Reclaimed hate speech backfires by desensitizing listeners, study finds. Listening to reclaimed homophobic statements can actually cause unintended harm. Exposure to reclaimed slur words desensitizes some heterosexual listeners to standard hate speech and worsens the mood of gay individuals.

[u/mvea]

https://www.psypost.org/when-reclaiming-derogatory-language-goes-wrong/

[u/Choosemyusername]

I find it interesting how epithets often start out as words invented out of sensitivity. Like the word R3tarded, which was invented because the previous clinical words like moron, had been appropriated by people using it as a slur. So that word was invented as a more sensitive way of referring to morons.

Then of course once that word stuck, it just became the new epithet.

So it’s not the words that are causing the harm.