think they should them more because people need to learn them and get comfortable with them.
Which of these do you agree they shouldnt use?
A lot of them shouldn't say LGBTQIA+, but only because they should keep us out of their bigot mouths. Also "inseminated person." Nobody say that.
Did I miss the "Third Way" memo on words Republicans can't use? Or is the "Third Way" free speech for Republican Presidents to call Americans "vermin" who are "poisoning the blood of real Americans" but the word police are coming for any random college student who says "heteronormative"?
Yeah, this is a just a list "Third Way" came up with to try to prevent being called bigots by their co-workers and family members. "What? My granddaughter told me get lost after I told her to lose some weight? What is it with these Democratic political campaigns against body shaming?"
A right wing operative can pretty much make death threats, the press treats that as wholly distinct from Republican officials. A leftie person on X or at a megaphone somewhere says "pregnant person", somehow Kamala Harris, Chris Coons and Leader Jeffries are fully culpable. It's total media bull💩.
That's a way of centering white men's issues certainly.
I don't even know what this is about. Can someone explain? In the comments ppl seem worried that prog lingo radicalized nice conservatives, but unless I'm misunderstanding those concerns, I think that's arrant bs. Also who is Third Wossname and why should I care?
The main thing Dems need to stop doing is using right wing framing and GOP talking points to talk about ANY issues. Just reject anything the GOP claims and reframe it in a way that promotes their view. Until that happens they will keep losing arguments.
I welcome the day these mutton-headed consultants focus on actions over words. And also the day they all shuffle off this mortal coil.
The fact that they put "birthing person" and "stakeholder" in the same list, man...
Imagine if there was a centrist think tank that put out a memo for republicans to not say certain words and it was just a list of slurs
that think tank would be run out of town
Then imagine the 4 Atlantic pieces decrying the “censorship”
Four is a very generous underestimate. Conor Friedersdorf would be living off that moment for the rest of his career.
There was a young GOP staffer who caused a little stir by mentioning that he was often advising younger conservatives looking to get work with the party to stop using the n-word and other way over the line slurs in their online forums
Yeah, even aside from debates over what specific terms to use, the fundamental issue is usually that *Republicans and an alarming number of centrists latch onto comments by random powerless individuals and treat them like official statements from a Democratic spokesperson* So much bad-faith BS
Marginalized & disadvantaged folk & allies who stand up for them will always be painted as unreasonable, illegitimate & threatening, to discredit & discount any efforts to improve civil rights & social conditions & to keep the status quo status hierarchy.
I do see this terminology constantly here though. It’s everywhere in liberal spaces. Some of it is a major turnoff. Just one example: I looked into a podcast about fanfics and they didn’t use the word woman. They used a technical term about assigned at birth. That’s insane. I gave up.
i'm sure those podcasters would be *heartbroken* to know they lost the viewership of someone who thinks talking about assigned gender is "insane", but what does this have to do with the democratic party?
If you're determining political theory and vocabulary from a podcast about fanfics, you've chosen poorly. (Related: Just because you don't like a thing doesn't mean it's bad or incorrect - that requires analysis of ethical and moral concerns - it just means you don't like it)
you waddled into one of the most queer subcultures imaginable and immediately started sniveling about how it was too gay for you. maybe you should fuck off?
how would the Democratic Party stop a podcast about fanfics from using normal modern terms about gender assigned at birth
By all means, don't listen to a podcast if it bothers you,... but whatever happened to not being so thin skinned about the words that other people choose to use? You can perceive people choosing to use a particular vocabulary as scolding, but that's really just your perception.
It literally only bothers you because you choose to let it bother you. Roll your eyes and move on. This is EXACTLY the same tendency that that leads to conservatives freaking out about pronouns in email signatures (a thing that came into existence to avoid confusion.)
yeah it’s annoying but not worth ending society over
Which podcast?
I want to know this--it sounds interesting!
You listened to a podcast hosted by some randos, didn't like how those individuals preferred to talk on *their show* that *you are in no way obliged to listen to*, and that's somehow the fault of Democratic politicians?
I see technical terms in two places, when i look at technical discussions, and when people try to use them to scare other people.
A podcast!? Oh no!
Democratic politicians do not have totalitarian control over what fanfic podcasters say. This should be obvious. How dumb are you?
We're all very impressed by how much effort you put into deliberately finding something to be annoyed about when you had the option of not doing that.
"I can't vote dem because of a random person saying things online" Do you laugh when keys are jiggled at you?
I'm gonna say this as politely as I can: complaining about that is the most pathetic loser shit imaginable. raise your level of dignity in life by doing anything else. doesn't matter what, you could smoke some weed and fall asleep. anything
Yeah, there are a lot of people in the world. Most of them aren’t Democratic Party politicians or spokespeople. Which is the point. The Democrats can’t - and shouldn’t - control what randos on the internet say and holding that against them is fucking deranged
And yet that’s our reality. But I am talking about something more subtle. Apolitical spaces which are about art or sports etc. We need a place for liberals and even potential liberals that doesn’t turn people off with weird language & needless scolding. We used to be good at this! We need it back.
using queer-inclusive language isn't "political" and the fact that you think it is is very telling
And yet the topic at hand is purported use of language by democratic candidates and elected officials…
you're not demanding a space where that happens, you're complaining you found a space where it doesn't
tell us more about needless scolding
I wholeheartedly assure you there exist fanfics that don't say latinx.
There is actually a huge difference between ‘we need’ and ‘elected democrats should’. We need better romantic comedies and shorter action movies too but that’s not something I’m going to scold Nancy pelosi about!
I am with you on politicians who are more small c conservative. I am just pointing out that this language became popular on old school Twitter and got repeated by, say, TV executives in interviews. It’s everywhere. Maybe less so now but I think it really turned off people including Dem voters.
It’s more cultural than a thing put out in Democratic politician statements. But maybe we need to talk about it. By the way, I have listened to several of your podcasts and you and your colleagues are plain spoken. I have heard it elsewhere in mainstream entertainment podcasts.
All we do as a nation is talking about it tho. You can't swing a dead cat in supposed left leaning media without hitting an article about how "the leftists are saying pregnant person instead of pregnant woman!" I personally am so tired of hearing about what the people on Tumblr say.
Democratic politicians are also not TV executives. You're doing a whole lot of describing people who are not Democratic politicians while discussing this document about Democratic politicians.
I just cannot see “some people say words I don’t prefer” as a big issue Dems need to address or be held to account for
I don't understand why it is an issue at all. Perhaps it comes down to conservatives screaming about it for decades at this point until it just becomes perceived wisdom that it is actually a problem. We let conservatives dictate the terminology.
When was it repeated by TV executives in interviews?
Oh boo fucking hoo. Grow up and stop being a whiny little prat.
Was this a major podcast with tens of thousands of listeners, or a podcast run by a few people for their friends and a small circle of listeners? If the latter, it ain't evidence of anything but your media illiteracy.
So like what? “Overton window”? “Democratic threats”? If you’re saying “middle people” still can’t see these dangers, then this country deserves to become Russia and everyone including them deserves to pay the price.
Yes. Precisely. bsky.app/profile/benj...
Nah, man. If cisgender, dead ame and food insecurity are too scary for Democrats to say, then they shouldn't be in politics at all.
But when they say Democrats they mean "every post on bluesky"
They just need to stop HARDER, Michael, and then surely the white working class that hasn't voted Dem in decades will come back
good point
they are literally doing the obverse of newt gingrich circa 1994. (they're the Democrats' version of newt gingrich, which probably is as close to a joe rogan as the Dems can get.)
its no worsethanthey treat the innocent hamas
They hate "stakeholders" because it suggests other people have interest in a policy besides The Money. You suggest The Poors have stakes in this!? *Scoff*
I kinda hate it because it usually just ends up meaning nimbys with money! But what's the replacement language about 'people affected by this decision/policy?' It's not only constituents; because non-constituents are also affected! Etc.
Riffing on this; It's whatever word you want because we all agree this language isn't in fact used broadly in the general public but academia or activism But for whatever reason some weirdos are mad this language even exists. Like, just don't use it. No one is making anyone use "stakeholder"
It's super-common here in the Bay Area, but that's use because it's hard to represent how intertwined our communities are but our representation is not. Like, I am not represented in building bike paths in a city on the other side of the bay, but my driving does impact them as I pass through!
Fair enough! Cities and Rural areas obviously have different lingo (I'm mostly a southern rural person now in Rural Minnesota) and location as well. Point still stands that language is an individual/audience thing and its weird for people to get mad at what words other people use to be inclusive.
Right!
So I'm always butting into public comment to say 'housing needs to be built in town so we can live here' or 'bike paths need to be protected so drivers like me aren't confused' To remind them we are, in fact, intimately connected. Not just to my own RTC and own representation.
A lot of these terms seem to suggest Third Way believes The Queers have had it too good for too long, now.
Its just a memo saying "gays and poors are icky", it barely qualifies as a dogwhistle
reading this in the same voice as a democrat nodding to newt gingrich's GOPAC language dictates
The fuck is wrong with heteronormative? Somehow people on the right can say whatever they want, but people whose lived experience every goddamned day is being framed as “other” don’t matter? It takes a person of good will about a nanosecond to understand this term. Others were never on our side.
Or ... hear me out ... people say whatever they want and whatever works for them and their situation. And other people can deal.
I mean, I don't say heteronormative or othering very often, or ever, really, but some nerdy Poindexter butting in to tell me not to just makes me want to start.
Instead of banning words, they could just speak in plain language. If we learned anything, people just aren't that bright.
'stakeholder'? Did some project manager just get fed up hearing the word and added it on here?
but if they propagate the false narrative then dems can use it as an excuse to shift right on policy! it's a win-win for everybody who isn't materially impacted by said policy decisions!
I don’t think I’ve ever heard an elected official use the word “deadname” or variations thereof.
Also a word for which there is no meaningful equivalent
I'm trans and tend to use "old name" unless I'm in very specific in-group contexts, because a lot of people don't know what deadname means and it sounds morbid. But also... literally zero national-level political figures are using that kind of terminology to talk to the general public.
