The reason I bring this up is because this person seems to be under the impression that those who are living an alternative lifestyle are not recognized by our advanced and openly tolerant culture.we must doggedly insist that family does not imply children.
He then insists that we need to redefine the definition of family to suit his criteria, but in the process he leaves out numerous other criteria, not to mention countless other people who he has overlooked such as those who consider their pets as family, or those who prefer not to be identified in relation to families.
The speaker is clearly referring to those who have children, but the rant against him insists that this be articulated, presumably every time he refers to the type of family he's explicitly talking about.
The spirit of the Grand Inquisitor seems alive and well at Google.
One employee stormed out of the March 2017 presentation after a presenter “continued to show (awesome) Unicorn product features which continually use the word ‘family’ as a synonym for ‘household with children,'� he explained in an internal thread. That employee posted an extended rant, which was well-received by his colleagues, on why linking families to children is “offensive, inappropriate, homophobic, and wrong.�
He wrote:
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 mean 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.