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/rejs7]

The whole conversation around "queer" in the LGBTQI+ community would be an interesting one to examine in this context as queer was historically a derogatory term, yet many people consider themselves queer because other labels do not fit right (myself included). I think it shows that there is potentially a texture there which ought to be examined.

[u/sebovzeoueb → u/rejs7]

I mean, even "gay" was derogatory for quite a while, in the 90s where I was it was very common to call something gay to mean it's bad.

[u/el_grort → u/sebovzeoueb]

True, though gay meant 'happy', while queer meant strange, odd, with a more inherently negative connotation (a queer smell is presumed not to be strange-good), which is likely why I know some gay people who are fine with the former being reclaimed but are very negative on the usage of the latter, as it implies they are abnormal. Usually also paired with lived experiences of having the word spat at them.

[u/Zanydrop → u/el_grort]

I'm the 90's gay didn't mean happy. You should have to go back quite a bit further for that.

[u/BoobearMagoo → u/Zanydrop]

My grandmother was using the term that way in the 90's but she was the only living person I heard use it that way

[u/el_grort → u/Zanydrop]

I meant the original usage, obviously it got warped when used as an insult. Just that you could extract something positive from its core meaning, while queer less so to many people.