[dotancohen]

My grandfather was a slave - he passed in 2007. I have no objection to the term master, nor have I heard anybody ever who was affected by actual slavery to take offence to the term.

I remember much debate about this, and not once was an actual affected person mentioned who took offence.

[pron]

1. My whole point was that it is not about anyone in the affected group taking offence. The question is whether other people can come to devalue people in the affected group. In this context "offensive" doesn't mean taking offence, but devaluing. To take and extreme and controved example, if I tell a subordinate that the women on our team were "diversity hires" who did not deserve to be hired, the harm is not in a woman hearing I said that. It is done even if none of the women on the team ever know I said that. Similarly, it doesn't matter if the women on our team all agreed with that statement and weren't offended by it.

2. I make absolutely no claim about the effectiveness of using or avoiding certain terms even in the relevant context. I'm only saying that people misunderstand what "offensive" means in this context. It means things that may make some people think less of others, whether or not those others know about it or are offended by it.

[didibus]

I think OP explicitly said that it's not about the affected party feeling offended, but about how it makes you look to choose such words.

Think bad PR, not actual people complaining due to being offended. Like if I named my code library dead babies, it's possible nobody whose delt with a dead baby finds offense to it, but many people might find it off putting that I've chosen to call it that. So if I was a high value corporate entity who doesn't want bad PR, I might want to rename it.

I think in the end it's more of a, oh damn, did I just make a master/slave analogy for my database design? Maybe someone will find that offensive, and I don't want that, so I'll rename it as a precaution, even if no one has yet to let me know it's offending them.

[aj_hackman]

The anti-master position also willfully disregards synonymy. Just because I have mastered the English language does not mean it belongs to me. Master Splinter does not own the Ninja Turtles.