I strongly agree, and I also think imposition of thought, generalizations and constant misuse of language is passed off as unimportant when it is the underlying disorder. Disorder, because that's what our results of not paying attention to meaning ends up as when we abuse words.

This topic is complicated. A friend of mine works at a place where they banned the term "backlog grooming" because it was considered offensive versus "backlog refinement". I'm certainly in favor of being sensitive to the vulnerable, but views on language are quite subjective.

Views are subjective but also relative in a cultural and team context. Subjective in one sense minimises the critique. In another sense it exactly points to the dynamics of language that is and always will be what we negotiate

If someone asked me to not use a certain word around them, I would probably accommodate them because I have compassion for others, but I'm wary of how far it goes when we start banning generally benign words. The nature of language is such that we could create negative...

associations with any word on an individual basis and we might not even be able to build a consensus. This is even more confusing because consensus isn't always great either.

Again I see that a suggestion for one approach means my suggestion was perceived as a singular solution? Clearly we are so concerned with our perception that we can't even consider multiple approaches? To assume I think only One Way wins? Thanks for the benevolent exclusion.

I think that we are quick to infer and quick to respond to inferred meaning. We seem to first see only how a word affects our own lives. That to me seems an unwillingness to solve problems in part because change across society feels impossible. It isn't. It takes communication.

I apologize if I came off that way. I wasn't trying to reject your idea, but just express some of the challenges I find in the topic. I'm supportive of moving terminology away from words with a history of oppression in favor of benign alternatives. ..

In the case of master/slave it seems like an easy argument to make that usage obsolete, but I still am unsure about alternative usages of the word master. The example I shared previously with the word "grooming" was challenging for me because of the many benign usages such as..

"dog grooming", "well groomed" etc. I'm happy to avoid the word if I suspect someone may suffer from its use, but I'm just not sure if this is a reasonable company policy. I'm open to considering it, but I struggle to see how "sprint grooming" is wrong, but "dog grooming" is OK.