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Since tweeting was a bit crazy yesterday, we wanted to create a thread of exactly what’s happening with @Dictionarycom and what we can do about it. Get ready for a thread! (1/12)
This week, @Dictionarycom added a ton of new words to their dictionary. Many of these words had to do with sexuality, race, and other social issues. Dictionary .com was quite proud of this. (2/12) https://twitter.com/dictionarycom/status/1300774927549820929
Among the words/definitions updated were “asexual” and “ace.” And while it’s great to be recognized, there were some issues with the definitions. Let’s take a look. (3/12)
First, we have their definition of asexual. This is obviously incorrect and could bring harmful misconceptions. Asexuality is actually experiencing little to no sexual ATTRACTION. Desire and attention are not the same. (4/12)
So let’s move into their definition of ace. Pretty cool that they included slang. Unfortunately, it’s the same incorrect definition. And what’s more, this is the SECONDARY definition. You have to scroll so far to get to this. (5/12)
You’ll notice I didn’t mention a definition for the word asexuality. Funny, huh? For some reason @Dictionarycom updated the definitions for asexual and ace, but not asexuality. Here’s what asexuality currently looks like. Oof. (6/12)
And let’s not forget about our aromantic friends, because it seems like @Dictionarycom might have. Here’s the current entry for aromantic. Not too bad, but is still bringing in desire where it should not be. Also? There’s no entry for “Aromanticism” at all. (7/12)
Now we do have to give @Dictionarycom a bit of credit. On many of these pages, you can scroll down and find longer articles discussing the origin of the words and the sexualities. Which is pretty cool! Except they’re way towards the bottom. (8/12)
There are several other words that @Dictionarycom recently added that aren’t quite right, but we’re focusing on the aspec ones here. Incorrect definitions are detrimental. When people google a word, dictionary. com is likely to come up among the first results. (9/12)
If someone is questioning their sexuality and comes across and incorrect definition, this could set their journey back by years. If someone is just trying to educate themselves and finds a wrong definition, this could cause really harmful or confusing misconceptions. (10/12)
So what do we do? Well we’ve already been tweeting @Dictionarycom and they did reply. But this doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll fix the definitions or add new definitions that are actually correct. (11/12) https://twitter.com/dictionarycom/status/1301594477186838528
SO if you want to voice your concern, you can email @Dictionarycom here and tell them what you think: http://www.dictionary.com/e/contact (12/12)
