There are people in this world who make fortunes branding ideas in ways that make them seem more attractive and palatable to the general public. In fact there are entire companies and political strategy firms dedicated to doing only this. Sometimes they call it messaging, another name for this is propaganda. It's big business.

Take for example The Patriot Act which was passed in the US post 9/11. Sounds good right? Who doesn't want to support our troops and keep the country safe from terrorists. Most people, including politicians do not read bills that run thousands of pages long. This allowed them to include things in the bill that actually took away many freedoms Americans once enjoyed all under the guise of patriotism. Now, whether you agree with the contents of the bill or not the fact is that the name of the bill was very deliberately chosen. The same is true for the Equality Act which is in congress right now. Equality is great right? Who wouldn't be for that? Dig a little deeper and you will see this bill actually obliterates many sex based rights women have fought long and hard for. But that is another discussion.

I'm getting really tired of members of FDS using the term sex work. There is no such thing. Nobody ever used that term until maybe 1990. It was very deliberately adopted in the press, media and academia to soften the reality of prostitution. Prior to then the focus had been on helping women get out of prostitution and creating an atmosphere where their past wasn't held against them. At no time did anyone see prostitution as legitimate work. Everyone agreed that it was dangerous, traumatizing, degrading and harmful in innumerable ways. Nobody wanted their children or anyone else they loved to become involved in prostitution.

Prostitution

Prostitution is the business or practice of engaging in sexual activity in exchange for payment. Prostitution is sometimes described as sexual services, commercial sex or, colloquially, hooking. It is sometimes referred to euphemistically as "the world's oldest profession" in the English-speaking world. A person who works in this field is called a prostitute and is a type of sex worker.

Why do they want young women seeing prostitution as legitimate work? Who benefits from that?

There are many more examples of this manipulation of words and many of them are found in the dating world. Almost always the purpose of the euphemism is to give men plausible deniability. It gives them the freedom to lie, mislead, coerce women into sex under false circumstances and use them in other ways (emotional labor, financial abuse etc.) Men will say all kinds of things BUT will accept no responsibility unless they have explicitly defined the relationship. Even then it is not beyond them to move the goalposts.

I urge younger women on this sub to start looking at things through a more critical lens. Ask yourself who benefits, follow the money. Maybe try looking at make up culture and the beauty industry the same way. I don't believe in telling people what to think, but I do believe in showing them how to think more critically. Don't take things at face value, consider the source, ask yourself who benefits. Does this policy or way of thinking help women as a class?

Many younger women here won't remember that universities, not very long ago, used to have Women's Studies programs. Now they are all called Gender Studies and focus on being inclusive instead of centering women. Think about that. Women carved out a very small space for ourselves in academia only to have it defanged within 20 years. Why did that happen?

Please include other frequently misused terms or euphemisms in the comments. There are a lot of them out there.