UNESCO has a thesaurus – a collection of terms that are not only defined, but labeled as preferred or non-preferred terms. (Psychoses, for example, is UNESCO’s preferred term for schizophrenia.)
I don’t know when because I can’t find supporting documentation, but at some point, UNESCO designated female circumcision and genital mutilation as non-preferred terms. The preferred term is excision, a word that struck me as remarkably and suspiciously sanitized. Why would you want to verbally soften and obscure the act of genital mutilation?
http://vocabularies.unesco.org/browser/thesaurus/en/search?clang=en&q=Excision
Tag: political correctness
the real “problem with political correctness” is not that it’s considered offensive to use slurs, but that there are now many “progressive” environments where saying the right things is more important than doing the right thing. it’s why it’s so easy for abusers to gain traction in leftist circles (they learn the right words quickly and employ them to frame their own behavior as progressive); it’s why so much potential activist energy gets poured into fighting about language; it’s why moderate liberals didn’t believe fer/guson had a problem until the police emails with actual racist language were leaked. (you can do racist things, you just can’t SAY racist things.) i don’t have a neat conclusion here but a related point is that i’m so much happier since i started focusing on like, being a good kind caring person instead of trying to remove the word “crazy” from the vocabulary of everyone in my family
Just saying this is truly one of the best “discourse” posts on this site like……this hits the nail directly on the head re: what is going on with language right now and everyone pushing back in the notes only serves to further prove the point it’s making
Wide Spread Interests 