@reiko any word that carries moral weight gets hurled around by illiterates trying to affect the behavior of the ethically impaired until it's reduced into good or bad, yes or no, a simple signal in a machine

@reiko @ZiaNitori people on the right characterize moving states to access healthcare for trans kids as "trafficking". i'm not aware of a popular bad faith concept leftists have of right-wingers as traffickers, tho i am aware of actual trafficking by elected officials like gaetz and that "sound of freedom" asshole.

trafficking is not a meaningless word, it means having your moves controlled by people who make money off of you. if you get flown out to an island to do a bit of labor and then you come home with a stack of cash in hand and no complaints about what work you were asked to do, you have still technically been trafficked. it's very often done to people without documentation and it can also be done by parents to their kids if they are turning the kids into a source of cash. it was infamously done to brittney spears by her dad for decades right in front of everyone, so it's done with varying shades of legality, tho obviously anonymity and ignorance are usually factors protecting traffickers.

many, many kids go missing at the border, never to be seen again. the entire government is complicit in stealing human life and selling slaves. trafficking gets to be a priblem of daunting proportion

@ViciouslyKind @reiko when kids are pushed to go to school under threat of truancy are they being trafficked?

@ZiaNitori @reiko not really. it's more like they're being jailed without charges

@ViciouslyKind @reiko not sure what the distinction is here then i think

@ZiaNitori @ViciouslyKind if we understand schooling to be a value-extracting activity and therefore labor, then yes, i think so

@reiko @ViciouslyKind value is another one of these words for me but that's a different convo lol

@ViciouslyKind @ZiaNitori without disregarding anything you've said, when i say the word (or any word) is meaningless, i mean that a great many people don't know or care about its definition according to etymological sources (Webster, OED) or respected social entities (constitutions, laws, human rights orgs). most people use the word on vibes

it's difficult to speak of my own definition as objective without foreclosing understanding what my conversational partner really means. "trafficking" isn't meaning-less exactly but *overstuffed with meanings*, it has to be first unpacked to the specific complaints a person has with real or hypothetical events

@reiko @ViciouslyKind often people use these words loaded with multiple meanings to do a kind of bait and switch thing (usually completely unintentionally) so i try to go out of my way to make sure people are on the same page with the definition of a word. one of the easiest tells that someone's on some bullshit is when they react negatively to clarifying questions (usually assuming you're implying something so they can talk for you)