But there are a few things we can see objectively if we try.

Empathy is important, but so is truth and reason. Suffering alone does not make a person right. And the way to get through to people is not to appease them at every point because they have had a bad deal. You talk about our community using buzzwords like contact and how it might offend people. Well it offends me to hear people refer to themselves as “abuse survivors”–as though most abuse is lethal. Cancer has survivors, the Titanic had survivors. You know what else has survivors? Prison.

We shouldn’t be hypocrites, that’s true. But we also shouldn’t start by accepting our adversaries’ terms of discussion as sacrosanct.