Two thoughts. Lists like these tend to force important topics off the table as "verboten". Also...flexible: A new issue arises: Put the words on the black list 2nd: The opponent gets a ready-made list of insinuations to use in campaigns. Trans issues only were (mis-)used by the GOP. So - be wise.
Just a thought, but perhaps Democrats (and everyone else, really) should refrain from using either Third Way *or* Politico / Axios as a source of reliable / useful information.
good luck to the Democratic strategists forever in search in getting thousands of votes from provincials who think their party is in league with "demonic forces"
Third Way isn't Democratic.
That list is wild. It's a mix of words right wingers think we use all the time (but don't because they're generally academia terms and most politics isn't academic) with generic buzzwords. I mean, "stakeholders?"
Most of those terms are really only used by, like, random Bluesky shitposters.
It’s a horrendous double standard: When TikTok leftists with 100 followers complain about the Sydney Sweeney ad, it becomes national news that Dems have to respond to. When major right wing influencers complain about male cheerleaders, nobody notices or cares.
I had to look up how "food insecurity" made it onto the list, because how else would you describe that? What other words would communicate the same meaning, so concisely? And...it's the "groups"! We can't talk like that because it's how the "groups" talk!!
The Democrats won't be satisfied until no one stands for anything.
A sixth-grader using AI could come up with this list; it’s absolutely moronic.
It's clear from the full memo that Third Way has completely bought in to far-right myth that Democratic overreach is what's causing Republican radicalization. I agree that Dems shouldn't say "inseminated person" but that because it's a fringe made-up term! www.thirdway.org/memo/was-it-...
I have never in my life seen anyone use “inseminated person” or “person who immigrated”
Cisgender is simply a descriptive term. Do they want to use 'regular' like this meme or something
Yeah cisgender being on here is such a tell. Only hardcore groyper psychos actually buy into the 'it's a slur!!!' nonsense, most americans don't give a shit
I feel like if you're a dem and a Republican is going on about high school girls' sports, the most normie-appealing response would be "who gives a shit about high school sports" instead of litigating whether or not "cisgender" is too woke a term.
I feel like if a Republican is going on about high school girls' sports another good option is "are you in the Epstein flight logs bc you're obviously thinking a lot about underage girls"
oh yeah, that's another one. If you care about girls' high school sports and you aren't a teenage girl, a parent of a teenage girl, or a teacher/coach, then your interest is highly suspect, and I think we as a group need to get more comfortable with calling these bigots pedos.
People take highschool sports way too seriously. Something like 1 in 10 parents think that their children will be professional athletes and high school athletics is an audition for their career. Many more think that it's how their children will get college scholarships. It's wild.
I genuinely believe that the majority of opposition to cis comes from people who think it sounds too much like "sissy"
For the longest time I only ever saw cis written so in my head I always pronounced it "see" with a silent S lol.
I’m a little jealous that you were never made to take organic chemistry
The only F I ever got on a test was in regular chemistry in high school so it's probably for the best.
damn, didn't realize organic chemistry was so woke.
Nah, they were just as mad about straight in the 70s. They want to be "normal" and everyone else gets a specific label.
I worked with Third Way on a project and to this day they’re the worst and dumbest clients I’ve ever had
If you're not under a NDA I'd love to hear the dirt
it was years ago now, but we were hired to do a full website redesign/rebuild for them - and they were just utterly clueless, nobody there had any idea what they wanted, nobody at any stage in the process was able to make a decision, and everyone just pawned stuff off to the next person
every time we talked to them it was some different direction or idea, but nothing based in reality we finally managed to have a meeting with someone from the C-suite to present our work and, to this day, it's the only time I've ever been yelled at by a client
our work was VERY good, very thought through, very professional - but the COO or whoever just didn't like some aspect of it (that the folks under him had specifically told us to do) and so he decided to yell at us my project manager, thankfully, stood up to him, ended the meeting, and we walked out
the whole thing was like pulling teeth getting them to answer very simple and basic questions, and then suddenly they'd pop up with some new random requirement (that nobody on earth would ever use, but Jimmy from X department thought it might be neat)
I can't help thinking this is emblematic of exactly what's going on in the thread we're commenting on, too: They don't actually know what they want, but they're unhappy someone else wants something they think they probably don't want.
An entire org with more credibility than anyone here dedicated to standing athwart history shouting NOPE
They will jump thru many hoops not to face the reality that the ugliness in many folks is what lead to Trump 2.0 🤦🏼♀️
I would say that in leftist organizing, these are terms used internally, and selectively in outside comms - but that only adds to the argument that this is a policy document. If elected D reps think they should dismiss anything with these terms, then they can write off entire grassroots movements.
I mean I think we should still say cisgender simply as a descriptor (otherwise how do people know whether we're talking about trans people or not) but overall sure
Genuine question: does Third Way have any policy proposals or is it just reactionary centrism all the way down?
"Stop using language that helps people you care about! Just use language that only helps others who hate them."
Bullying makes sense where "body shaming" feels precious. We don't need a word or phrase to describe each transgression when "don't be a dick" and "stfu, they aren't hurting anything" work just fine.
You're doing the thing I'm complaining about. Democrats are not standing at podiums lamenting the scourge of body shaming!
Not at the podiums, but man...if you don't see it in columns, posts, pleas for allyship, I'm not sure what to tell you. That stuff permeates social media.
I don’t understand how you can be so bad at understanding my point. “Permeating social media” just means you hear it from random people. Elected representatives cannot change this!
I get your point. I think it's more common than you think/are giving credit to. Unhoused and breaking norms are just two of them. Homeless and illegal make the points better.
Back when I was gestating I greatly preferred being referred to as a "pregnant person" over the nauseating "little Mommy" that some health care workers called me when they didn't want to read my name off the chart. It's reassuring to know they were still viewing me as a PERSON, not an incubator.
Yeah inseminated person is too broad, thats just people having an evening
Inseminated person. Ew. That feels very... women-as-incubators dressed up as woke to me.
This has been Third Way's game from the very start. They corrupted the Democrats, not the other way around. You can go back and read all the insanely conservative policies they helped the Clinton Administration pass.
First of all, “quaint” how?? Also is there a specific demo this is for, or are these potential allies just “people we can imagine existing to justify the purposes of this list”?
No one says some of those things except people making up stories about Democrats.
"Inseminated person" is a perfectly valid expression... when discussing the Aliens franchise, and pretty much only then. "The chestburster erupted from the inseminated person, spraying the rest of the crew with viscera."
the fact that patriarchy is on that list makes me feel like any attempt to justify its existence is retrogressive fwiw
If you squint, I think you can make the case that overuse of it as a term (and some others here) without actually describing what it actually means or how it applies can come off as hollow and alienating. But not sure that's what they're going for here
I do agree with that in principle but honestly it just feels like people absolving themselves of thinking about problems
Definitely true for some
This post is literally the first time I've heard that term. And I'm pretty well ensconced in Dem circles.
'Daddy only beats you when he gets mad, so if only you wouldn't make Daddy so angry, he wouldn't have to beat you and make you cry.'
im as woke as they come and ive literally never heard the term "inseminated person" lmao
sounds like a fetish term tbh
Most likely it's from an organization specifically dealing with pregnant transgender people. Or possibly some guidance on medical documentation somewhere, which is where "birthing person" came from.
alright I'll be the first to say it: this is a dumb language change
Is it? Sounds like an attempt to stop bigots from denying services based on gender.
In the specific case/context of IVF taken in isolation it may not even be that dumb, but taken as part of the overall "inclusive language" trend (birthing person, uterus haver, menstruator, chest feeding, etc.) it just adds fuel to the fire. Many women have been warning about this for several years
As a transgender person who could become pregnant and knows many who have, this is not a term that we use. “Pregnant person” sure. Everyone calls people pregnant. This is a normal term regardless of gender. Nobody calls anyone “inseminated”
Please do not attribute what really does sound like someone’s fetish to us as a group
I didn't. I suggested transphobes dug it up from some specific place like an org trying to be sensitive to people under stress. Someone else linked articles indicating it was Wisconsin Democrats implementing gender neutral legal protections for IVF procedures.
I bet their AO3 history is wild.
“Cisgender” is such a weird one because I don’t know what you would be expected to say otherwise. I’m not trans, how do I describe myself? Interesting that they don’t advocate getting rid of “straight” or “heterosexual”
They want you to refer to "biological men" and "biological women". (please don't, by the way)
They think you should just refer to cis people as "normal people"
Of course the real answer may be that they don’t want you to talk about trans people as being real people with a legitimate right to be equals in society
There it is
That part.
Two options these assholes are okay with: 1) use "normal" 2) just don't talk about trans issues ever again
Listen up, h*mos, we're only calling you f***ts to build broad coalitions, so just calm your little fairy asses down while we create some fucking empathy, would you? (before this gets me banned, I am in fact gay, I need to say that)
One of the problems is every interest group develops specific language over time to deal with recurring issues. When Dems campaign they want to be inclusive so they’re going to use the specific language of trans rights, women’s rights, etc in order to signal that they take these issues seriously.
Republicans have to know the language of gun owners & Christians. Dems need to be conversant with the language of many more groups and also understand that the phraseology of some of these groups is confusing/irritating to others. Good politicians know this instinctively.
Possibly made up by Third Way.
Can we reflect on how elected Democrats haven't said "latinx" since 2021 and yet I still see two articles a week telling them to stop? The evidence doesn't indicate that Dems using SJW jargon is a real problem — it's something the far right says to justify their actions.
i can't imagine what line of thought got the authors to the point of thinking a social theory created by black women would put off black voters.
Another case of taking things that some random left/liberal accounts on social media might say and treating them as if they're official statements of the Democratic Party
I'm a crusty old white guy, who doesn't use any of the five terms listed. I've never once been accused of racism for that. People need to lay off whatever's left of that poor strawman.
The idea that anyone has ever been called racist for not using the word "allyship" is so ridiculous.
Surely somebody could do a LEXIS-NEXIS search or something and find out the last time any of our elected politicians used these terms.
