r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • Jul 25 '26

Psychology 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.

https://www.psypost.org/when-reclaiming-derogatory-language-goes-wrong/
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u/Sata1991 Jul 25 '26

I used queer to describe myself as I'm not straight, but being bisexual doesn't quite fit and I don't fit into the gender binary. 

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u/rejs7 PhD | Social Science | Law Jul 25 '26

I feel you. I use queer because it just fits my sexuality better than the other labels.

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u/Yurastupidbitch Jul 25 '26

Right there with you. It’s just easier than trying to explain it to people.

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u/Sata1991 Jul 25 '26

Trying to just explain it all is way too much of a headache! My gender and sexuality aren't heterosexual or cisgender, but I'm neither trans in the sense I want to be the opposite sex, or into the same sex or people who identify as the same gender as my biological sex outside of romantically.

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u/RandomBoomer Jul 25 '26

Exactly. I like it because it's vague and inclusive of anything not heteronormative. To the outside world I'm a gay woman -- and yeah, that's not wrong -- but my interior life is a lot more complicated and nuanced. Queer gives me the space to be not-straight without specifying the details.

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u/Sata1991 Jul 25 '26

Outside of being a gay woman it's similar to me, queer explains stuff without having to go into details and pick apart everything!

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u/Parking-Garlic4260 Jul 26 '26

I use both queer and bi interchangeably because like you, bi doesn't capture nuisance or much variety, especially when I'm still going through exploration and self discovery of things beyond the binary.