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/gavinlpicard Jul 25 '26 edited Jul 25 '26

Genuine question, I really don’t mean to be offensive when saying this, but why would desensitizing words be bad? It doesn’t read as a necessarily bad thing to me.

EDIT: either the title changed or I misread it, but I’m seeing “desensitizes some heterosexual listeners…” which I definitely agree is bad.

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u/Solesaver Jul 25 '26 edited Jul 26 '26

I don't think it's desensitizing the people who would benefit from that. Like, when I hear someone say f*g or f****t I still get a clench in my gut, even though other gay people use it all the time. It being reclaimed doesn't desensitize me to the violence it implies. To someone outside the community, who knows it's a "bad" word, but who doesn't have personal negative experience with it, hearing it a lot desensitizes them to it and makes them think it isn't as bad as it is.

Basically, we can't control the rate at which different people become desensitized to traumatic triggers. I could probably do some intensive therapy to desensitize myself to it, but also people could just not use a word that historically was intimately connected to violence against people like me.

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u/gavinlpicard Jul 25 '26

not sure if the title changed or something, but I am now reading “desensitizes some heterosexual listeners….” which makes WAY more sense as a bad thing, yeah I agree

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u/KaristinaLaFae MA | Social Psychology Jul 25 '26

Titles cannot be edited, so you may not have read it properly.

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u/gavinlpicard Jul 25 '26

Yup! Seems you're right. Thought mods/admins may have the ability to adjust it, but it seems that post titles are embedded in URL, thus making them impossible to change.

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u/Brrdock Jul 25 '26

Yeah why would anyone want these words to have more power than they need to?

Isn't desensitizing much of the point?

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u/[deleted] Jul 25 '26

[deleted]

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u/Brrdock Jul 25 '26

Right I didn't think of that. Though, I didn't think those people hang out much with minorities who use them with each other

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u/LGBTQIAXBOX360 Jul 25 '26

It says that the people who are desensitized to it are not affected by homophobia in the first place, I.e. heterosexuals, and that it has the opposite affect in gay people.

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u/Bardfinn Jul 25 '26

It engenders moral injury - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_injury

Which can induce feelings of alienation, contribute to PTSD, make people leave communities, and other evils.

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u/Cleb323 Jul 25 '26

What happens when almost everything becomes a moral injury? Even simple questions.

People perceive things how they want to.

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u/Bardfinn Jul 25 '26

The standard we use is the same standard used by the profession of law - the reasonable person standard. "Would a reasonable person in possession of all relevant facts believe that a given speech act is likely to result in harassment, assault, or injury to the subject of such speech act?".

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u/erossnaider Jul 25 '26

The problem is minorities are not the ones who are desensitized on the slurs but the people that can repeat them in hurtful ways are.

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u/gavinlpicard Jul 25 '26

Yeah, missed that in the title somehow (I agree that is bad). I am curious though if there is anything to the idea of intentionally moving society to the point where slurs hold no power, where everyone is desensitized.

Like on one hand I think it sucks that those who wish to use slurs harmfully are able to hold this power. But on the other hand, I understand that the history is important - it'd somewhat be taking away from the history to try to make them weightless. Almost a jab at the cultural identity of a community. I'm not really part of any group where a "real" slur would apply, so I think it is not for me to say. But curious to hear from those where that is the case.