4 ms·

I think the more heinous "conservative" (as you put it) changes are related to physical conditions and the euphemism treadmill. George Carlins "soft language"

• derefr 3y ago
  > George Carlins "soft language" specifically spells out an example; shell-shock, battle fatigue -> Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. I’ve always thought that this was a bad example of the euphemism treadmill, because each step is clearly an attempt to be more general than the last. The name makes it clear that this isn’t just a disorder you’ll find in soldiers at constant fear of being shelled at any moment (shell shock); nor even of soldiers who’ve seen the horrors of battle generally (battle fatigue); but rather that anyone who has been through any kind of chronic, fearful stress under the constant expectation that some traumatizing event might happen at any moment, is liable to end up experiencing these symptoms. Or, to put it more viscerally: doctors would be wary of diagnosing a victim of domestic abuse with “shell shock.” But “PTSD” — not just as a symptom profile, but also as a name for that symptom profile, and a set of social connotations around that name — clearly fits. > CSAM This is actually an example of a completely different effect: it’s a cultural shibboleth. Police want to use automatic word filters to discover and surface conversations between pedophiles, while not triggering those filters with their own conversations about the pedophiles’ activities. So they have invented a word that is equivalent to the generic term in meaning, but part of “policing language.” (And, as a special trick, it’s a term with no potential for a treadmill effect, as pedophiles would be loath to use a term that frames them as perpetrators of abuse.)
  • kbenson 3y ago
    > Or, to put it more viscerally: doctors would be wary of diagnosing a victim of domestic abuse with “shell shock.” But “PTSD” — not just as a symptom profile, but also as a name for that symptom profile, and a set of social connotations around that name — clearly fits. In some ways it's a natural consequence of broadening the scope of something. Is the loss of impact because of the language, or because it now applies to a lot more situations which we imagine is expressed in different ways (whether that's largely true or not)? Shell shock likely didn't conjure the idea of a person going through a harrowing experience as much as a soldier going through constant shelling for weeks. The first encompasses the other, but the second one is much more explicit and conjures specific thoughts that we can latch on to when we try to imagine the experience. Battle fatigue also paints a somewhat specific picture, even if more broad than shell shock. We can imagine what types of things caused this, even if our imagination probably only covered a subset of the actual causes. Those things it does conjure are bad though, so the idea is very impactful. PTSD, which more accurately encompasses a lot more situations, not all of them (or maybe even the majority of them) related to war, also leaves us without as much information to use to form an emotional response to as we imagine what it was they went through. Was it the horrors of war? Was it assault by a stranger as a civilian? Was it physical abuse by someone you know? Was it long term mental abuse? We know it was bad, to affect the sufferer, but it's harder to form a real emotional response, I think, when the cause is ambiguous. So, is the problem the language, or is the language just a side-effect of the increased scope of the term, and the problem is actually the increased scope?
• roenxi 3y ago
  CSAM I'd put in a different category - just based on the flow of the conversation I'd guess some people have deep seated emotions that trigger when children get hurt. There is a reason that authoritarians use children for cover when pushing their agenda - the topic hinders people's ability to argue rationally and engage the part of their brain that that can spot obviously bad ideas (war is similar - having an enemy seems to do similar things). "CSAM" is useful because it is so drained of any colour. It makes it much less likely that emotions get triggered because it gets discussed as an abstract thing instead of something related to children.
• PhasmaFelis 3y ago
  > The most up-to-the-minute example I can think of is "CSAM" which removes all pain of the victims. For those not in the know "kiddie porn" as it was once known was rebranded to "child rape images", then "child abuse images" now finally "child sexual abuse images" which is now so long that it is oft abbreviated CSAM. There are several good reasons for this, one of which is that poorly-thought-out child pornography laws have beem used to charge and convict children for taking photos of their own bodies. Explicitly defining the prohibited material as "child sexual abuse images" puts a stop to that when it's obvious that no abuse or exploitation occurred. And of course we use PTSD instead of "battle fatigue" because it affects many millions of people who have never been near a battle. These are not good examples.
• Angostura 3y ago
  “Child Sex Abuse” actually puts the pain and damage to the victim front and centre in a way that ‘kiddie porn’ singularly fails to do.
• watwut 3y ago
  > George Carlins "soft language" specifically spells out an example; shell-shock, battle fatigue -> Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Except that his account is ahistorical ... and the term post-traumatic stress disorder actually captures what the issue is. Neither shell-shock nor battle fatigue are good descriptors.