The condescending tone of those explanations is deliberate, malicious and fucking infuriating
I have never once said “LATINX” or “BIPOC” (ok never twice said them) and have never once been called racist for it.
*These* people are the reason Democrats lose. Condescending sniveling dorks afraid of saying anything meaningful, hedging every word.
enough with this minefield of careful language terms! I say while capitalizing White mid-sentence
Christ, I'd never read, much less heard, the phrase "minoritized communities" until this very moment. Minority communities? Sure. Marginalized communities? Absolutely. This bullshit isn't even good enough to use real phrases that some1 has used before, instead, it's mish-mashing to pad the list.
Still standard for news orgs like NPR though! Someone missed the memo over there.
I loathe Democrats. This is embarrassing.
Third Way is specifically not 'Democrats'. So you're on the side of bigots here or...?
No I misread it and I'm stupid.
Oh! Okay. It's really insider baseball here anyhow. Third Way has been effing with Democrats for decades and were on the outs after Obama but they're trying to worm their way back in.
The real problem was White Conservatives started pushing the meme, then Democrats thought they were too good to address it, then Latinos started believing it! Latinx was coined by NY Dominicans! And it's just ONE OF SEVERAL non-gendered terms introduced into Spanish across the globe.
Everything about the Latinx beef sounds exactly like what a White person who's never met a Latino person would say and just imagines what Latinos *should* be upset about.
I use Latinx in a work context because I work at a university, and that's the term the *students have chosen in order to be inclusive*.
Exactly... In my day, every organization in college that used Latinx was run by Latino students. This smear designed by White Republicans actually erases Latino input and influence on their own culture.
Yeah these are the real tell that this isn't about language, it's about policy. Shifting criminal justice toward the perspective of victims is an argument for mass incarceration!
"people deserve to feel safe" yeah see... after entirely too many years of people being scared of shit that ain't real, i have changed my mind on this. people don't deserve to "feel safe"; people deserve to BE safe, but ppl who work themselves into racist/transphobic panics don't deserve validation
Sometimes the "criminal" is actually the victim. I literally spent 4 hours at the ER being checked for a heart attack because once again the neighbors called the cops and DCFS on my Autistic daughter acting Autistically and the anxiety combined with brand new perimenopausal GERD made me feel like:
People like cause and effect to be crime - > punishment instead of cause - > crime (effect) - > victim (follow on effect) The first is easy and zip zap you're done. The second is hard because you now have to solve the first order cause instead
So this whole piece is about what Democrats *shouldn't* say in public discourse, but nothing about how they *should* address issues involving these topics. I can only assume they think Dems should adopt GOP terminology and framing.
Instead of “involuntary confinement” use the term the Trump executive order called “Ending Crime and Disorder on America's Streets” uses: involuntary commitment. Problem solved.
"People deserve to feel safe" is cribbed directly from the Trump Administration's invasion of DC. The idea that law enforcement should not be in the business of preventing or solving crime, but making (some) people "feel safe".
Yeah and it’s not about winning votes or improving communications or anything like that. It’s about disciplining the left. We saw the same thing in the UK and if you don’t stand up to them and let them take an inch, they’ll try to take a mile.
The strongest conclusion from this argument is that they think criminal perpetrators *are not people*, which .... is a position traditionally held by the far end of one side of the political spectrum.
I would say that position is traditionally held by a lot more than just the far end of one side of the political spectrum in this country, unfortunately
The main thing that makes me feel unsafe where I go to school is when a transphobe heard that a "gender studies" class was occurring and he brought a knife there and stabbed several people.
I also have no idea how "incarcerated people" - a straightforward and literal descriptor - somehow communicates that victims of crime are not important. (Obligatory note that many people who are incarcerated are *also* victims of crime, before, during, and after their incarceration)
I suspect that the complaint is that "those libs won't call them criminals and call them incarcerated people". But that is because incarcerated people refer to a specific type of person not always captured in "criminal". A person who is currently incarcerated may not be convicted of a crime yet.
Donald Trump is a criminal. He isn't an incarcerated person. The terms are not interchangeable. Like, the real complaint these guys all have (and to be fair the right does also) is that the world is complicated and you can't easily separate it into binaries the way they wish you could.
The existence of Trans people continues to break the brains of so many of these guys because the ability to sort everything into a binary is how many people function in the world. Man or Woman. Black or White. Criminal or good person. Christian or Heathen. Linguistics is a reminder of that.
Criminal is a perfectly good term. You don't need to encompass every nuance in the world with your language at every moment. When the time comes to talk about Trump you can just make the point that he is a criminal despite the fact that he didn't go to prison.
most people in jails have not been convicted of anything. your suggestion is that democrats just throw out the presumption of innocence? i do not find that particularly persuasive.
Dems should speak like normal people. That means not using woke language, which they generally don't, but also means not using language that sounds like it was produced by a team of pollsters.
"dems should speak like normal people" is fundamentally at odds with "dems should take instructions on how to speak from weirdo centrist think tanks." pick one!
Found the centrist bot! Hiya lil no-avatar, no-posts, definitely-a-real-guy! 😂
Again, we have existing terms for this - "inmate" and "prisoner."
My husband spent 27 hours in police custody because one of our neighbors didn't like that our children are Autistic and sometimes do "weird" things, so they reported us for child abuse and neglect, and 4 years later, my youngest is still pee her pants terrified whenever she sees a uniformed officer.
You see the problem is that it implies convicts are also human, and that's no bueno
Most people are fine recognizing that criminals are human, as long as this does not mean that they have to support weak on crime laws that make society more dangerous, something that even Democratic primary voters rejected.
are those "weak on crime laws that make society more dangerous" in the room with us right now
Putting a kid in prison for 25 for looking at weed does not make the country safer, and the existence of parole does not make it more dangerous.
there is little or no correlation between "tough on crime" laws and public safety. making laws harsher or more punitive has at best an extremely limited impact on crime rates (and more often no observable impact at all).
The logic here is that in order to center victims, that means that criminal justice must be punitive and humiliating. We must refer to people accused of committing crimes by epithets wherever possible.
And are also people who should be able to feel safe.
Sure, but victims who are not criminals should be given priority, this is the obvious moral intuition of most people.
what on earth does "given priority" even mean in this context? most policies affecting people in jails or prisons don't affect victims of crime in any way. they relate to the conditions of incarceration.
This is precisely the sickness right here: "The Democratic Party should make fan fiction podcasts say 'woman' again." How? Why? Do right-wing podcasts ever say anything untoward that Republicans should address? Everything goes back to the myth that Dems are responsible for petty aesthetic gripes
good lord. who fucking cares. if you don't like it, don't listen to the podcast. why are they such whiny little babies.
Ah, yes, fanfiction: the famously cishet-normative medium of (checks notes) Johnlock, Rinch, mpreg, A/B/O, and getting force-femmed by communist plants from outer space.
I had to look up "Rinch." I was thinking Riddler/Grinch
My favorite example is probably the Pacific Rim crossover archiveofourown.org/works/3596418
Ever since I read @polphilpod.bsky.social piece on agency, I see it everywhere...people were FORCED to vote for Trump because, e.g., a fanfic podcast said 'birthing person' once. It just makes no sense.
Reactionary centrists continue throwing tantrums over the fact that activists are not their employees and they cannot fire them from doing activism
You mean like when reactionary leftists threw temper tantrums and shamed the entire internet for posting the black square in 2020?
@driftglass.bsky.social wrote a post about how democrats are always accountable for republican reactions: bsky.app/profile/drif... And how it never seems to work the other way around.
Murc's law, to a degree, covers this: www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2024/12/the-... "only Democrats are assumed to have agency. Republicans are like... sharks eating seals: they do what they do because that’s just what they are... no point in holding them responsible for anything."
But I think there is also a, "We're all rational people, here," fallacy at play. One that assumes that there is good faith to be found on both sides and therefore the failure to appeal to men of good faith is evidence of your failure to make the right rational argument.
"If only I had the right incantation, if only I had avoided using terms like gender at birth, if only I had listened to Matt Yglesias and David Shor more." bsky.app/profile/jeff... It's searching for a means in your behavior to make your abusive partner less abusive. It does not work.
We need is to acknowledge the toxic media that one side has that justifies every abusive behavior. We need to acknowledge that republicans are neither behaving based on rational principles nor are they unaccountable for their failures to follow rational principles because "they are who they are."
We need to confront their belief that all acts are justified, every slander and violation of norms embraced, because their opposition are, to them, the forces of Satan. They're convinced by their churches and their radio that we are the communists agents of evil and must be stopped at all costs.
I think so much of this is people saying, but many Ds used to use anti-gay/anti-trans rhetoric publicly — and I miss it! Well, tough. Anti-gay/anti-trans actions lead to widespread social misery. DADT/DOMA were not workable.
As is said, "Every time you complain we add more genders." Try giving up harder, perhaps.
there's also, like, man, maybe the podcast is annoying, but you're literally discussing FANFICTION, a body of culture where the sentence "in my story, Spock is a trans alpha he/they lesbian from Duluth and KIRK is a half-Jewish werewolf" is perfectly cromulent.
did you think it was possible to discuss this without specialized language?
Only the finest straightest stories for this fanfic enjoyer
ONLY THE CIS HETEROEST ALTERNATIES, MY GOOD MAN, THANK YOU
If this one fanfic podcast that I tried listening to once doesn't start catering only to my preferences I'm going to register as a Republican. I can't believe the Democrats would do this to me. Thank you for your attention to this matter.
BACK IN MY DAY, when a Canadian pretending to be an Iowa space captain made sweet love to a green-blooded space alien as imagined by Leonard Nimoy they did so in a CHRISTIAN, HETEROSEXUAL, GOD-FEARING—
I need to be clear: I am obsessed with tracking down this fanfic podcast.
exactly! fanfiction depends on specialized language. Lemon/Lime/Zest, A/B/O, Peggy-Sue, For Want of a Nail, Drabbles, MLM/WLW, Canon Compliant, Canon Divergent. The list just goes on and more gets added to it everyday!
