Remember, they should be mnemonics if they’re more memorable. That was, ostensibly, the whole point of using them in the first place! Refusing to use them is certainly “balking”. If less outrageous (and therefore less memorable) mnemonics are substituted in order to spare a tiny minority’s unbelievably delicate sensibilities, you are simultaneously harming however many other users WK has.
When you’re suggesting that we shouldn’t have mnemonics with “boobs” or “Joseph Stalin” because those words are inherently harmful, yes, that is whining! We could also call it “crybullying”, “lying”, or “insanity”. The notion that people are being harmed or threatened by slightly outrageous mnemonics is absurd on its face and should be categorically dismissed.
The alternative tells the entire rest of the userbase that Tofugu cares more about catering to a few selfish, manipulative, attention-seeking griefers than about serving the bulk of its users. Particularly when we know that no one’s safety is actually at stake.
I could pretend to be harmed by something harmless and make endless petty demands for the censors to censor themselves, too - and numerous people have done this. What they almost invariably find is that the censors, rather than meekly agreeing, end up making ad hoc arguments for how their speech isn’t problematic or how the people who are complaining don’t have real problems or aren’t eligible to be considered. It’s almost (i.e. definitely) as though the people calling for voluntary censorship so as not to offend certain individuals don’t actually care about the principles they espouse, but are just authoritarian hypocrites using a superficially noble position for cover.
In the bigger picture… this argument in a fairly non-mainstream public forum about whether or not to use words like “boobs” or “gay” to help people memorize kanji is almost meaningless. No one cares. But the root of this argument is a much larger cultural phenomenon that has significant effects on politics and culture, and which has been insufficiently challenged by the mainstream in recent decades - and just as it advanced by inches, through individual conversations and tiny voices, it will be repelled the same way. America, and western culture more generally, has had enough nagging and finger-waving, and the tide of public opinion is shifting away from political correctness and the scolds who enforce it.
And as an aside… we are all trying to learn Japanese here. Some of us may want to move to Japan or already live there; others may mean to visit the country, while others just want to consume Japanese culture. As it so happens, Japanese society is insular and conservative. Tradition and conformity are valued more than individual gain and expression, gender roles are still strong (men and women actually have different ways of speaking!), and deference to bosses and elders is expected. None of that means you necessarily have to be what we would consider socially conservative in America to study Japanese or visit or live in Japan, but if you’re the type of person who goes out of their way to be deeply offended by things and are “harmed” by words used without malice, you are probably barking up entirely the wrong tree. Forget Japan. Go learn to paint or something, because the treasure at the end of this rainbow is just going to end up offending you.
