If you are using a word to refer to a person as belonging to any group with the intent to label that person as lesser or some kind of failure state of being then you are by extention calling anyone being part of that group as being something people wouldn’t want to be. You are implying members of the group are inferior.
Examples :
Calling someone “gay” in a way to mean “uncool”. You are implying that a person should never want to be gay. That being gay - is bad. Inferior to being straight.
“You ____ like a girl!” Your underlying premise is that being female is a failure state. You should be angry at being compared to something who lesser than you. This could apply to looks, ability, mannerisms etc. Hence it implies being a woman is a failure state as opposed to being a man.
Calling someone “the R-slur” when you mean something like “asinine”, “idiotic”, “mean” or “silly” you are implying those groups are failure states of being who those behaviours can be appended to as an expectation. That is a slur This sentiment is the same if you were to change the word you used but the specific history of this specific word as a slur is based on it’s once widespread use in context of being a synonym for “stupid” . Now it is less widespread but as the comic that spurred this conversation shows- it is still being used in the context of being a failure state. Intent makes the slur. If people didn’t use the word to refer to people in a way that was supposed to make them sit up and be indignant they are being compared to a disabled person it never would have become a slur. Since parlance never popularized the other use of the word as a verb “to stop or hinder” and the use of this one as a slur is still active it is far too early to attempt to “reclaim” this one.
You can argue “well a new word will just gain slur status!” and the answer is no. The problem stops when you realize the underlying problem is intent the lesson is understood and society stops creating new slurs by implying inferiority through context. English is vast. Use a word without the connotation of belonging to a specific group and you stop the underlying problem.
I think you have it backwards - calling someone a slur doesn’t make the negative association, society as a whole has already decided those traits are negative, and as a result, we use them as slurs. Stopping people from using hurtful words does not fix the problem, I think it lets some people self-righteously think they’re helping, but it doesn’t really do anything.
We’ve seen that happen with using “gay” as an insult - society has shifted over the years, so that being gay is no longer seen as a bad thing (at least not so much so as it was in the 90s, we still have some room for improvement…) therefore it has lost its power as an insult. Somebody calls me gay today, I don’t really care - it’s inaccurate, but it doesn’t hurt me any. And because it doesn’t hurt me, they’re not going to use it as an insult, because that’s what they’re going for, and it’s not effective.
But certain classes of people will always be looked down on, so those traits will always be used as insults. If society makes it unacceptable to use those words, assholes will continue to use them when they think they can get away with it, or find new words. Think of how many words there are for “mentally deficient”. Many of those words were the clinical term for specific disabilities until they fell out of favor after being used as insults. Stupid is one, as is idiot, moron… The only real difference is recency.
Slurs have a couple of different ways of coming about. Calling someone “gay” in the context of being uncool or unmanly was one whete the attitude shifted but consider that because of underlying attitude of homophobia became more appearant to the average listener in the attempt to use it in context of a slur. Once something reflects the small mindedness of the speaker more than insults the listener it does lose it’s power.
Now consider something you said about the disability community :
But certain classes of people will always be looked down on, so those traits will always be used as insults
There is a very large body of disability advocacy that is involved in fighting for a social attitude where this is not the case. In fact it hasn’t always been the case. Our concept of “normal” is historically more recent than you would think and people with mental disabilities in the English world were not really considered a distinct class. You are taking for granted that the disability community will be considered inferior by the wider population because you cannot imagine a state otherwise. That is ableism my friend and it doesn’t change unless you look it in the face and recognize it for what it is.
A fundamental thing lacking in your understanding of slurs is your insistance that their existence is a full negative for the community that they are levied against. It is more useful to look at the designation of slurs almost more as a form of technology those communities use both as a form of self advocacy to spread awareness of underlying prejudices and to identify individuals and groups who hold them particular opposition or threat. They aren’t just about “getting upset” or giving people an avenue to press buttons.
Consider the “N-slur” in light of it being a technology. Those who use it are either :
-Identifying themselves as a member of the ‘in’ group and using it as a means of solidarity.
-Identifying themselves as an individual that believes they have “the right” to use the slur companionably thus often identifying themselves as a problem who at best doesn’t quite understand the assignment or at worst believes they can make unilateral decisions as part of a group to which they do not belong presenting a threat
Identifying themselves as a legitimate threat by using the word with the full weight of it’s oppressive and derogatory context.