The implication that everyone affiliated with the left of center has to carefully avoid using a list of words is actually catastrophic for free speech! Imagine the brouhaha if someone said we had to prevent random podcasts from using slurs! Suddenly there's an "existential threat" to free speech.
These are people who, gun to their head, couldn’t explain the difference between a slur, profanity, and inclusive language. They think inclusive language are slurs against cis people, and that the t-slur is simply mild profanity.
“I want Chuck Schumer to stop saying birthing person when he talks about his Yu-Gi-Oh slash fiction on a podcast hosted by two random college students”
Not only would this sentence kill a Victorian child, it did *me* 10 points of psychic damage!
McSweeney’s and the Onion should have a headline-writing competition. It’d be fun!!!
“woke” unfettered
Someone introduce this guy to A/B/O.
Yes, this sounds less like a complaint about the Democratic party and more like "Culture is changing and I don't like it, and I want our leaders to stop it." Which, you know, is the exact impulse powering the fascist takeover of the US right now.
You know what caused the explosion in "wokeness"? Electing Trump the first time! Before that it was internet fringe stuff. Trump made all those ideas relevant to mainstream politics!
Nnnno, it well preceded Trump
Meanwhile of course Republicans – including their President – are allowed to use literally any words that happen to pass through their heads.
Who is holding guns to these whiners heads and making them listen to super nerd pod casts?
Yeah, this is the core of the problem: the performance of Democratic politicians is being blamed on the fact that literally anyone in society talks this way ever. Some people hear a YouTuber says "LGBTQIA+" in a video game playthrough and genuinely go, "This is how democracy dies."
I think part of this is terrible right wing parents are terrified of the indoctrination from these fanfic podcasters because their kids have long stopped paying any attention to them.
And rightly so!
Even aside from all the other problems here, "assigned male/female at birth" is incredibly simple as far as jargon goes. The only information required beyond defining four words is that gender and sex are not a single, rigid, immutable binary. That's what they actually hate - trans people existing.
Why should the Democratic party do anything at all about fanfic anything? I don't get the connection unless you want the left controlling speech the way the right wants to. Hard pass.
Their first mistake was looking for a podcast about fan fiction.
They need to look up A/B/O!
I think it's relevant that I can't type the words that GOP folks say regularly, because everyone agrees they are slurs. So I can't put a list out of the words that right-wing podcasters should stop saying without a bunch of astrix.
I hang out in lefty spaces with lots of feminists, queer and trans people and they all use "woman" and "man"…unless they're challenging the gender binary or talking about those who don't fit into it. And knowing how gender fuckery abounds in fanfiction, they probably weren't discussing just women.
Democrats are responsible for anything anyone on the left says. Republicans are responsible for nothing that anyone on the right says, not even if they are elected officials
Only the left has agency. Wait, I assume that word is also banned.
This. Someone you've never heard of on a podcast with 55 listeners is a representative of everyone remotely to the left of center while the unambiguous statements of the Republican president are not to be seen as representative of the Right, the GOP, and even the President himself somehow.
THIS ⬆️⬆️⬆️
Once you realize that *this* is what's going on it becomes so infuriating.
It would be nice if political alienation and cultural alienation did not go hand in hand.
This memo seems to be yet another instance of a byproduct of this. No matter what ails you, democrats are perceived to be the party that will change for you and republicans aren’t, and lots of people actually hate that and will yell “no change different!”
I think what addresses this is Ds toughening up and openly defending their values.
"How am I supposed to masturbate to this???"
Les États-Unis sont finis.
Someone needs to introduce him to A/B/O.
These fucks are trying in every way possible to shove trans people back into the shadows, to show us just how much they think we are disgusting. And they are trying as hard as possible to convince others that it is the "normal" way it think
As if normal means good
"Normal" people brought us the world we all inhabit at the moment. I'd say "normal" people should sit the fuck down for a while and let, literally, anyone else have a chance to call the shots.
A political party pressuring/forcing a random fanfic podcast to speak a certain way is censorship.
"a fanfic podcast used a word that reminded me that trans people exist and i got so disgusted i gave up listening immediately" is a hell of a tell lmao
The ability of people to completely misread these posts is fascinating to me. Pete Buttigieg is not talking like an anarchist book club! Literally no one thinks that he should. Who are you even making this argument to?
Extremely funny to imagine there being enough anarchists anywhere to organize a book club, let alone that anarchists could have the ability or desire to organize the book club.
Have you ever been to the PNW? Just as an example.
I went to a wedding in portland. I did not enjoy my time but it had nothing to do with portland
I also didn’t have a good time in Portland but my point is that there’s lots of anarchists there, there was even an anarchist library.
Where is/was the library? I’ve only ever seen the online archive.
Sounds like you don’t know any anarchists
Only on the internet. It may, or may not, surprise you to learn fresno isn't exactly a hot bed of leftist organizing. Which is unfortunate because I'd really like to challenge our s***** centrist. Congressman
Sounds like you should make your own book club and start creating some anarchists out in Fresno.
They have a whole book store here in Philly, with lots of clubs
anarchists are constantly doing book clubs. it's one of the go to jokes about anarchists, even. feds trying to infiltrate anarchists have on the record gotten fed up with how much goddamn reading there is. true blue anarchists are often theory nerds who just also know where to get drugs
I do like being able to find safe drugs...
went to a godspeed you black emperor show a few months back and they had an anarchist book/art sale table next to the merch
Any time there's any sort of outdoor public community event in my city there's ALWAYS a table somewhere with anarchists handing out contraceptives and cheaply printed theory books lmao I got an absolutely dogshit copy of Stirner's The Unique and its Property from one of these
Part of the reason I want democracy expansion to be a much more central part of the democratic coalition policy platform is because I want these micro political environments to have voice in our politics. If we had a thousand Congressional seats there could be anarchist in them.
using cool leather jackets to bait the unsuspecting into reading kropotkin
My anarchist bookclub meets on a Tuesday what are you on about
(I think he should 🙋♀️)
I am in a literal anarchist book club with a buncha leftists and even we don't talk like this!
I think Buttigieg should participate in anarchist book clubs because he'd gain valuable insights. (Everyone interested in politics should engage more with anarchist theory, even if they're not anarchists.) But I full admit he shouldn't talk like one, and doing so would tank his political chances.
Would be pretty funny if he tried though.
"Typical people" = White, male, straight, cisgender, wealthy. They are represented plenty.
why am I taking strays here 💀 i WISH politicians were more like me!
If politicians spoke more like me, there'd be a lot of references to them hanging around at a gas station.
I think this is right. Reactionary centrists want an endless stream of Sista Souljah moments, a Democratic party that denounces and scolds its own base until the annoying language goes away. Not only is this impossible, it is electoral suicide!
Republicans fear their activist base and cater to it, while Democrats despise theirs and need to constantly make a show of shitting on it.
Then are OUTRAGED when some of the people they spend years shitting on and telling to fuck off stay home or vote third party.
>denounces and scolds its own base until the annoying language goes away that's pretty much what they did in 2024, it's a wonder they didn't lose harder
my favorite is when they gaslight you and tell you that she was a staunch supporter of trans rights
reactionary centrists rejecting political conventional wisdom so old Karl Rove was doing it 25 years ago. energizing and turning out the base wins elections. Winning ten million imaginary ken bones doesn't because there aren't actually ten million of him to be won.
Would you rather fight 10 million Ken sized bones or 1 bone sized Ken?
Wait. Would you rather bone 10 million Kens or Ken 10 million bones?
I will ken the bones
increasingly convinced centrists do in fact want the Democratic party to commit electoral suicide
I’ve been thinking a lot about Obama’s 2008 campaign, how it was the most progressive-coded presidential campaign of my (elder millennial) lifetime, and how the enthusiasm this created lead to the democrats’ most electoral success.
Bingo. @kateriga.bsky.social wrote a piece on how this phenomenon plays out over every bullshit culture war issue, even if no elected Dem comments on the outrage du jour. talkingpointsmemo.com/where-things...
Good piece, thank you!
📌
For the rabid right, everything they don't like is 'woke.' I don't think they have a clue but have interpreted it to mean 'anything not racist or aligned with white supremacy.' We may be 'in dialog,' but we also just talk or discuss.
We also see it with legal jargon. Do most people understand what 'jurisprudence' means? If they're sincerely trying to communicate with 'the masses' they need to find down-to-earth easy to understand language. The rabid right has their own terms that are annoying as hell.
I think every group of one sort or another uses jargon that they don't always realize might annoy people who are not part of that group or familiar with that jargon. I first noticed this decades ago with the tech crowd. It seemed to me it was their way of trying to appear superior/smarter than other
If there's any lesson from trump (whose language is offensive lies tossed into a word salad) is that your language doesn't really matter as long as you project some sense of confidence and conviction about them. And sidestepping a list of words is the opposite of that.
always think it's worth noting that out of three presidential runs, trump has won the popular vote ONCE. his 2016 "win" doesn't represent some great example of a brilliant politician connecting with the voters over a bad centrist dem - it shows a bad centrist dem getting nearly 3 million more votes
than a braying jackass but then being thwarted by the archaic electoral college, a system pretty much without analog in the rest of the civilized world.
The party would be better off, of course, taking cues from Beshear rather than from Third Way.
I think the real target is the base not the language
The idea -- which *may* have been true in the 90's -- is that there are a pool of gettable moderate voters who think Dems have moved too far left, and respond well when centrist Dems punch left. 1/
But that's not the demographic of swing voters now. White suburbanites have chosen sides -- some one way, some the other, based on their tolerance for fascism. 2/
Swing voters now are much more anti-establishment, and there's a real danger that punching left comes across as punching down.
The goal is to make Dems abandon their base. If I were conspiracy-minded, I'd say that the goal was to make Dems abandon their base so that they can never win an election agin.
Pretty much gave the game away with making Overton window a no no term. Like I’m struggling to imagine a single voter anybody using that term would alienate in any way whatsoever. The only reason to try to stop people from using it is to shut down debate and entrench the already powerful.
