The Right of a Fly to a Common Name

Are these not your words?

Regarding the topic subject, the revised title of this topic is The Right of a Fly to a Common Name. The original title was The Right to the Invention of a Common Name, and closed with this question,

Rights - for those who name things, for things to be named or for anything else - are rather different than vague propositions for the sake of conversation. Or perhaps your title(s) were hyperbole?

You have presented taxonomic bias as a serious societal issue (in this and other topics) and used the language of rights to frame the discussion. You borrowed terminology from social theory to refer to marginalized taxa. The topic title has been changed in the course of the discussion to refer to the rights of a fly (although if I take your latest comments correctly it doesn’t actually reflect what you wanted discussed and you don’t want either title taken to heart). Marginalization is about inequality. Rights are about equal treatment. If equal treatment is not an objective maybe use different language.

The issue of taxonomic bias is real and problematic in various ways. It is a manifestation of the sort of thing that has been termed a wicked problem, a complex problem with no straightforward solutions. It isn’t going to be solved here by permitting the coining of common names or any other means.

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