[scubbo]

This is linguistic nonsense on a par with disliking the phrase "my spouse" because it implies ownership. You can easily talk of "my country" or "my university" without claiming ownership, just as one can talk of "a sense of belonging" or of "belonging to a club" without feeling owned. Words have several meanings.

[pipes]

Yet, if I said my wife belonged to me I think I would get a few rebukes.

[cush]

Why not just have a conversation in good faith?

Instead of assuming the person you're chatting with is talking about slavery, and then when they clarify they're not talking about slavery, and you saying that it could be about slavery, you could just as easily say, "oh I misunderstood you". Sometimes humans have misunderstandings. Languages are messy. Just let it go.

[burkaman]

Right, because that's a completely different sentence with a completely different meaning.

[scubbo]

Yes, that's exactly my point. "X belongs to Y" and "Y owns X" and "X is Y's <noun>" are not perfectly synonymous - despite considerable overlap, they have different shades of meaning.