Yeah, the people who might like to hear this language are not to be permitted any spaces in which that might occur
Very much agree. I don't think the memo is written with this in mind, but the end goal is simply what Republican voters want: Dems being scolded for language those voters don't like. The language is at most secondary. It's actually just the scolding of Dems for who they are perceived to be.
What if holding people to precise language is exactly what creates the divide within this center group? And what if this group is a only bit of nonjudgmental/nondogmatic debate away from understanding why trans kids need to be able to choose hormone therapy and need equal opp in school sports?
What if my butt was an airplane? Damn that'd be crazy "Judgment" and "dogma" are just dismissive ways of saying "values" and "priorities." Targeting annoying phraseology is just a way to avoid discussing the underlying politics.
You're saying you refuse to stop and consider a differing viewpoint (that's actually not so fantastical as a butt becoming an airplane). And you're showing you literally are no longer able to separate an issue from how the issue is talked about, and you don't even want to. This is bad, friend.
throwing woowoo terms in it makes it harder to get those shibboleth terms to go away! also note the people who dont parrot "make things affordable" probably in Nazi Bar Chat Rooms
Dems to base: Drop Dead
Trying to imagine some academic who got a phd studying homelessness going “I’m going to stop using the phrase ‘unhoused’ in favor of ‘dirty vagrant bums’ in the hopes that I can personally help Dems win an Ohio senate race by doing so!”
"Unhoused" is a stupid one though. In the 2020 search for wokified words someone discovered "houseless" to take the stigma off of "homeless", but houseless sounds comical so it was changed to "unhoused". But Democrats don't really say this except in when they are demolishing unhoused encampments
no the term was invented to illustrate the difference between a house and home. a tent can be a home, but it's not a house. so you are not homeless, but you are unhoused.
In other words, a word to make homelessness sound less bad. It's also confusing the actual issue, since a lot of homeless people are in houses at any given time, they're just sleeping on couches or floors. worksinprogress.co/issue/why-ho...
If there's one thing Democrats have shown it's that winning is not a concern. They exist to constrain and suppress the left and that's all
I attended a conference a few weeks ago with state-level administrators of federal criminal justice grants and we got a lecture from lobbyists about using “criminal legal system” instead of “criminal justice system.” I wanted to scream “DOES ANYONE KNOW IF OUR PROGRAMS WILL STILL EXIST IN 6 MONTHS”
How about just speaking like a normal person? Frankly, the only people I know that use these hyper-stylized words are those who are performing for an audience of one.
Thank you for using the term “reactionary centrist.” The corresponding term on the left might be something like “purity leftist.@ We need people who can deal with being in a coalition, who vote, and vote democratic.
"You're all cunts that should talk exactly how we demand; respect my authority!" *a few moments later* "Why won't you vote for us you cunts, do you want a third Trump term?"
Sista Souljah moments were only really applicable in that one specific instant because of what she said that same year. No idea if it even moved the needle
Yeah like: the most obvious issue is that the sort of people that use those terms do not like or respect elected Democrats, and do not generally think of themselves as being on the same side with them, sometimes not even in a very broad sense.
At least when Republicans ban phrases for their candidates and pundits, they provide alternate phrasing — say “death tax” not “estate tax.” What are the better ways of expressing the concepts these phrases cover?
All of them are just “don’t talk about any concept related to this at all unless it’s to call people slurs” when it comes to Third Way.
The Third Way, through Clinton through Scoop Jackson through the Southern Democrats, is direct inheritor to the side of the Democratic Party that branded itself “The New South” while instituting Jim Crow.
Reactionary centrists should be fighting the right-wing noise machine, not engaging in a futile attempt to language police a million left-of-center online randos (myself included).
Yes. But also denouncing and scolding people for their identity traits is bad for electoral survival. This should not be a controversial point yet ...
Not to mention the fact that, setting aside how it impacts their support from their own base, the other voters don't care. Harris went out of her way to say she didn't support Defunding Police or open borders - people voted against her for supporting both because that's what they wanted to believe
If the Dems talked more like us they might win occasionally because it would indicate they actually know and care about literally anything
The fact that they want to exclude voters instead of reaching out to them is disqualifying.
On the contrary, I would pay money to see him try and utterly fail to.
They are just making up a guy to get mad at.
I'm like a one-person anarchist book club and I'm intensely aware that I'm not representative. I'm currently reading "The Useless Mouths" and Other Literary Writings by Simone de Beauvoir and it's wonderful. Your loss, typical person.
i want to know what kind of hypothetical typical person is tuning into a fanfiction podcast and getting upset at gender neutral language
No offense to anyone who enjoys fan fiction podcasts there's absolutely nothing wrong with that but fascinated at the idea of a person looking for fanfic podcasts that appeal to Real America™️
Nobody who is so into fanfics that they're listening to podcasts is an average voter. Like, enjoy whatever you like but you are by definition a freak!
republicans should get their supporters to stop posting so much nazi content
What an idea!
Dems should ban podcasts. Now that's a policy position I can get behind!
the response i wish i heard more from dems when asked about shit like this is to say something along the lines of “in a free society, politicians don’t get to dictate what podcasts say. republicans disagree, and want to live in a society where the can control culture”
the truth is there’s a core group of americans who responded to cultural losses by turning to reactionary, even fascist, politics. if we want a non-reactionary politics, we need to force the conversation around what it means to be a citizen of a free country
Why do you want a response to this from the Dems? Why entertain the objectively crazy premise?
i don’t think dems need to respond to that particular person, but that person is blaming dems for cultural aesthetics. the impulse is everywhere, and needs to be called out with real messaging for what it is - reactionary politics, which inevitably leads to fascist political solutions
the “sickness”, to call it out explicitly, is that americans are turning to politics to solve what would be non-political questions in a free society. do we want to be free or don’t we?
Why can’t these people just roll their eyes and move on with their lives like a normal person?
Its always funny to see moderates reinvent democratic centralism from first principles. The Dramione Lovers Podcast will have to deliver a self-criticism and reaffirm their commitment to the eternal science of Clintonism-Obamaism.
You misunderstand, this is a Carville joint. It's the same people from 1992!
Yeah it's totally those fan fiction people. Definitely not geriatric establishment Dems actively stopping progressive ideas that would directly help the people. Instead we get infrastructure and are told to be happy about it. I like bridges too but it doesn't solve my financial issues NOW.
Most trans people I know aren't a fan of using AFAB/AMAB outside of very specific situations because it goes back to placing a focus on our birth sex, rather than who we are now and is often used maliciously. But, like, people on podcasts using terms wrong is not a major political issue!
Also, it doesn't feel like the memo is aware of that, and their *actual* concern is people using language that acknowledges trans people exist.
The demand for perfectly broad inclusion, including those that reject even the mildest attempts at inclusion.
My response to this doofus would be “that sounds like a you problem”
For a second I thought the Dems were now recording podcasts about fanfic and was like "my god, finally they're doing something that will draw in the horny nerd echelon!" - but alas.
look all I’m saying is if they made the donkey a fursuit we could start making real inroads here
Random internet user: "The overton window has shifted right." Dem Pol: You are costing us the election with this shit. Right podcaster with 2m sub with a R congressman on the show: Fuck these f* n* jew k*s. Don't you agree congressman? Yes. Dem Pol: My friends on the other side...
Like I was talking to a guy that was complaining about how trans focused “the democrats” were. Come to find out he was just complaining about what he saw on Reddit. Arrrgg
Like, apparently I’m leading the revolution in my county, and got upset at a friend that’s running for congress and her husband because they were talking about building and burning bridges. I’m like no, you’re missing it. It’s about forming alliances wherever you go and finding the commonality.
I appreciate that you're too nice to say that that poster is full of shit, but I'm not: if people talk about gender assigned at birth it's because they feel like they have to be precise about something. claims that people "refuse to say woman" is terf shit that never turns out to actually be true
The only kind of person I've seen refusing to say woman is instead saying womyn, and I don't think I've seen that in a decade.
The kind of person I see refusing to say women now is the right wing chud-o-sphere hopeful using “females” instead…
Right. Like, a woke podcast would 100% use the word woman when talking trans women because trans women are women. They wouldn't say "Well, Harry Potter can't be gay because he is only attracted to people who were assigned female at birth". They would say "we've only seen him attracted to women".
Yeah I'd say there's a ~0.00001% chance the poster has discovered a podcast where the hosts never say "woman". People like this are just bigots who lose their shit anytime someone calls an inferior woman-object a "person".
It sounds like this person heard "assigned female at birth" and assumed it was replacing the term "woman" in any context, which I don't think would happen had they not already been primed to believe this by bad faith "the libs want to erase women!!" stuff coming from the right.
I got into it with someone who was mad about a "period party" which was an event distributing mensural products to "mensurating people" in the community. "Oh, you mean WOMEN!" I'm a 45 year old woman who has gone through menopause. Why would they invite me?
In a way this speaks to our moment: The demand is for Democrats to act as totalitarians who use the government to silence enemies on the left. The Republican program is overtly totalitarian, to use state power to silence enemies on the left. The demand either way is for dictatorship.
I think that MAGA has made ridicule such an important part of political expression that what these people are actually looking for is not just for the party to avoid those terms, but to assert that they don't by affirmatively ridiculing anyone who does.
Sorry, messed the wording up on that a little. Meant "...but to assert that they don't endorse them by affirmatively ridiculing..."
"women" and "woman" are two of the flagged DOGE words that trigger (oops) a review of grants.
Annoying podcasts are obviously the most important political problem of today
all this talk about needing a Joe Rogan of the left when we clearly have a surplus of annoying podcasts already!
Hint, if a podcast, toot, comment, or blog uses vocabulary I don't get, I'm not the audience! I don't follow baseball and understand baseball jagon so I don't read baseball stuff. Easy peasy!
And I don't use words like patriarchy or heteronormativity with my parents or coworkers. I do when talking to fellow queer feminist though.
I hate the language of "people have a right to feel safe." they don't! What makes people feel safe is a black box based on their prejudices that policy can't actually do anything about! People have the right to _be_ safe.
Those terms that you agree with are just added the list to normalize their regressive views in the rest of it. A bunch of rich Republicans don't want you talking about privilege, trans rights, or over policing. This just is garbage and you really don't have to hand it to them.