This is legitimately words as weapons of war. A technique hit upon by modern civil rights movements as a means of fighting back. The meeting place of sociology and etymology where people started looking at words beyond strict meaning. What you are attempting to do is disarm a community making use of this but in reality you are identifying yourself using this tech as the second form of threat. The one that treats advocacy as a lost cause because the idea of implicit inferiority is so ingrained you can’t see the paternalism.
LMAO, ok so I don’t need a lecture. We’re not talking about using “gay” as a pejorative. That’s not the same word that’s being discussed here. Nor are we talking about using femininity as a negative state.
The “R” word originally meant “to slow” or to hold back progress. That’s what it meant before the medical community misappropriated the term for individuals with intellectual disabilities. At some point after that, the word changed into an informal pejorative and then became taboo. At this point, there’s very viable uses of the word that correlate with politics and perspectives that are counter-progressive.
You appearantly do need the lecture because you are not listening. There are plenty of words you can use without using one that, misappropriated or not, was and still is used to describe the disability community and is now primarily linked to that understanding.
Your statement of “well words are fine if they aren’t used at the people who they are meant for” is inherently incorrect, hence the examples each is an example of using the word in a disrespectful or phobic context. What you are proposing is using a word linked through current pejorative use to the disability community to be expanded to not just be used in the context of “stupid” but to now mean essentially “facist” because… Why? You particularly like the word?
Making something more taboo doesn’t decrease it’s power; it increases it. Making things commonplace decreases their power. If the word is truly problematic for you, you’d want to decrease the historical harms.
I certainly do not need a lecture from someone that’s inherently lacking understanding about the evolution of language.
You are talking about the forces of reclamation and that historically isn’t up to people outside of the community effected. You are an agent of the majority outside the community which means if you go against the wishes of the community actively stating its harm then you are enforcing something from without which is a really good way to perpetuate a slur. Until that consensus is met by the group it is never going to lose it’s connection and doing something “for someone else’s good” is patronizing.
You have the seeming of someone who dipped their toe in a discipline and is now using it to lord over others. I suspect however given lack of historical backdrop and advocating for the very circumstances that create slurs there are some holes in your education to address. Let’s do a little a little etymology exercise.
If you say “A man walks down the street” what is the stated gender of the person? If you say “I think you are very nice” should I be offended at the comment on my intellect?
Words sometimes lose their original connotations in favour of other ones. This can happen in historically very short periods and sometimes there’s no reversing the clock. Sometimes a change is there to stay.
If you are using a word to refer to a person as belonging to any group with the intent to label that person as lesser or some kind of failure state of being then you are by extention calling anyone being part of that group as being something people wouldn’t want to be. You are implying members of the group are inferior.
Examples :
Calling someone “gay” in a way to mean “uncool”. You are implying that a person should never want to be gay. That being gay - is bad. Inferior to being straight.
“You ____ like a girl!” Your underlying premise is that being female is a failure state. You should be angry at being compared to something who lesser than you. This could apply to looks, ability, mannerisms etc. Hence it implies being a woman is a failure state as opposed to being a man.
Calling someone “the R-slur” when you mean something like “asinine”, “idiotic”, “mean” or “silly” you are implying those groups are failure states of being who those behaviours can be appended to as an expectation. That is a slur This sentiment is the same if you were to change the word you used but the specific history of this specific word as a slur is based on it’s once widespread use in context of being a synonym for “stupid” . Now it is less widespread but as the comic that spurred this conversation shows- it is still being used in the context of being a failure state. Intent makes the slur. If people didn’t use the word to refer to people in a way that was supposed to make them sit up and be indignant they are being compared to a disabled person it never would have become a slur. Since parlance never popularized the other use of the word as a verb “to stop or hinder” and the use of this one as a slur is still active it is far too early to attempt to “reclaim” this one.
You can argue “well a new word will just gain slur status!” and the answer is no. The problem stops when you realize the underlying problem is intent the lesson is understood and society stops creating new slurs by implying inferiority through context. English is vast. Use a word without the connotation of belonging to a specific group and you stop the underlying problem.
I think you have it backwards - calling someone a slur doesn’t make the negative association, society as a whole has already decided those traits are negative, and as a result, we use them as slurs. Stopping people from using hurtful words does not fix the problem, I think it lets some people self-righteously think they’re helping, but it doesn’t really do anything.
We’ve seen that happen with using “gay” as an insult - society has shifted over the years, so that being gay is no longer seen as a bad thing (at least not so much so as it was in the 90s, we still have some room for improvement…) therefore it has lost its power as an insult. Somebody calls me gay today, I don’t really care - it’s inaccurate, but it doesn’t hurt me any. And because it doesn’t hurt me, they’re not going to use it as an insult, because that’s what they’re going for, and it’s not effective.
