Friends keep correcting my ‘unacceptable’ choice of words

Dear Miss Manners: I’m a politically liberal person with like-minded friends. Occasionally, in the course of a conversation, a friend advises me that my use of a word or phrase is unacceptable.

I’ve read that terms I should no longer use include previously neutral terms such as “depressing,” “battle,” “minefield,” “the poor,” “the disabled” and also “field,” as in academic fieldwork. (I’m not referring to racial or ethnic slurs, which were never neutral.)