It sounds like there are some misconceptions about "political correctness"

This is not the case. Often the "politically correct" version is not actually more correct, but is replacing some common phrase that is declared obnoxious by some very small unrepresentative minority of people who coincidentally make their living as activists.

Yes you can be houseless but not homeless, but you can also be homeless and not houseless. It's an utterly stupid distinction predicated on an intentionally incorrect, close, and literal minded reading of the term, done for political reasons.

Some iconic precursors to PC speech was the redefinition of role titles. Janitor which everyone was familiar with would be replaced with "sanitation engineer" or something similar which conveyed less what the person did do.

It kinda sounds like classism or wage related; "janitor" or "cleaner" sounds common, a "sanitation engineer" or "chief housekeeping manager" sounds like they would earn more.

Would I prefer to be a Janitor earning $20/hr or would I prefer being a sanitation engineer earning $15/hr. Sounds like I'm trading title for less money. There is probably some relationship with the now passe "rock star" "ninja".

I think it's worse than that because it actually devalues the role of engineer, and the role of janitor by presenting it as something it's not.

A sanitation engineer sounds like someone that knows how to safely build sewers or run a sewage processing plant. i.e. something you'd have a formal education and be accredited for.

With respect for honest hardworking janitors everywhere, that's not the same thing as minor plumbing or ensuring that places are properly cleaned. Neither task is engineering.

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“I understand that you’re a neurosurgeon.”

(Bert grins.) “…No; I’m a barber. But a lot of people make that mistake.”

Right, but that's a fictional example. No-one has actually unironically called a janitor a "sanitation engineer".

Not so fast:

Brand Evangelist (Marketing)

Outplacement consultant (someone who comes in to fire people)

Flueologist (Chimneysweep)

Loss prevention officer (Security guard)

Waste removal engineer (trashman/trashwoman)

https://www.businessinsider.com/recruiting-firm-shares-the-5...

So a clickbait piece in on a Buzzfeed-style site?

It’s fluff (trivia) but it’s real. Those titles exist. If buzzfeed has a listicle of the most populous cities, Does that mean those cities are not real?

You're downvoted by not far off to be honest. See also: the Euphemism Treadmill[0]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euphemism#Lifespan

"first, do no harm" includes psychological safety.

To use a bold example, there's a difference between telling your client they are "overweight" and telling them they are a "fat ass".

Psychological safety is utterly subjective. There cannot be a general ruleset. Although of course most doctors will not call you a fat ass. Maybe if he knows you more closely...

I think I agree with the sentiment, but being overweight is a characteristic of someone’s body. A fat arse is a part of a body. You can be overweight without a fat arse and vice versa, those are not identical.

I would naïvely think that “fat arse” is vulgar or insulting enough (or at the very least way too informal) not to use it with someone you’re not familiar with. This has nothing to do with political correctness.

You can ruin some people’s day by calling them ginger. I would expect a psychologist to be sensitive to this sort of things (do no harm, indeed), but that’s not a good reason to make everyone stop using that word.

Sometimes the brutal truth is the best anecdote. Does it hurt? Yes, but so do needles and countless other medical procedures. Pain != harm.

It doesn't. Doctor's and psychs feel entitled to treat their patients in any abusive and harmful manor. It won't matter, because nobody would believe the anyway.

A huge percentage of Doctor's are abusive scumbags. Everything you hear about medical ethics, they do the opposite.

They are bigoted, and emotionally abusive, gaslighting monsters, who stubbornly refuse to self reflect.

Huh? If you live in a condo, you have no house but you are not homeless. A house is only one kind of shelter that can be a home, of many.

It could also refer to the difference between living in someone's spare room, couch surfing, or living in a camper van vs having a home (rented or bought).

> living in someone's spare room

Children living with their parents don't own houses, but they aren't homeless either. Or adults for that matter. For a few years in college I lived in a spare room in my grandparent's house. I had no house of my own, but I certainly felt welcome and wasn't homeless by any means.

There is no meaning of "housed" that implies "owns a house".

Unhoused vs homeless looks like a good example of a euphemism treatmill (in progress). Their state is not being altered by the "finer" wording instead it sounds pretentious and condescending.

There are a lot of these political correct terms that are being used more cynically by now, however I'd prefer to not open that can of worms.

Good example of this from the article: "alcohol use disorder (formerly called alcoholism)"

pedantically, I find alcohol use disorder more accurate to my internal definition of condition and disease.

What we call things matter: as even slight changes in wording affect how people perceive things - so great care should be use when deciding what vernacular we should adopt generally.

Agree - this changes the language around someone suffering from this condition from “an alcoholic” to “a person suffering from alcohol use disorder”. The former seems permanent, the latter describes a condition that can be changed.

In my mind, an alcoholic is someone that has a dependency on alcohol, but not all people with AUD have a dependency on alcohol. For example, I think binge-drinking consistently (college students on weekends, for example) can be considered to have a mild AUD, but that person is not necessarily an "alcoholic" -- at least not what the average person considers to be an an alcoholic.

(If anyone knows more, feel free to correct me)

It makes sense to have a distinction between the word disease and condition and a disorder.

A disease particular is from a foreign agent: bactierial/fungal/viral/prionic/parasitic.

a condition or disorder is an integral structure on awry, or rewritten (by chemicals or by viewing data) to go awry: the key distinction between this and disease being that there is no other 'lifeform' (yes - include viruses for simplicity's sake).

so alcohol use disorder vs alcoholism reflects a more accurate state of reality. (there is no bacteria/fungus/prion/parasite/virus that is the CAUSE of alcoholism - a chemical rewrote your brain which has been damaged to potentially require alcohol to survive).

the push back I've encountered had nothing to do with being 'correct'/'sensible' and had everything to do with protecting the feelings of people suffering from AUD - which is not a worthwhile goal to coddle people with fluffy medical terms in the aims of removing responsibility from one's self...

... sorry for the rant :)

That’s just a straightforward description of changes in the DSM. “Alcoholism” was split into “alcohol abuse” and “alcohol dependence” back in the 80’s, but in the intervening years the consensus view settled on treating these as separate symptoms of a single disorder. This is reflected in the DSM-5, which uses the term “alcohol use disorder”. The purpose of the linked article is to ensure practitioners are using consistent terms when communicating in a professional context.

Further context: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2701140/

No, political correct is most often the opposite. It tries to obfuscate. Certainly not gain precision.

You're looking at it too literally.

Enforcing others to change their language is mostly about power. Any feel good explanations of why it needs to change is justification for executing that power.

True, it is about the prerogative of interpretation and to backhandedly assign motivation to someone that uses certain terms to mostly discredit them.

There are some that just mean well, but even then, the method is questionable.