But certain classes of people will always be looked down on, so those traits will always be used as insults. If society makes it unacceptable to use those words, assholes will continue to use them when they think they can get away with it, or find new words. Think of how many words there are for “mentally deficient”. Many of those words were the clinical term for specific disabilities until they fell out of favor after being used as insults. Stupid is one, as is idiot, moron… The only real difference is recency.
Slurs have a couple of different ways of coming about. Calling someone “gay” in the context of being uncool or unmanly was one whete the attitude shifted but consider that because of underlying attitude of homophobia became more appearant to the average listener in the attempt to use it in context of a slur. Once something reflects the small mindedness of the speaker more than insults the listener it does lose it’s power.
Now consider something you said about the disability community :
There is a very large body of disability advocacy that is involved in fighting for a social attitude where this is not the case. In fact it hasn’t always been the case. Our concept of “normal” is historically more recent than you would think and people with mental disabilities in the English world were not really considered a distinct class. You are taking for granted that the disability community will be considered inferior by the wider population because you cannot imagine a state otherwise. That is ableism my friend and it doesn’t change unless you look it in the face and recognize it for what it is.
A fundamental thing lacking in your understanding of slurs is your insistance that their existence is a full negative for the community that they are levied against. It is more useful to look at the designation of slurs almost more as a form of technology those communities use both as a form of self advocacy to spread awareness of underlying prejudices and to identify individuals and groups who hold them particular opposition or threat. They aren’t just about “getting upset” or giving people an avenue to press buttons.
Consider the “N-slur” in light of it being a technology. Those who use it are either :
-Identifying themselves as a member of the ‘in’ group and using it as a means of solidarity.
-Identifying themselves as an individual that believes they have “the right” to use the slur companionably thus often identifying themselves as a problem who at best doesn’t quite understand the assignment or at worst believes they can make unilateral decisions as part of a group to which they do not belong presenting a threat
This is legitimately words as weapons of war. A technique hit upon by modern civil rights movements as a means of fighting back. The meeting place of sociology and etymology where people started looking at words beyond strict meaning. What you are attempting to do is disarm a community making use of this but in reality you are identifying yourself using this tech as the second form of threat. The one that treats advocacy as a lost cause because the idea of implicit inferiority is so ingrained you can’t see the paternalism.
LMAO, ok so I don’t need a lecture. We’re not talking about using “gay” as a pejorative. That’s not the same word that’s being discussed here. Nor are we talking about using femininity as a negative state.
The “R” word originally meant “to slow” or to hold back progress. That’s what it meant before the medical community misappropriated the term for individuals with intellectual disabilities. At some point after that, the word changed into an informal pejorative and then became taboo. At this point, there’s very viable uses of the word that correlate with politics and perspectives that are counter-progressive.
You appearantly do need the lecture because you are not listening. There are plenty of words you can use without using one that, misappropriated or not, was and still is used to describe the disability community and is now primarily linked to that understanding.
Your statement of “well words are fine if they aren’t used at the people who they are meant for” is inherently incorrect, hence the examples each is an example of using the word in a disrespectful or phobic context. What you are proposing is using a word linked through current pejorative use to the disability community to be expanded to not just be used in the context of “stupid” but to now mean essentially “facist” because… Why? You particularly like the word?
That’s not better.
Making something more taboo doesn’t decrease it’s power; it increases it. Making things commonplace decreases their power. If the word is truly problematic for you, you’d want to decrease the historical harms.
I certainly do not need a lecture from someone that’s inherently lacking understanding about the evolution of language.
You are talking about the forces of reclamation and that historically isn’t up to people outside of the community effected. You are an agent of the majority outside the community which means if you go against the wishes of the community actively stating its harm then you are enforcing something from without which is a really good way to perpetuate a slur. Until that consensus is met by the group it is never going to lose it’s connection and doing something “for someone else’s good” is patronizing.
You have the seeming of someone who dipped their toe in a discipline and is now using it to lord over others. I suspect however given lack of historical backdrop and advocating for the very circumstances that create slurs there are some holes in your education to address. Let’s do a little a little etymology exercise.
If you say “A man walks down the street” what is the stated gender of the person? If you say “I think you are very nice” should I be offended at the comment on my intellect?
Words sometimes lose their original connotations in favour of other ones. This can happen in historically very short periods and sometimes there’s no reversing the clock. Sometimes a change is there to stay.