it feels simultaneously authoritarian, self righteous and childish
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I feel the same about "challenges." Such as being mobility challenged (disabled), document challenged (illegal alien), visually challenged (legally blind), housing challenged (homeless), age and budget challenged (old and poor).
It's intentional obfuscation of the severity of the problem.
Please tell me you made that one up, and it isn't something you've seen used.
The best way to push back against that kind of linguistic mutilation is mocking it by taking it to extremes. Like if a woke person says "fat" or even "plus sized" be like "woah woah you mean gravitationally challenged."
Also, somewhat related, my buddy is getting a masters in education and frequently tells me about the crazy woke shit he encounters. The craziest linguistic manipulation I've ever heard is probably when he told me they would say someone has "exceptionalities" instead of "disabilities."
"x-challenged" in vocabulary though long predates the contemporary woke movement though.
IIRC, the concept was introduced in the late 90s/early aughts in a PC attempt to stamp out the colloquial use of the term "retarded".
I disagree about separating the late 90s PC movement from contemporary wokeism, it was just it's larval form.