As the title says, what's your opinion on reclaiming words? What makes it okay/not okay to bring a derogatory term back into social acceptance?
I'm cool with the idea of reclaiming words myself. Words evolve in meaning in over time, it's been happening since the first days of language, and the idea of a 'taboo' word that must never be uttered again seems crazy to me. I think it makes a much stronger testament to progress to have a word that was once such a powerful tool for causing pain and suffering to others because a passive word that's used casually with little meaning. A good example is rap culture's use of the word "Nigga" that word used to only come with a heavy dose of pain and now it's a word the people who were victimized by it use without thought or care because they've stripped the word of its meaning and power. They conquered the word and pacified it.
That's up to the individual if they want to reclaim a certain word, not other people to say it's right or wrong (like white people telling black people they shouldn't say the n word).
Queer and slut are both words I feel can be reclaimed. it just works. Faggot/dyke have so much hate behind them I don't know if it would work.
I don't think we should place so much emphasis on the history of words We need to live in the here and now
How does one reclaim 'slut' and by whom does it get reclaimed? Well, I think slut is too silly to even be offensive in the first place but I know not everyone feels that way.
It's fine, as long as you don't assume that just because you don't find it offensive, everyone will be the same. I twitch whenever someone calls me "queer" or "dyke" even if they're being endearing or whatever
Nothing wrong with reclaiming words. After all, it's the meaning of a word that makes it offensive, not the word itself. If we change the meaning of it to something inoffensive, the word stops being hateful. It really depends on the intent of the use of the word.
I think it's a tad silly to fight the evolution of words. No one can control how people use a word, so there's no reason to get all uppity about it. I understand the negative experiences that words like "faggot" and "queer" connote, however, to say that the usage of those words should be kept to a hateful nature seems a bit backwards.
Ehhhhhh I'm okay with it except for faggot. I hate that word more than anything and a lot of people don't know where it originated. It originated in nazi Germany and its what they'd call the burning piles of homosexual corpses. So you can see why its so offensive to me. People say it just means a bundle of sticks, yeah, the bundle of sticks that they used to burn our bodies. Or that it means cigarette, you can see how that's connected, kinda messed up huh? Plus I find that when people use words more often, the more people who start saying them. I know a lot of people who say faggot for no reason cause people say it a lot online or in music and it hurts me so much to hear it and I think reclaiming it would be disrespectful to our own kind and I wish the word would just stop exsisting to be honest. When I wasn't out yet people using that word just made me go deeper in the closet.
Personally I have never had a problem with offensive words and slurs. I was always called a faggot before I even knew what it meant or what "team I really played for". I still use it because its only a slur if you give it the power to be one. I still get called it a few times and ill say "thanks for the reminder, I almost forgot I was a faggot". Hell, I still use the word faggot because regardless of what it used to mean I only hear it being used in terms of someone being annoying. I think any word is okay in a certain context or setting. And I don't mean only appropriate around homophobes who don't know your orientation, I mean if we collectively allow it to become powerless and inoffensive just like the word nigga than we will never be able to take it back.
It's kinda funny and I can't believe I didn't think about it sooner, but I use the word whore a lot. I'll consider myself a beer whore because I've tried 100s of different beers but I guess some people get really offended by that word
