&gt; perfectly considerate and inoffensive for quite a long time<p>No, they weren&#x27;t considerate and inoffensive. You just didn&#x27;t know they weren&#x27;t.<p>If you don&#x27;t speak much to gay people, you wouldn&#x27;t realise certain terms (like, historically, &#x27;gay&#x27;) were offensive. If you don&#x27;t speak much to disabled people, you wouldn&#x27;t realise &#x27;cripple&#x27; was offensive. If you didn&#x27;t speak much to trans people, you wouldn&#x27;t realise &#x27;tr$&amp;%y&#x27; was a slur.<p>&gt; never with any intention to hurt, marginalize, offend, bother, or in any way cause any trouble<p>Intention is nice and all, but <i>effect</i> is what actually matters. People will be kinder on you if you didn&#x27;t <i>intend</i> to be hurtful, but it ultimately doesn&#x27;t matter if you&#x27;re consistently actually being hurtful without good reason.<p>&gt; enforcing softer language will inject love and understanding into people&#x27;s hearts<p>Who thinks it will? The idea of considerate language is to avoid normalising things that are unreasonable (not all firefighters are male, don&#x27;t use &#x27;fireman&#x27;), or avoid causing hurt to people (at best a gay person would be irritated by a certain word beginning with f, at worst deeply hurt).<p>&gt; they distract from things that actually matter to the quality of people&#x27;s lives<p>Avoiding discrimination DOES matter to people&#x27;s lives. Maybe it doesn&#x27;t to you. But you should maybe listen to the people this actually affects, who may actually appreciate these efforts.