There are lots of situations where the members of some very small set of people would like or need something, and there is a basic choice to make: Does society deal with it, or does the individual deal with it? If it costs the majority little or nothing, then the solution is obvious. The potential problems arise when there is some sort of cost to people in general of the accommodation for the few.
One example is the sheet of paper in many official mailings giving in a wide variety of different languages the basic message, 'This is important. Don't ignore it." That seems reasonable. People who speak a wide variety of languages get a mix of important mail and junk mail, and this seems like a reasonable way to distinguish the two. It's easy enough for English speakers to ignore. I wonder if there is a legal penalty for including such a piece of paper in marketing mail -- or maybe it just wouldn't be very effective advertising. I'm also thinking that these ubiquitous pieces of paper cry out for some slang term, but I haven't heard it yet.
Phone trees only came into widespread use after I was an adult. But initially there was never a "To continue in Spanish, press 2" message. Now there is. This is I trust a cost/benefit tradeoff. Someone judged that there were enough Spanish speakers that it was worth it. Or perhaps it came out of an activist demand, and including it earned points with activists for the Spanish-speaking community. But it costs everyone a few seconds on every phone call. In contrast, something like Braille instructions on ATMs have no cost. Perhaps a half-second version, like "Espanol, dos" would be obvious enough to Spanish speakers and save us all a second or so on every call.
Some people are sensitive to fragrances. Some people like to wear fragrances. Do the sensitive ones have the right to determine that others can't wear fragrances? Or is it the responsibility of those truly sensitive to fragrances to plan to be elsewhere?
I was a partaicipant in a series of pot luck dinners starting ten years ago, at which people were required to provide a label with each dish listing the ingredients. This is significant work to prepare this list and display it. The solution I would favor is that those very few with serious food allergies should bring a bag supper and let the cooks prepare their dishes without having to document them.
I have heard about serious peanut allergies, based on which any traces of peanuts are banned in an entire classroom -- maybe an entire school? Might it make more sense to designate a few schools or classrooms as peanut-free and let the peanuts crunch freely elsewhere?
On the whole the Americans with Disabilities Act was a good thing, giving access (notably for people in wheelchairs) to places they couldn't access before. But when I look at specific examples I often wonder if 90% of the benefit might have been achieved for far less money. Elevators are very expensive. If the ADA requires that a renovation include an elevator, that's money that could have been spent on other things. Alternatively, simple renovations that would improve most people's lives are foregone because the required elevator makes them too expensive.
I save for the end two examples that seem to be controversies with political overtones: trigger warnings and pronouns.
The "trigger warning" is given in advance when some sort of content contains things some groups of people might find upsetting. It might be, "this show depicts graphic violence". I don't object too much if it's voluntary, though I tend to think it's a waste of people's time. As I see it, life in general comes pre-marked with one big, implicit trigger warning: You might see upsetting things. I am more passionately against trigger warning scolding, where the content maker is castigated for not having included one. Implicitly there is a competition here among various sensitivites people might have, whereby some are more important than others. A trigger warning might be demanded on behalf of some group by sympathizers who wish to show their support, whether or not the group itself feels the need for a trigger warning.
Some poll showed that 90% of Native Americans had no problem with a football team named the Washington Redskins. Whether the poll result was valid or not, it raised a few key questions... Had people thought about identifying the offended group and asking their opinions? Or was the real objection that the rest of the population thought it wasn't suitable, independent of actual effects on an actual minority. That might itself be a valid reason, but if so it's best to be clear about it.
I enjoyed the Harry Potter books, but got only partway through one movie before deciding it was too violent for my tastes. But I never expected anyone to put a trigger warning on the movie.
Pronouns. 'What are your pronouns?' you may be asked. Perhaps they are to be filled in on name tags, or included in online signatures.
Perhaps there is a significant population out there that is traumatized when people meeting them for the first time don't use the pronouns they would like, but I don't believe it. I can see they might find it a bit tedious, but not especially upsetting. The old, tried-and-true method we had was to look somebody over, and with 99.5% accuracy determine from their appearance what pronouns are appropriate. A few people whose appearance didn't match their gender were stuck correcting people. The same rule should continue to serve us well today. If you want to use something that doesn't match, it's up to you to tell people. (After they tell you, it's polite to try to use the ones they request.)
Consider for comparison people who are deaf or who don't speak English. As they move through American society, they will constantly have to set people straight by conveying their language situation. If they wish, they could wear a nametag alerting people to this situation, but it's up to them. The same goes for people whose pronouns do not match their appearance. But they're the ones who wear the tag. Our mental space should be freed from worrying about pronouns of the people we meet. It's only when someone alerts us to the fact that they prefer other pronouns -- or are deaf, or don't speak English -- that we need to deal with that. But to follow the analogy, we do not need to put "I am hearing" and "I speak English" on our nametags!
One reason some people might oppose everyone specifying preferred pronouns is a hostility to gender identification that does not follow biological sex. I'm sure this is true, but the issues I raise are a sufficient reason to oppose the practice, and I myself am supportive of individually chosen gender identification.
On the whole I think our society has gone too far in the direction of accommodating the needs of very small groups of people who have special needs when they meet one particular condition: They occupy everyone's mental energy and attention even in the vast majority of circumstances where no such very rare people are present.
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