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Seems easy enough to imagine who would be offended by the use of terms “orphans” and “dead children,” and why they would prefer not to bring it up constantly.

The issue is that you can have that with nearly every term that has some meaning. Leader/follower? But I've once met a terrible Leader and they had many followers that made my life hell.

If the argument is "but that's only true for very few people": what percentage of the population (or the subset of the population that is programming) does need to be affected before it needs to be changed? Orphans aren't that common either, neither is losing a child.

We should avoid offensive language if there is a simple alternative without any loss in clarity / semantics.

EDIT: Misread and deleted parts.

Reaping, not raping.

They would find it offensive - just look at the santa hat debacle of vscode. But they don't know the terms you listed. It's not like these people know anything about or even have an interest in software dev. They're a purely destructive force, hopping from victim to victim and spreading wherever they find weakness.