"Words matter" is also the reason the other side of the debate fights so vociferously. Perhaps this is the fault of our educational system, but many cases for r

"Words matter" is also the reason the other side of the debate fights so vociferously. Perhaps this is the fault of our educational system, but many cases for renaming would lose much of their steam if the involved and onlookers knew more about homonyms, etymology, and what the actual common usage of these words were in classic literature. Language prescriptivists can't get past their perception of renaming as indulging a slippery game of schizophrenic word-association. My extremely liberal grandmother who was a NYC English teacher and penpal of many authors despised email, Twitter, pop culture, and Trump for what she thought was the degradation of English. Earlier as an optimistic techie, I thought she was being ridiculous but I recently started seeing her point now that society lines up on both sides of daily culture war arguments over miscommunicated non-existent strawmen and red herrings. On the other hand, language is not prescriptive. If people start to see words differently, for whatever reason, and thus change their usage - that is nothing new in the history of language and is how languages have evolved since the dawn of time. I can see the utilitarian trade-off of simply realizing this is just that and if it helps more people's psyche than it hurts then maybe we should just go with it (as long as that benefit is proved statistically in the population at large, and isn't just an ivory tower assumption).