Google is not your friend. As I covered previously, in November 2016, employees of the iconic search engine debated hiding conservative search results in light of the tragic election of Donald Trump.
Well…check this out. These are the peeps behind the service that’s directing you to your desired online info.
As reported by The Daily Caller, during a March 2017 company presentation, an executive used the word “family.”
I know what you’re thinking: That’s an offensive term. Well, you’re right as rain.
The word was used during a weekly series, as part of the discussion about a children’s product.
The reason “family” was offensive to many employees was that it suggested the two go together: that families involve children.
Oh, sorry — ***RETROACTIVE TRIGGER WARNING***.
The outrage over the horror of the “F” word was so severe, a company vice president asked for feedback from the fragile, employed nerds to find out how the administration could keep from hurting their feelings in the very scary future.
One Google worker was so offended, he walked out of the presentation. Here’s the rant he posted in an internal thread about the ordeal (I’ve corrected a few spelling and punctuation errors):
This is a diminishing and disrespectful way to speak. If you mean “children”, say “children”; we have a perfectly good word for it. “Family friendly” used as a synonym for “kid friendly” means, to me, “you and yours don’t count as a family unless you have children.” And while kids may often be less aware of it, there are kids without families too, you know.
The use of “family” as a synonym for “with children” has a long-standing association with deeply homophobic organizations. This does not mean we should not use the word “family” to refer to families, but it means we must doggedly insist that family does not imply children.
Even the sense, “suitable for the whole family”, which you might think is unobjectionable, is totally wrong too. It only works if we have advance shared conception of what “the whole family” is, and that is almost always used to mean a household with two adults, of opposite sex, in a romantic/sexual relationship, with two or more of their own children. If you mean that as a synonym for “suitable for all people” stop and notice the extraordinary unlikelihood of such a thought! So “suitable for the whole family” doesn’t mean “all people”, it means “all people in families”, which either means that all those other people aren’t in families, or something even worse. Use the word “family” to mean a loving assemblage of people who may or may not live together and may or may not include people of any particular age. STOP using it to mean “children.” It’s offensive, inappropriate, homophobic, and wrong.
Among his fellow employees, the posting garnered approximately 100 upvotes.
It received, among others, this comment:
Using the word “family” in this sense bothers me too. … It smacks of the “family values” agenda by the right wing, which is absolutely homophobic by its very definition. … [I]t’s important that we fix our charged language when we become aware of how exclusionary it actually is. As a straight person in a relationship, I find the term “family” offensive because it excludes me and my boyfriend, having no children of our own.
And this one:
My family consists of me and several other trans feminine folks, some of whom I’m dating. We’re all supportive of each other and eventually aspire to live together. Just because we aren’t a heterosexual couple with 2.5 kids, a white picket fence, and a dog doesn’t mean we’re not a family.
And that, my friends, is the younger generation, the keepers of the torch, the hope of tomorrow.
Tomorrow’s lookin’ like a real turd.
[But at least there’s this].
-Alex
Depressed now? It could be worse — you could be this guy:
SEE MORE IN THE VIDEO BELOW — A.P.
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