You were being "corrected" by someone else, weren't you? They knew the "right" language and you didn't. What do you think would have happened if you'd disagreed with this particular correction?
Like if I had said, “thanks for the feedback but I’m going to continue using this other word”? I think we probably would have just moved on and the individual would have been offended, but - why would I do that? To whose benefit? Mine?
Because, look, I’m a successful, senior, valued individual who is respected and liked by my team. In the grand scheme of my life, if someone wants me to use one word vs another, why do I care? I have thousands of things that are more important to worry about than that.
It’s the same way that I work with someone who likes to be addressed in emails by their full name - okay, no problem, remind me once and I’ll just move on. Or a coworker I had who was from Africa and did not want to be referred to as “African American” - sure, fine.
Doing so diminishes me not at all, because I don’t define my worth based on whether I use the correct (or incorrect) word or not.
It seems like a lot of the objections that I see in this thread have to do with people having issues being “corrected” or “policed” or “silenced”, all of which have to do with how they interpret how those moments have wronged THEM. Another option would be to let it go. Yet another would be to see themselves as making the faintest possible effort to make sure people feel welcome.
I think we probably would have just moved on and the individual would have been offended
That's the gap between you and others in this thread. What we've experienced is not that one individual is genuinely offended and everyone just moves on, it's that they immediately run the HR/management with crocodile tears in their eyes, and then demand you be fired. They conclude that the only reason to refuse their request is because you're an ideological enemy and don't care about anything else.
And that's why it's bad. It's not about genuinely taking offence, and never was. It is about establishing dominance over powerful institutions so they can turn them all into Twitter - weapons in a never-ending dystopian culture war that can never be won because the victory conditions change every day.
