I think you'd have better luck by explaining your ideas further, rather than simply trying to associate ideas with emotionally charged words like 'slavery' or 'sex trafficking' by writing them next to things you dislike.
I agree with what you are saying, just that the way you originally went about saying it by including a contrived hyperbolic example regarding slavery was a poor way to frame your position, at least in my opinion, and made your argument less likely to be received in good faith.
You removed the words "of the genuine horrors that exist even today". Those make it clear that I think the use of "slavery" is wrong here not because it slanders Jeff Bezos or American enterprise or whatever, but because it conflates (a) a bad job--accepted on the open market, by people in a country with a safety net that while imperfect almost never lets people starve to death--with (b) taking people with force or deception, making them work, and keeping them even if they want to leave, under threat of physical violence.
Do you think we should use the same word for both of these concepts? Is there a word that you use to mean (b) that doesn't include (a)? How do you think that guy on the Thai fishing boat would feel, if he saw the Amazon warehouse and was told it was "slavery"?
Because it pisses me off when people try to 'argue' by stretching the commonly-understood meanings of emotionally-charged words like "slavery". Argue the merits, don't attempt cheap rhetorical legerdemain.
The problem with ”slave” (as an example) for me is, how do we know this is actually a problem for enslaved people? How do we know this isn’t just a ”white man burden” thing? Yes, it makes sense, but just because something makes sense doesn’t mean it’s inherently good or applicable. Lots of things make sense from a theoretical, conceptual perspective, but are not feasible in practice.
It seems to me that enslaved people have much bigger problems than to worry about this, and if they don’t anymore, then the wording doesn’t matter. They are either ”former slaves”, which emphasizes the severity of the situation they were put through, or they are still slaves, which again——emphasis. I could argue that the new wording diminishes the seriousness of the predicament (but I won’t as I don’t believe that, given the horrors of slavery, the word matters at all here).
My point was that trying to paint slavery as being particularly objectionable in the face of just as seemingly reprehensible (but not at all in context) metaphors of child murder, is disingenuous and pointlessly selective. Child murder and slavery are horrible and I can't believe I actually have to specify this. They are both ongoing, so your argument from ancestry doesn't work. There's millions of slaves as we speak, many more ancestors of slaves and many who have had their children murdered. That doesn't somehow make those metaphors irredeemable when put in purely technical context, e.g. slavery as a relationship of total control and ownership by one party over another (actually just as applicable to S/M -- a consensual sexual practice, as it is to real-life slavery).
The problem is that the word can have derogatory implications, not that it represents a bad thing to do with humans. If slavery didn't have the sort of implications it does in the US, it might be no worse than 'kill' or 'destroy'. You shouldn't do those to humans either, but seeing the word doesn't leave an unpleasant residue.
I'm sorry I have a strong aversion to hyperbole, but if you're going to compare the situations outlined in the article to slavery you're going to have to lump a lot of other stuff into the slavery pile as well. It's important to preserve the weight of words lest you further increase people's apathy.
I really feel your usage of "enslaved" and "tortured" are not very inclusive. There are people whose ancestors experienced such things, and words like that might be triggering and make them uncomfortable.
Maybe you could use friendlier words like "not free" or "hurt"?
What about human trafficking? Do you know why that policy was written long before the current administration?
Also, “cages” is just a word used to evoke an emotional rather than a rational response. “Why do we send our children to prisons every day? They can’t even leave of their own free will!”
If you want to point out poor conditions, then do it.
Because the idea of a slave has immediate connotations of people being enslaved. I'm not talking in some broad philosophical sense of rightness, I mean it brings to mind, for me, thoughts about human slavery that are uncomfortable.
It seems odd to me that we've settled on the weirdly euphemistic "trafficking" to describe slavery. It sounds like a marketing word intended to take the sting out of a distasteful concept, which I don't think is anyone's intention.
Yeah, I understand that. I actually think is important to find what bothers us despite our "blessings" and try to make it better, we'd be stuck in the past if we didn't.
I just found "slavery" a strong word, and that a little perspective on these matters is also very important.
I can understand all of that, empathize with it, and still believe it's a massive stress to claim it's "[literally] slavery" when its more related or connected to the history of slavery.
There can be different kinds of slavery. Let's not get bogged down by details shall we?
If a situation fits for 80% and there is no other single word that better describes it, i see you would just do nothing and leave a clearly wrong situation in confusion and undefined. People need a word and a clarity of meaning to rally behind it. Slavery fits really well, even if some things don't fit the historical original definition of it. If you can come up with a better fitting word, be my guest, otherwise please don't stand in the way while people are trying to raise awareness for the tragic lack of freedom that so many of us experience.
I believe these sort of 'word bans' are motivated by Whorfianism; basically the idea that the sort of language we use can influence (or even set the bounds of) the kind of thoughts people have. But scientific evidence for Whorfianism is weak at best, and starts to seem particularly absurd when you try to state plainly exactly what you're trying to accomplish in situations like this. In this case, the idea seems to be that we can denormalize the practice of slavery by eliminating metaphorical references to slavery.
If you think about this, it's obviously a complete farce. The sort of people who engage in slavery today are not enabled to do so by such metaphors. And those apathetic to the problem of modern slavery, who might otherwise be doing something about it, were not made apathetic by the metaphors. The premise of fighting slavery by eliminating metaphors to slavery is pure pseudoscience of the highest order.
reply