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by MildlySerious 2145 days ago
Making certain uses of some words a taboo is exactly what's happening. Which, in some cases, just seems arbitrary and not related to a societal problem, let alone its solution. It's a good thing we are becoming more sensitive to these topics, and that they are beginning to get the attention to hopefully bring meaningful change. However, as is the case with any sufficiently big movement, subgroups will form that have their own interpretation of the goal, and some of those will end up being detrimental to the overall cause. For example, the few individuals rioting during the recent protests hurt the entire movement one way or another. This comparison is to be taken with a grain of salt, but my impression has been that the whole debate on certain words is somewhat similar to that, in much lesser form of course. There is language that needs changing. There is also language that I would argue doesn't, and arbitrarily creating artificial sensitivity just dilutes the original, important message.

When I hear the word camp, I don't immediately think of labour camps, the same way I don't think of race when I hear the word blacklist. That's not the case for everyone, so it does need addressing. What it boils down to is the question when and why it was concluded that deprecating those neutral uses was the better solution over deprecating their negative connotations. It mostly just seems counter-intuitive to me for the reason stated in my previous comment.