Some [unstated assumptions] may be sensitive, and making them explicit would bring an open conflict.
Feminists would say the conflict already exists, but the majority demands that everyone pretend there is no conflict at all, partially as a beneficial tactic in the conflict. We can make arguments about whether society as a whole is better off masking certain conflicts. But the minority has no reason to respect a tactic that is aimed at, and often achieves the goal of suppressing them.
As an example, I guess many feminists would be very uncomfortable with public discussion of "pick-up arts" (of course unless they could control the whole discussion). Irony is that PUAs are also trying to expose some unstated rules, for the sake of hacking them.
Well, I suspect that PUA want to learn the unstated rules in order to take advantage of them. They do not want the rules to become explicit common knowledge because that could/would remove the power and effectiveness of the PUA skill set. Aside from the general feminist principle that unstated assumptions should always be made explicit, one can't ignore that the particular unstated assumptions PUA aim to hack are precisely some of the normative expectations about how young women should think that feminists oppose even in the absence of PUA.
But are you sure it is the feelings about the word that have changed, instead of feelings towards the queers themselves?
All I can do is assert that the feelings about the word have changed. 20-30 years ago, queer and faggot were only slurs. From 2003-2007, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy was a reality show playing on TV. But faggot is still a slur.
Alternatively, compare n#@@#r. Given how the word is deployed today, there's no way "N#@@#r Eye for the White Guy" (helping clueless nerds get in touch with their popular culture side, or something) would ever play on television.
People use gender-neutral pronouns because they are sensitive about something, not the other way around; though perhaps the use of those pronouns can further increase their sensitivity.
This is probably right, and I think feminists learned some of this lesson from the utter failure of the "spelling to reduce sexism (i.e. womyn)" experiment. Have you read this Hofstadter essay? I think it helps show what might be a stake in the vocabulary sensitivity issue.
Some unstated assumptions can be good for minority. Consider for example the idea of religious tolerance, which appeared when society was highly religious. The unstated assumption is that having the right religion does not matter too much, because people not mass-killing each other is more important than believing in the right kind of deity. Now say it too loudly, and religious people will have to oppose this idea, to signal their faith.
More generally, an inconsistent person may be friendly with you in a "near mode", but your opponent in a "...
You folks probably know how some posters around here, specifically Vladimir_M, often make statements to the effect of:
"There's an opinion on such-and-such topic that's so against the memeplex of Western culture, we can't even discuss it in open-minded, pseudonymous forums like Less Wrong as society would instantly slam the lid on it with either moral panic or ridicule and give the speaker a black mark.
Meanwhile the thought patterns instilled in us by our upbringing would lead us to quickly lose all interest in the censored opinion"
Going by their definition, us blissfully ignorant masses can't even know what exactly those opinions might be, as they would look like basic human decency, the underpinnings of our ethics or some other such sacred cow to us. I might have a few guesses, though, all of them as horrible and sickening as my imagination could produce without overshooting and landing in the realm of comic-book evil:
- Dictatorial rule involving active terror and brutal suppression of deviants having great utility for a society in the long term, by providing security against some great risk or whatever.
- A need for every society to "cull the weak" every once in a while, e.g. exterminating the ~0.5% of its members that rank as weakest against some scale.
- Strict hierarchy in everyday life based on facts from the ansectral environment (men dominating women, fathers having the right of life and death over their children, etc) - Mencius argued in favor of such ruthless practices, e.g. selling children into slavery, in his post on "Pronomianism" and "Antinomianism", stating that all contracts between humans should rather be strict than moral or fair, to make the system stable and predictable; he's quite obsessed with stability and conformity.
- Some public good being created when the higher classes wilfully oppress and humiliate the lower ones in a ceremonial manner
- The bloodshed and lawlessness of periodic large-scale war as a vital "pressure valve" for releasing pent-up unacceptable emotional states and instinctive drives
- Plain ol' unfair discrimination of some group in many cruel, life-ruining ways, likewise as a pressure valve
+: some Luddite crap about dropping to a near-subsistence level in every aspect of civilization and making life a daily struggle for survival
Of course my methodology for coming up with such guesses was flawed and primitive: I simply imagined some of the things that sound the ugliest to me yet have been practiced by unpleasant cultures before in some form. Now, of course, most of us take the absense of these to be utterly crucial to our terminal values. Nevertheless, I hope I have demonstrated to whoever might really have something along these lines (if not necessarily that shocking) on their minds that I'm open to meta-discussion, and very interested how we might engage each other on finding safe yet productive avenues of contact.
Let's do the impossible and think the unthinkable! I must know what those secrets are, no matter how much sleep and comfort I might lose.
P.S. Yeah, Will, I realize that I'm acting roughly in accordance with that one trick you mentioned way back.
P.P.S. Sup Bakkot. U mad? U jelly?
CONCLUSION:
Fuck this Earth, and fuck human biology. I'm not very distressed about anything I saw ITT, but there's still a lot of unpleasant potential things that can only be resolved in one way:
I hereby pledge to get a real goddamn plastic card, not this Visa Electron bullshit the university saddled us with, and donate at least $100 to SIAI until the end of the year. This action will reduce the probability of me and mine having to live with the consequences of most such hidden horrors. Dixi.
Sometimes it's so pleasant to be impulsive.
Amusing observation: even when the comments more or less match my wild suggestions above, I'm still unnerved by them. An awful idea feels harmless if you keep telling yourself that it's just a private delusion, but the moment you know that someone else shares it, matters begin to look much more grave.