I *agree* that people deserve to feel safe where they live and work! I also think the Third Way should reflect on the fact that crime is actually at historical lows and that perhaps their framing of this issue is part of the *reason* people don't feel safe.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen any of these terms, but the one I hear all the time they left off the list: “carceral state.”
Broke: weird leftists who yell at me on twitter represent the Democratic Party Woke: half-remembered left-wing slogans from a group chat full of colleagues who have never talked to someone left of Mitt Romney represent the Democratic Party
Also…none of these words/phrases have anything to do with people’s feeling of safety! None of these remotely diminish victims of crime, downplay crime, tell anyone they’re wrong for feeling how they do, or correct their inaccurate perception of safety
And the stolen valor of pretending they had anything to do with criminal justice reforms rather than being dragged kicking and screaming into them is a cherry on top (and in many cases, tried and actively continue to try to undo those reforms)
These third positionists make me crazy. The point of saying "incarcerated people" is not to imply their innocence, but that criminality is not the defining factor in addressing the conditions in prison. We shouldn't use the term "divorced people" because this guy Hank I know is also into trains.
Don’t say justice-involved, but “officer-involved shooting” is fine
Well we wouldn't want the general public to find out that cops shoot people, would we?
Is 'latinx' a thing?
It's an experimental thing that started in some radical queer spanish speaking communities, had a moment or two where some cities/neighborhoods considered using it officially and then became primarily a whipping boy for resentment for radical queer things in mainstream
This can all be boiled down to one sentence. "If those damned liberals would stop annoying me with their woke words I wouldn't have to beat them so hard." This is abuser language. If words like this are the deciding factor in your vote, you've abdicated your responsibility as a citizen.
See I just dislike latinx because latine is such a prettier alternative for a gender-neutral term! Flows off the tongue super well and is basically right in between latina/latino, sound-wise This has been your daily pro-latine propaganda post
That said, it’s not true that it’s a term made up by non-Latin Americans in the US, which is a common claim. The -x as a gender neutral ending originated in Argentina in the 1990s or so, in feminist/anarchist/queer circles, initially through literally crossing out the default masculine -o with an x
The Latin Americans I have seen criticizing it have tended to be right-wing.
I've seen left-wing ones radicalized against it because of right-wingers successfully positioning it (incorrectly) as "US cultural imperialism"
What a surprise
And they’re still very common in Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, but not in Mexico hence people in the US thinking this was made up there when it was imported to the US later (mostly for just this word) because they often don’t see beyond Mexican Spanish, maybe Puerto Rican
-x is used in Mexican Spanish too
Not as widely as in Argentina where it’s been in use longer, though, where it’s normalized enough to often be used in official, even government contexts
(even if there’s now backlash under Milei)
well yeah, it just comes down to politics then - the link between mainstream feminism and transfeminism being much stronger in Argentina, as well as the influence of both on the Peronists being stronger than their respective influence on the Obradorists (who are quite conservative on gender issues)
but within feminist and queer communities, people do use it a lot
I haven’t seen this kind of use in Mexico, at least not at this scale
as an aside, this exact same issue resulted in this, people being offended by “offensive Mexican caricature” which in reality was just normal Chilean Spanish bsky.app/profile/ausi...
Even AOC and the squad haven't used latinx since like 2020, let alone all these other terms. This is delusional
They have issue with "unhoused"? Give me a fucking break. Some privileged folks on left are regressive on this issue too, but no need to buy rightwing fantasy of disappearing most vulnerable in society. "Homeless" is denigrating term used to describe more than lack of housing.
Like, it literally means 'people whom there isn't even a cot in a shelter for'. Unhoused, vs homeless. Couch surfing == housed, but homeless In a shelter or temporary == housed, but homeless People in tents are generally, unhoused! What do they want to do, just ignore it? (rhetorical; yes)
Journalists still use “Latinx”. Right wingers lump them in as “Democrats”.
There's still student groups called Latinx and use the word Latinx! Latine is getting more traction amongst younger, though it's not from the US Spanish-speaking communities. It's all about denying Queer history, self-determination, and validity of Spanish-speaking people in the US.
Whoever wrote that is opposing sociology in general. Sociology that helps us understand how to help people and how to keep them safe. That’s the type of person I’d expect to say the cure to homelessness is jobs but we should offer no assistance in finding a job.
Yeah, that is /exactly/ how that reads when one follows their reasoning to the logical conclusions.
Anti-sociology people are people who oppose basic things like treating people for substance abuse disorder with effective approaches instead of demonizing them and hoping they die off. I got no time for those types.
I always love the "give a man a fish vs. teach am an to fish," argument, when they don't want to feed us OR teach us.
And who gives a f*ck if Democrats or anyone uses the term Latinx or any other activist language? Why are people so TRIGGERED about discussions of language and words. Get over it, snowflakes.
these people have all made the academy the enemy and then they act shocked when the administration they helped get elected tries to destroy academia
Woke 2 is here and I refuse to vote for someone who doesn’t say Latinx. Sorry, losers
Opus DEI
For the briefest of seconds, I read "Democrats stop saying Linux" and I thought "Oh - I had no idea!"
Democrats need to shed the nerd vote
Sadly, machismo is real. I don’t entertain it with my brothers.
The trick is when you expand Democrats to mean any left-leaning person anywhere of any age who has posted or been recorded in any way and can therefore be farmed for outrage content.
This literally baby promotes communist "sharing" the time on the swing set and elected democrats have said NOTHING. It's literally impossible to win this game. Playing is just alienating people who agree with most of your policy. It's a scam.
Because even when elected Dems do denounce something it's used to fuel the other favorite Dems in disarray.
In fairness, it's not that Third Way bought into the myth. It's that Third Way was founded specifically to perpetuate that and other right wing myths within the Democrat milieu.
Correct. David Brock has a parking space right next to Satan's.
I haven’t even heard of “inseminated person” until right this moment and I interact with a lot of queer content online…
Someone saw it in like a tumblr post and now they've decided it's a whole thing that needs attacking.
Because they made it the fuck up. These people are right wing outrage baiters trying to worm their way into the Democratic camp.
I mean they didn't "buy into it", Third Way is a far right organization and always have been
It sounds like a derogatory MAHA term for people that use seed oils.
"Hey person, you tryna become inseminated"
Well, there are. They just all work at Third Way.
Hot
I can’t even tell what it’s supposed to mean! A person undergoing an IUI procedure? Anyone who’s ever raw dogged? TELL ME!
Basically the IUI thing, but actually IVF: bsky.app/profile/nick...
I wouldn't bet that no one on AO3 has
I'm sure a pervert like Chris Rufo made it up to terrify/titillate his audience, it quickly became axiomatic as a commonly used woke term amongst right-wing freaks and almost simultaneously amongst reasonable, serious centrists, in some weird coincidence
"We should use plain language and not therapy jargon" would be good advice. Unfortunately Third Way does not offer good advice. These fuckers are either saboteurs or idiots.
We’ll have to call suckers who fall for this stuff Sydneys or Sweeneys
I have literally never seen the term ‘chest feeding’ used a single time in anything before, and I’m very actively in trans spaces lol
right?? like, somehow your gender orientation affects whether it's called "breast" or not? like bro, my boyfriend has breasts. my dad has breasts. EVERYONE HAS BREASTS
I have like…maybe twice? But it was someone using it to describe what THEY did, not forcing the language on anyone else.
Like most of these terms, I’ve only ever heard it from reactionary centrists complaining about them
If a trans man is too dysphoric to call his "daddy milkers" "breasts", he probably is also too dysphoric to want to even carry a pregnancy to term!
I feel like there *is* a category of term that is rarely used by anyone except a certain type of annoying person who is in no way connected to the communities these terms were allegedly created for/by but has still appointed themself Language Cop on their behalf. And “chest feeding” is one of them.
They’re also used by people who can’t or don’t want to make material change, but want to look like they’re doing *something*. Accounts for most of the drama in the UK about the NHS using ‘pregnant people’ or whatever.
People like this are unpleasant but there are many kinds of unpleasant people. As a cis mom who breastfed for nearly 2 years, I certainly never had anyone jump out of a bush and slap me with a rule for saying “breastfeeding” lol.
I’ve only seen “chest feeding” in the context of “omg we don’t care, just say breast feeding”.
I only ever hear it from fascists outraged that it's apparently become mandatory and credulous centrists who launder their bullshit for a mass audience, much like half the rest of the shit listed
Their argument here is that we could advance lgbtq rights by gaining supporters that do not want us to pursue advancing those rights. I wish it was my job to come up with this shit because it's got to be so easy you don't even have to think it out you can just write stuff
They should be honest and explain what they want democrats to do about random people online saying these no-no words. Like how should the party punish the wrong thinking wokes that aren’t even politicians? Because that seems to be what they want.
The only time I have *ever* heard a politician use the phrase “chest feeding” was when Lauren Boebert used it as a homophobic slur against Pete and Chasten Buttigieg.
I don't think even my OBGYN would say "inseminated person" because that's just an awkward construction but also the idea that awkward language is somehow killing people or oppressing them on a spiritual level needs to be interrogated, possibly at gunpoint.
I suspect it's specifically about medical documentation like "birthing person", or just from some organization dealing specifically with pregnant trans people.
Yeah whenever conservatives complain about this they always hyperlink to some sub-sub-sub-page of a random clinic website in some random city. This may be present in some niche medical spaces but it’s not mainstream Dem messaging
Like show me on the doll where the gender correctness language police touched you, Chip.
They haven't bought into it. They use it to further their own odious goals. They believe nothing.
jp sartre envies your brevity
"You made us be Nazis!" will never die.
They’ve bought into it because it’s necessary for their existence. They have to pretend that there’s an unoccupied center, when in reality that’s where the Democrats already are.
Some of my best friends are inseminated people
“Creating empathy” with whom? Empathy for gay and trans people? Or empathy for MAGA and coddling their big big feelings? Because I worry it’s the latter.
