[slackdog]

I believe these sort of 'word bans' are motivated by Whorfianism; basically the idea that the sort of language we use can influence (or even set the bounds of) the kind of thoughts people have. But scientific evidence for Whorfianism is weak at best, and starts to seem particularly absurd when you try to state plainly exactly what you're trying to accomplish in situations like this. In this case, the idea seems to be that we can denormalize the practice of slavery by eliminating metaphorical references to slavery.

If you think about this, it's obviously a complete farce. The sort of people who engage in slavery today are not enabled to do so by such metaphors. And those apathetic to the problem of modern slavery, who might otherwise be doing something about it, were not made apathetic by the metaphors. The premise of fighting slavery by eliminating metaphors to slavery is pure pseudoscience of the highest order.