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Seth said: ”I’m more than a little dubious of any form of categorisation that isn’t self-defined”
I agree with this, but I think that the way to deal with this is to be careful in how one uses the words, rather than to not use the words at all. Certainly if someone says, “Non-magical people don’t read Tarot cards,” they’ll be excluding people who will consider themselves non-magical, but who read Tarot cards (when I was younger I dabbled in Tarot cards, but I hadn’t yet heard of magick, and I doubt I would have considered myself magical). On the other hand, Charlie’s Horse said in this thread, ”typically magicians are better at working magic than nonmagicians”. That would be a pretty hard idea to express without using the words magician and non-magician (or some synonymous term), and it doesn’t label anyone as being magical or nonmagical, but seems to leave that determination for individuals to make for themselves.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding your point here. Maybe you mean that in order for it to be acceptable to use a word for a certain group, it should be coined by that group, or at least widely accepted as non-offensive by that group. I agree with this, although you’re unlikely to get non-magical people to make up a word for ourselves (yes, I’m non-magical), as most non-magical people would not bother making up and agreeing on a word, since most will never find much use for it. It seems like any term that doesn’t already have negative associations with it ought to work, as long as it’s not used in a derogatory way often enough to gain a negative meaning. Maybe I’m wrong about that, but it’s hard to imagine how anyone could be any more offended by being called a non-hatter than by being called non-magical (although they might be more confused by it, especially if they’re wearing a sombrero or something).
To go back to the example of the word “neurotypical” (sorry if I’m beating the autism example to death), before the word “neurotypical” was coined, normal was used (as it still often is) and I suspect that it was self-defined by neurotypicals (although I’m not sure, maybe it was autistic people who started calling neurotypicals normal). The word “normal” may not have been offensive to most neurotypicals, but it was offensive to a lot people with autistic spectrum disorders. I guess what I’m saying is that just because a categorization is self-defined and accepted by the group that it’s applied to doesn’t make it non-offensive. If people started using the word “normal” to mean “white” (race-wise), then even if white people found this acceptable (and I know that it’s quite unlikely for this to happen, but it’s hypothetical, ok), people of other races would be offended because of the implication that they’re abnormal. |
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