List of obfuscatory terms used by authorities
Obfuscation and abuse of language is frequently used by governments in an attempt to re-draw moral and ethical boundaries, silence dissenters and hide gross abuses of power. The following terms have been used in such a way by various authorities:
- Child Sexual Abuse - Undermines sexually mature minors and lumps consensual sex with clear abuse. See also Child Sexual Abuse Material - CSAM.
- Safeguarding - Conflates a range of questionable measures.
- Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children - This term ignores youth who depend on the sex trade and choose to take part in it.
- Adolescence - An imagined stage of life, used to extend age restrictions upward.
- Covert Incest - A term used by some anti-sex feminists to bring shame upon family life.
- Grooming - The presence of consent or agency leading up to unlawful sex.
- Feminism - Some (but not all) "feminists" promote an ideology that creates victims out of those it seeks to empower.
- Sexual Violence and Teen Dating Violence - conflatory terms that stem from and give rise to the assumption that sexual impulses and young people must be controlled in order to prevent harm.
- Sex Trafficking - Usually consensual economic illegal immigration related to the sex industry.
- Rape - A term that once had a very certain meaning is now virtually redundant.
- Child Pornography - In some cases, the images do not have to be pornographic, but merely "indecent". In others, all of the participants may be sexually mature. The EU-funded IWF has attempted to re-write the language of child pornography by coining "child sexual abuse content", despite the fact that any image, regardless of content may be deemed "indecent" under British law (see Indecent images of children).
- Gratification disorder or "benign idiopathic infantile dyskinesia" - A medicalization of normal childhood masturbation.