> that's a great way to side line people that are actually talking about real harms

Valid. This is a real linguistic process. But it absolutely debases the original term. I’m not convinced we have to choose between empathy, on one hand, and accuracy, on the other hand.

There's also a pragmatic elephant in the room: By the time certain labels are perfectly and undeniably true to say, it's no longer safe for people to speak out and use them!

So our desire for word-correctness should be tempered by our desire for word-utility.