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See, here’s the thing.
➡️ When you have a community term that your community originally defined as “supporter of freedom of expression in fiction and artwork”–
➡️ but your enemies insist means “active child abuser”–
➡️ and the term is vague enough bystanders outside the argument don’t actually know which is correct and assume that your enemy is being truthful–
➡️ you might as well drop the term and adopt clearer language.
YES. It’s unfair to have to stop using a word because someone else changed the meaning.
YES. Having a snappy word to define your community makes it easier to find one another and congregate.
But it also makes it easier for you enemies to decide how you’re perceived by the public.
If you actually explain your stance on a subject without relying on a snappy buzzword that the public doesn’t know the meaning of, then your enemies **actually have to go into detail about what they’re accusing you of and why**.
They can’t just say “they’re an X” and people who don’t understand know it’s true because it’s all over your blog. They have to say “you’re an abuser” and then they have to actually dig up some proof of it.
And sure, people who already side with them might decide that whatever “proof” they have of their accusations is good enough to burn the witch over, but the actual common bystanders who don’t know what’s going on won’t be fooled.
They’ll see whatever the accusation is and go “that’s absurd, why are you treating this perfectly normal fiction like it’s some kind of crime” and move on.
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