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Notes -
I don't think so. "Grooming" is a pretty flexible word to start with. One of it's definitions is very generic:
and I don't think you can argue the way it's being used by non-progressives doesn't meet that definition. You could argue that it's unfair, because it evokes the sexual meaning of the word, but
It's far less unfair than the word games progressives were playing for years.
There's a pretty broad definition for "grooming" as creepy behavior as well:
This also seems to fit like a glove. It doesn't help that mainstream publications were using "grooming" to describe consensual relations between adults.
I'd love to, but linguistic prescriptivism seems to have fallen out of fashion. But if we can get everybody else on board here's a list of words describing harm, that are used egregiously incorrectly, in my opinion. Not saying you have to go after every twitterer and tumblrina, but would be nice if we could get them dropped from academia and mainstream news:
systemic racism
misogyny
objectification
transphobia
trans genocide
islamophobia
wage slavery
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