Where are all those free speech absolutists that were so noisy the last several years?

(The question is rhetorical; we know where they are)

Trump and his fellow fascists use terms like DEI to describe anything they don’t like, which means that the word “women” is on the forbidden list while “men” doesn’t initiate a review.

Straight white men are seen through the MAGA worldview as the default human and thus wouldn’t be suspicious and in need of a review. Any other type of identity is inherently suspect.

It’s still not clear what happens on the other side of all this. But when they’re flagging words like “women” and “trauma,” less than three weeks in, it can’t be good.

I thought gender was a strange word to ban

THEY ARE PROHIBITING THE USE OF THE WORD "BIASED"

• disabilities
• disability

Fucking hell, I ain’t allowed to be disabled anymore?

They’re gonna be reading a lot of medical papers just from banning the word “trauma,” to say nothing of common words like “female” and “black.”

Here's a quick off-the-cuff list of neuroscience domains, not part of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, that will be impacted by this censorship. This is not an exhaustive list, it's just what I thought of after thinking critically for 10 minutes.

It goes without saying this practice is evil and reprehensible. No academic domain should be politically targeted. But it reaches more than their targets. It is dangerous. It is unscientific. It is book-burning. Contact your representatives. Take action. Donate to good causes.

Patient advocacy for people who have had a stroke, or have dementia, or have any number of disabilities, hereditary or acquired.

Any research about the blood brain barrier, including development of drugs that can cross it more efficiently.

Any research about the placental barrier, including development of safe medications for birthing people.

Research into cognitive bias.

Development of statistics (including Bayesian, the hot frontier), machine learning (that's AI for anyone who prefers that term), where the term bias is used to talk about parameters and model performance.

Basic visual and auditory science, where we talk about visual and auditory discrimination.

Sex differences research- this isn't just a social issue, we don't understand how differences in metabolism impact drug metabolism. Can't have female mice anymore, apparently.

Basic research in the function of neurons, which polarize, depolarize, hyperpolarize, etc.

Concussion research and, again, stroke research. The field is broadly known as traumatic brain injury.

something something Tiananmen Square

Further proof that the people making the rules have no clue what they’re regulating.

Anybody who has read an academic/science paper knows that the authors go all out with their $5 and $10 words. Make no mistake, they can find some of the best alternatives to any word, and will have no problem sidestepping this blacklist.