The argument is more that Democratic progressive overreach causes Dems to lose. Which gives gop space to move farther right and still win.
also like, birthing person sounds weird to everyone, but when academic and medical journals use it it's because not every birthing person is a mother and sometimes accuracy is more important than natural language
That term is ubiquitous in political, advocacy, and healthcare settings - not just in academic journals - and it is extremely alienating to many women. Planned Parenthood basically stopped using the word "women" altogether a few years ago. It's ridiculous.
This gets lost! Medical journals use it. Some doctors doing education posts on social media use it. I had a baby last year and nobody ever referred to me as a "birthing person" - mostly in clinical settings my providers were using MY NAME, because that's how you talk to people
Yes. And even for mothers, sometimes it’d be useful to refer to a very specific part of motherhood. Mother captures a very wide range of experiences and you’re not discussing every part all at once.
Far-right person trying to imagine the most extreme left way of referring to a pregnant person possible: "Center the cum from a penis in the conversation"
Third Way really out here embracing "cisgender is a slur" huh?
What you don’t like the strategy of “standing up to maga,” by giving into all of their demands?!?
Cisgender is the opposite of transgender. They are an anti-trans right-wing org.
Standing up to MAGA's cruel attacks on transgender people requires... not having the vocabulary to talk about transgender people in a societal context? Also, has anyone outside of weird conservative impreg fanfic aficionados ever used the term "inseminated person" in everyday conversation?
But we can keep insisting they stop doing it and make people think they won’t!
The think tank industry is an existential threat to the Democratic party.
But it's great for the think tank consultants, they give terrible advice->dems lose->dems go to those same consultants-> repeat until everyone is dead
The hilarious part is that while Dem politicians do not say "birthing person," they do talk exclusively in consultant -approved buzzwords that no regular human would ever say
None of these people will ever tell their clients to stop saying “access to healthcare”
And this is an actual problem that a memo like this could address! If only they had avoided the temptation to make it about being too woke.
The "I want shorter games with worse graphics" line, but for Dem politicians whose every word and action has been preapproved by multiple right-leaning beltway insider think tanks.
The entirety of the Democratic party's communications consists of the crunchiest of university liberal arts departments. Despite the fact that most of congressional leadership went to school when you could smoke in class and date professors
Set that aside for a moment though & recognize the larger issue at hand The problem isn't that they bought into right-wing fear-mongering, it's that a huge segment of mainstream America did in 2024, ESPECIALLY on trans issues So while they're not allies, Dems DO need more effective messaging & a
the words we use to describe issues can have a huge impact Think of how the entire anti-abortion movement was re-framed from a push to strip women of autonomy to a mission to save babies by normalizing the term "pro-life" Phrases like "death panels" & "flip-flopper" literally changed the course
of elections While the premise of the article is based on an unfair assertion about Democrats, we should use it as an opportunity to obliterate right-wing talking points by clearly, cleverly, & concisely re-framing every one of those talking points to favor us by adopting more persuasive language
Also, to state the obvious: if some consultant tried to tell GOP electeds what language not to use, they'd blow a gasket. They would compete to cram as many forbidden terms as they could into a single sentence, and then fundraise off of it.
The "Third Way" is to constantly cede ground to Republicans. They're worse than useless. They are hostile to the left. They exist to launder right-wing ideas to make them acceptable to Democrats, while feeding a sense of inevitability. BTW, nothing is inevitable, and change happens fast.
There’s also the brain disease that everything is messaging, like politics is about getting magic words right instead of organizing people to act
Pro tip: just be your fucking self and talk like you actually talk
They want YOU to stop saying these things, they know electeds don’t. They’re just sick of hearing these words.
I’m just kinda confused why the Overton Window is on this list. Is that not just a very basic and neutral political science term??
I think at one point they meant to say "don't use a bunch of college kid sounding political science jargon" and got lost in the sauce of making people go back to saying slurs.
Because Overton Window suggests Dems have agency in shaping public narrative. If you believe you can't influence public opinion, then it's a scary word.
They know they can influence public opinion, they simply don’t want people to understand how centrists shift it rightward by excluding concepts like the New Deal from the realm of possibilities.
No because they don't want people to think about how their narrative isn't "the way it has always been, how people think except for woke". If people show how this isn't even our white supremacist culture's norm, the right loses a wedge of "common sense"
They object to jargon and technical terms on the grounds that they intimidate regular people. I can't tell if that's more pathetic than the truth that they're just trying to launder their actions.
The inability to give examples is just amazing. When multimillionaire crybaby Dave Portnoy was interviewed by NPR, he was asked what dems are getting wrong in their messaging to men... and his only example was a post on Deadspin, a sports blog most people have never heard of!
Inskeep interviewed him like he was a sensitive child.
“No we are the third WAY not the third POSITION”. TOTALLY different
"Existential threat" these people are quislings and enemies of the republic
Having a list of forbidden words makes a candidate sound as robotic as having a list of mandatory words
Every liberal or leftist who has ever annoyed you online is "the Democratic Party," apparently.
begging these people to get some lived experience beyond being peeved about other people Online
When your grandkids say "Meemaw, you can't call Uncle Bill a homo! They're pansexual!" that's The Democratic Party.
So have they released a list of what the right wing shouldn't say?
They have to give in to the right-wing narrative because they have the same problem as the fascist Republicans. They don't want to fix income inequality and need to keep their aristocrat donors safe from pitchforks.
I think that they are talking to us. The people on social media
No housing or food talk. We need to stick to Kitchen Table Issues except the two most important ones.
Kitchen table issues, but do not discuss kitchens, tables, or food.
The subtext is that people are idiots and can’t learn new words and concepts. Why isn’t that a problem?
Am I alone in finding it a little funny that an organization coming out strongly for the gender binary is called “Third Way”?
Weird that they didn’t include “tax credits” on this list.
Ohhh, good one. I’d like to add “means testing”
It's also so arbitrary - "Dems should stop talking about the infield fly rule" oh ok thanks.
“Person who immigrated?” I don’t think I have ever heard literally anyone say that.
“Food insecurity” is insane though. That’s a phrase with technical meaning!
I believe we’re supposed to say “fuck them kids.”
"Hunger" means the same thing and is generously more effective and easily understood.
*generally
No it doesn’t mean the same thing! Hunger is a physical state that has many causes. Food insecurity means a lack of regular access to food. I’m hungry right now. But I’m not food insecure.
You are right of course. My point, and the point of this discussion is that from a mass communication standpoint, it is more effective to say "no child should go to bed hungry" than saying that food insecurity among children is an important problem that needs more attention.
Most of these phrases are. I understand arguing that politicians should avoid overly technical language when talking to the public, but you’ve got to be able to say food insecurity and BIPOC and LGBTQA+ and unhoused and so on.
Pretty much every single one does
That's actually what they list as their objection to it. They claim voters are intimidated by jargon and technical terms.
Yeah. And the Dem brand is toxic? Where? On Twitter and TikTok? Cause voters are voting for Democrats.
The issue with many of these terms is that they obscure what you actually want to say. The actual content isn’t the problem. I’m going to assume third way actually has a problem with the content….
i’m sorry- “food insecurity” is a problem? why??
yeah I have no idea why this one is on there. Are dems supposed to say "hunger" instead? Third Way would scold them for exaggerating if they did.
a number of these are specific concepts without precise "plain language" equivalents - one can only conclude they don't want the concepts discussed at all
Housing insecurity, too. People with housing insecurity aren’t homeless—they have a roof over their heads generally but it’s unstable (eg behind on rent) or insufficient (eg electricity turned off bc they couldn’t pay this month). I think both of these are logically academic or healthcare terms?
originally* not logically
Letting people like Rufo dictate the boundaries of our political discourse and language is part of the reason why we are here. Overton Window got yanked hard to the right, and language is one way we pull it back.
This entire thing (even the stuff that's not gender) is gender. Third Way, like Trump, are attacking an imaginary party composed entirely of blue-haired women's-studies-major baristas.
They don't want political candidates to stop. They want ordinary people out in the world to stop. They are mad about the way language changes over time -- starting in fringe subcultures and working its way into the mainstream.
Which of these words do you agree with not using?
Right? There are generally ways of conveying the underlying sentiments and principles that are less off-putting to more mainstream audiences. The problem is that 3rd Way wants Democrats to ditch the underlying principles.
Yea. Maybe that’s right but you see terms like these all the time from left leaning orgs.
Good thread that I agree with mostly, aside from "most of these" - some of them certainly, but there are tons of words on this list that Dems definitely should be using.
A senator, as in, someone who managed to get elected? If we can accept a politician not sticking to dogma we can get that person elected. There is a center that respects people's identity/pronouns but doesn't want to talk about pronouns or recite their own. We can't let democracy die on that hill.
which democrats repeatedly recite their pronouns?
You're still talking about who gets elected, which for the left at large can no longer be the AIPAC guzzlers. Something keeps this real but inscrutable "center" away from the candidates we need, and purity of language is a big part of it. Voters know when woke virtue is being signaled and expected.
Dude just say you have issues with LGBTQ people and be done with it
That must be why I said anything.
No we get it. People like you are willing to throw LGBTQ people under the bus. When will you abandon marriage equality. Because when we were fighting for marriage equality it wasn’t popular and people like you were telling us accept domestic partnerships.
People forget what the real problem is with shooting the messenger. Sure it's unfair to that hapless messenger, but more important, it's an utterly futile approach to dealing with the issue they were notifying of.
No the real problem is so called “liberals” willing to throw marginalized people under the bus anytime the fight gets difficult.
I don't know who you're talking about but as a separate issue I think you need to expand your idea of who is marginalized. We're all homegrowns and dissidents, and they are coming for us, and not just about marriage licenses or access to transition care.
Genuinely sick of pretending people like this just don’t like being mildly inconvenienced when someone corrects them. That isn’t oppression! And you don’t get to throw queer people under the bus because of that imaginary oppression!
you literally sound insane
I wish people would stop saying "Third Way" when they mean Third Position.
none of these people remember what Kamala's campaign was actually like, they just assume it was performatively woke because of what she looks like
They also have a vested interest in forgetting b/c they were at the helm of the campaign lol. Just trying to throw smokescreen after smokescreen so we forget they're responsible for the ass-kicking last November.
