this post was submitted on 14 May 2024
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Every few years some people decide you can’t use certain words because they have become negative terms to some group. So they invent a new term for the same thing and as the years go by and more people use the new term, it gets the same negative association that the old one had. Then the cycle begins anew.
Sometimes it’s good - a lot of slurs that were ok for anyone to say when I was a kid are now socially unacceptable and that’s great. But sometimes the SJWs take it too far and I think this is one of those times. I don’t understand the reason for the push to call them “unhoused” but I’m willing to be educated.
Once you hit middle age and have seen this happen a few times you’ll usually just roll your eyes and carry on.
Also, homeless is far from a slur in my opinion, and a similar term is used in many language. Using unhoused doesn’t change anything, the people you talk about still don’t have a place to live, but now you can feel better about yourself by using a different word.
Good article on the topic, highlighting the origin of the word, and the reasons many try to use it: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jul/20/homeless-unhoused-houseless-term-history
Very interesting, thanks for linking it! And they even have a name for the phenomenon I described.
"Intentional shifts in terminology might seem like a game of Whac-A-Mole – an ultimately unsuccessful effort to outrun a concept’s ugly implications. The Harvard professor Steven Pinker dubbed it the “euphemism treadmill”."