This is a good argument against a blanket condemnation of all political correctness. But we still need some clear thinking on exactly how to go about making these kinds of language changes. Every important political movement has its good points and it’s abuses, and at the moment, this movement has no way of separating the wheat from the chaff, the baby from the bathwater. That is because it is being run on the principle that anyone with a blog and a grievance has a right to censor the entire human race. I agree with you that this principle is embraced in service of a social change that needs to take place, and the principle of “let every marginalized person speak their truth” is probably the only process that can enable it. But this processes has flaws that need to be acknowledged if its goals are to be achieved.

I know that “censoring” is an exaggerated description for the private pressure that gets people fired and ostracized, but it’s the only short word available. There is an important difference between merely criticizing someone’s word choices, and trying to ruin the reputation and/or job prospects of that person because of their word choices. The latter actions do the same kind of damage as censorship, so calling them censorship is accurate enough.

In many cases, the censoring is done by privileged people who claim to be speaking for marginalized people. Sometimes these people are self-righteous scolds who make up imaginary offenses and attack other privileged people for committing them. I discuss these in my article “White Wokeness” https://teedrockwell.medium.com/white-wokeness-4104af5b5a85 . Other times they are terrified bureaucrats who try to imagine the feelings of marginalized people, and censor things that no one is actually offended by. I would consider at least four of the recent de-published Dr. Seuss books to be in that category.

But even if we listened to only the genuinely marginalized, there is a factor I call “trigger creep” which threatens to push us towards insanity, or at least neurosis. Our minds are what philosopher Andy Clark calls associative engines, and if left unchecked, they will find ways of relating everything to everything else. Each banned expression about marginalized groups creates a similar sensitivity to the expressions that are left, which leads to more banned expressions and so on. More on this here: https://teedrockwell.medium.com/the-fall-and-rise-of-forbidden-language-bb0a27152b09