what people call you and how you’re referred to affects how you’re treated, directly. this is why propaganda works. i’d like to think carlin would understand that fucking around with marginalized groups trying to better their perception and situation is probably not super cool, and that it’d be much more chill to go after the powerful assholes doing the marginalizing. but who knows.
the word homeless has stigma attached thanks to movies, tv, politicians, news. unhoused drops alot of that stigma. removing that stigma is important in the interest of allowing people to feel empathy for those affected rather than fear. i still slip every now and again but the rationale makes sense and i’m trying to do better.
I’m guessing you’ve never seen the bit where Carlin goes from Shell Shocked -> Battle Fatigued -> Operational Exhaustion -> Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. The whole thing about changing these terms is it tends to undermine the seriousness of the issues being discussed. And the marginalized people that are effected.
it categorically does not undermine the seriousness of what’s being discussed. it casts aside stigma and hatred lumped onto groups from the outside and allows people in marginalized groups some degree of agency or choice in how they’re named which usually results in more accurate terminology that’s adaptive and capable of shifting away from terms and meanings applied by unaffected people in media and politics. these changes also create community and organization in marginalized groups
source: being gay and trans
i haven’t seen the bit. but there is literally no evidence that seriousness gets undermined. sure, bigots will use shifts in terminology to mock their targets, but bigots were always going to do bigot shit anyway. again, i’d like to believe that carlin would’ve seen how things progressed into the 2010s and 2020s and painted targets on the powerful instead of the powerless.
