You’re thinking it’s about the *intentions* behind the word, and whether it’s *intended* as a slur on the people it describes in other contexts, but that’s not the issue at all.

It is also comparable to using a phrase like “fat chance.” This is in no way a slur on obese people because in the context it has nothing to do with them.

There’s the base assumption that someone saying “your use of that language is hurtful” is fundamentally manipulative, that it’s said with the intent to control, not out of any genuine response.

It’s a convenient assumption because it means you don’t have to do or change anything in response. I just trashed a comment on this blog where someone said I was complaining just to complain. That’s really the same silencing tactic, really.

Some people interact with the world as if everything and everyone is trying to control them. They resent being told that their method of expression is unecessarily hurtful because they can’t separate their ideas from the presentation of their ideas to others.

(I know there are no absolutes, “two kinds of people” or anything here. I’m just hitting the edges of the seesaw.) There’s the base assumption that someone saying “your use of that language is hurtful” is fundamentally manipulative, that it’s said with the intent to control, not out of any genuine response.

It’s the idea that if you aren’t meaning to be offensive, and someone is hurt, that any discussion of it exists only to shame you and control your behavior.

You and a number of others here very much seem to come at all of this from exactly the opposite direction. You operate from a fundamental honesty of intent that allows you to take others as whole people, whose opinions and responses were not created merely to impose limitations on your expression.

I know that sounds simple, but there are so many people who can’t seem to cross that distance. They simply can’t seem to understand that choosing to carefully craft your words for minimal avoidable harm has nothing to do with censoring your opinions or “allowing yourself to be controlled by others.” It’s about a personal choice to make actual decency, not a semblance of righteousness or a fear of backlash, the controlling factors for any attempt at communication.

It’s a quality I admire very much. I appreciate your example.

No. Write what you want to write, and the devil take the hindmost. Self-censoring because you might offend someone is the sure sign of a scared writer.