Comment on Montrealer who dumped water on unhoused man's face issues public apology.
slaacaa@lemmy.world 6 months agoAlso, homeless is far from a slur in my opinion, and a similar term is used in many language. Using unhoused doesn’t change anything, the people you talk about still don’t have a place to live, but now you can feel better about themselves by using a different word.
Good article on the topic, highlighting the origin of the word, and the reasons many try to use it: theguardian.com/…/homeless-unhoused-houseless-ter…
CarbonatedPastaSauce@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Very interesting, thanks for linking it! And they even have a name for the phenomenon I described.
“Intentional shifts in terminology might seem like a game of Whac-A-Mole – an ultimately unsuccessful effort to outrun a concept’s ugly implications. The Harvard professor Steven Pinker dubbed it the “euphemism treadmill”.”