And that's a big part of why they have been attacking the left since the lost. They cannot be honest and admit they were the problem. They'd lose funding and power! They are not going to go quietly into this good night. We need to help them lose control.
Or because they read too many Salena Zito columns
They know they are lying
The Republicans spent four years accusing BIden/Harris of being 'woke'. The lack of supporting evidence is more than compensated for by the surfeit of accusation. Absent real push back, Republican accusations stick.
Maybe Newt Gingrich can come up with some dandy words we should use.
A random, anonymous person on social media who seems vaguely liberal, who could very well not even be a human = “Democrats”
“Person who immigrated” is practically a made up term. Nobody is avoiding the word “immigrant”, and the only reason to pretend that’s the case is if they’re trying to drive a wedge between democrats and some nonexistent faction of the left.
The only time I come *close* to saying it is when I'm discussing my family, as in, "My dad, who immigrated from Germany as a very young toddler, didn't begin speaking until kindergarten, and the whole family just thought that was because of the language change, but it was actually probably Autism."
I'm actually wondering if this one is some half-remembered version of "don't say that someone of a certain race is 'from' the part of the world their ancestors immigrated from"?
A lot of this is just “don’t use technical terms to talk about oppression and discrimination”, and maybe there’s simpler terms one might use, but it gives the impression that the list maker just wants Dems to not talk about those things at all.
Exactly. Food insecurity is accurately descriptive and it is real. Why consider it jargon or technical? Feels forced.
That's one where, to an extent, I agree with the spirit of this memo. In a stump speech, just say "hunger". People know what hunger is. Use basic terms like "X% of American children don't have enough to eat". Half the country reads at a 5th grade level. You lose people with "food insecurity".
yeah “food insecurity” didn’t come from tumblr it came out of efforts to get everyone enough food. hunger is an inaccurate term when you’re trying to solve the situation because a lot of people are staying ahead of hunger but negatively impacted by not having steady sources
Food insecurity is probably the most glaring example that shouldn't have been included
It's literally an official word used by the FDA, just basic public health terminology. I can't help but think its inclusion is exceedingly sinister.
THIS. They simply oppose recognizing, describing, discussing, or trying to alter systems of organized oppression.
Or maybe it's all Thought Police crap.
It's an interesting list because the main issue I'd have with a lot of it is not, "This is alienating," but, "When the hell would this come up?" Why would a major political candidate find space to say "body shaming"? Or "holding space"? "Triggering"? It feels unimaginable in most contexts.
A lot of these terms are "low level" in some sense. They refer to interpersonal social issues, not to things that a governor would have to concern themself with. If there's some opponent worth calling out, they can just use the big words like "racist", and benefit from doing so.
WHO IS THIS FOR!!!! what is the voter they want?? just a perfectly smooth stone? round spongebob? what do they hope to accomplish?
It's not Spongebob, they would consider him "too woke".
It's for all of us to each stick our knife into our favorite scapegoat. The Left, The News, The Elitists
Bad faith bullshit
Overton window being on here is hilarious. They want Dems to refrain from sounding smart? Or analytical?
Overton Window is not analysis
Actually they want people not to believe their own eyes. It’s the third way. Also it’s very “Reason”able and besides it’s labeling a window.
Ironically, the document is trying to shift the Overton window by exempting language terms to effectively change the discourse. There is an argument that exempting these won't change the actual window, but I would surmise the opposite.
Gee I wonder why the third was doesn't want people talking about the overton window food/housing insecurity or incarceration. Just fuck these people.
The centrist language policing is also a reflection of how the right-wing noise machine can make some random social media poster a stand-in for “the Left” and by extension “the Democrats.”
I’m certain this is an example of HIPPO (highest paid person’s opinion) & not anything tested by research, b/c the word “Latinx” is not on the list & there actually is research it turns off Latino voters.
Should the Dems really be agreeing with the Trump Administration that having a list of words to blacklist is a good thing?
No, but just because a think told them to do something, doesn't mean they will.
It's @thirdway.bsky.social. Every crypt keeper fuck in the Dem leadership is 100% part of the same cloth.
Lol. Politico is owned by MAGA. They publish this shit to get people mad at the Democrats and you all fall for it every single time.
The full memo is available. It's not made up. Itd the Consultant Class Freaks of @thirdway.bsky.social doing their normal thing.
I didn't say it was made up. I'm saying third way doesn't control the party as a whole. But Politico, being a right wing publication sure would love if their ragebait gets people enraged at the Democrats.
Third Way is one of the strongest Think Tank/Consultant firms associated with the Democratic Party. All of the leadership of the Party are Third Way (ideology) adherents.
Robert Garcia, the new leader of Oversight Committee Dems is in the Progressive Caucus. Chuck Schumer isn't the only Democratic leader. From what I can see, the party members are talking about ICE, the economy, redistricting and voting rights today. Axel Springer has you focused on this.
Chuck and Hakeem are talking about "kitchen table". DNC Leadership are all Third Way. Senior Leadership won't endorse the Democratic nominee for NYC because racism and AIPAC $. Meanwhile, you're out here saying "no no, see, ignoring things that are happening is good because I am very smart".
You're literally doing the "Distraction" discourse that every Democrat Leader throws out to avoid talking about issues they don't want to talk about or address.
I'm going to try and make this the last reply I make on this topic. The Progressive Caucus has over 90 members in the House. There's no official Third Way caucus, but the ideological match for them would be the Blue Dogs. The Blue Dog Caucus has 10 members. Way down from their peak of 64 in 2009.
If you think "Blue Dog Dems" are the core of Third Way you're cooked.
You know you can just easily google these things right? No need to just make shit up.
No they aren’t. The Third Way peaked in 1995.
Remember in like 2018 there was a Trump Administration memo on blacklisted terms for the CDC to avoid in their memos, research abstracts, grant documentation, etc. and most Democrats flipped the fuck out? Well now apparently we not only approve of that, we want it on our side, too.
Third Way is a cryptofascist op.
I would like the terminally consultant-brained dummies that drafted this to focus their meager attention and effort on actual resistance to the armed occupation of American cities! Or, idk, literally anything else than this inane bullshit!
Yeah. Using these terms is alienating to the typical person—your book club of anarchist leftists is not representative of the typical person—and you need typical people to join up with you
I'm not an anarchist, but I have used probably a quarter of these terms in the past month in discussions about ROMANCE NOVELS. These are normal words to use when talking about specific social issues!
You should learn how to read.
That’s Michael’s whole point. Democrats aren’t using them.
The people who are making this argument are talking about you. They think *you* should remove those
There are a lot of these terms that only people in anarchist book clubs (and maybe a few sociology grad students) are using in the first place, which makes it more than a little ridiculous to claim that "the Democrats" alienate anyone with them.
The two phrases I wish people would stop using are "at risk of" and "complicit in". As to the first...epidemiology uses relative risk factors based on POPULATIONS but unfortunately health care started using that terminology to apply to individuals. And it has become meaningless. When people think
about risk, they think of the risk of losing money in a lottery (almost 100%) and spend it anyway because the theoretical payoff is so high - SOMEONE is going to win and their odds became 100%. The risk of getting into a car crash is pretty high but we all drive anyway because we feel in control.
Say "at risk of" and everyone zones out with "not me". Just say 'threatened". Or just tell a story. Drop the "at risk of".
I just want them to start calling these Republican assholes “assholes”. Most people dislike assholes.
Yes. They encourage the narrative that Democratic politicians are using these terms all the time, which is complete horseshit.
Even more they complain about this while the right side of the dems bust out the most technocratic speech known to man
Green Party is the future. People. Planet. Peace.
i'd be genuinely surprised if most national elected dems could explain half of these terms
Right wingers should stop saying socialism is good
This list is so fucking anti-LGBTQ. Screw them.
Yeah better not use ‘overton window’ or people might catch on that TurdWay is fascist adjacent. Also see the disaster that is the UK Labour Party right shift.
If my representatives, @kaine.senate.gov @markwarner.bsky.social and (soon) @jameswalkinshaw.bsky.social, don't ignore the fucking Third Way, I don't know what is wrong with them!
a few of these seem pretty alarming to ban, though. "existential threat" is useful and true for talking about climate change. Also, much to say about the LGBT stuff but mostly, saying cisgender is good. Cisgender cisgender cisgender. Politicians should say cisgender.
I mean we can help conservatives get over themselves by providing examples of how to change, but protecting them from themselves is insane.
See #Maine gubernatorial races 2010 & 2014 when we elected the ur-Trump Paul LePage. Third Way elected him. Twice. They work as an arm of the radical right wing. I don’t know why anyone with a brain listens to a damn thing they say.
See also "we have to make a case for democracy"
I think they should use whatever goddam words they want as long as they’re prepared to define some of the weirder and more obscure ones.
I would like Third Way to Peru e significant examples of a public facing Dem of significant position saying “Overton Window” This is just wonks getting mad at wonks
I don't.
Yes, some of the terms aren't ones I use and some are clunky and most of @michaelhobbes.bsky.social's later points are great. But the intro to this is buying Wren's premise, which is buying the Third Way's premise.
Third Way's premise is that Dems are word-policing people over this shit, which is very definitely not the case. You'd be hard-pressed to find anyone actually using these terms, much less trying to shame anybody else for using the more "thoughtful" alternatives.
[I'm so tired, I thought I had quote-skeeted the first one; that's why I tagged you, Michael.]
The Democratic Party = some online rando
I don’t use any of these words unless the academese kicks in and I’m going off, and maybe it’s five on that list, tops.
even AfD uses the term 'LGBTIQ' bsky.app/profile/stru...
Yep. The chasm between observing the Harris campaign via actual speeches and events versus what the reporting said showed how the likes of Third Way shape the narrative. She didn't come close to running a "woke" campaign, but try telling that to those who watch the manosphere and conservative media.
sorry im with you for most of this but a couple of these - esp food insecurity, housing insecurity- really stand out as bazonkers things to ask politicians to dance around
I said most!
yeah i'm clowning on the original post haha
