In broader American society right now, actively ignoring others’ pain is, in certain circles, seen as some sign of virtue. I don’t have to care about how you feel, or how my words affect you – and while we’re at it, stop being such a snowflake. That obstreperousness and obliviousness are clearly not Torah values, but how much accommodation, from programming design to language, of those whose difference from communal norms can be a source of alienation and pain is called for? It’s a good question, one to which I don’t have a good answer.
Some communities have renamed their motzei Shabbat learning programs from Avos U’Banim to Dor L’Dor, acknowledging that not every boy has a father or has a father who can accompany him to a learning program. (In more Modern Orthodox communities, programs are more likely to be styled as “Parent-Child Learning,” which might mitigate the concerns.) I know of a school that changed the titles of Shabbos Abba and Shabbos Ima in its preschool to some other honorific for a few years, after a tragic accident claimed the life of the young father of a preschooler. Our shuls run programs before Pesach about sensitivity, in word and deed, to the pain of couples in our community awaiting children. There are many more examples: disability, visible and invisible; marital status, singleness, and divorce; children who have chosen different life paths, etc.
We are called upon by the Torah to be sensitive to the pain of the widow and the orphan, and endlessly exhorted to care for the stranger. What’s the right calibration of that sensitivity to programming and language that reflects the communal majority and norm?