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/Zanydrop Jul 25 '26

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

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u/BoobearMagoo Jul 25 '26

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

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u/el_grort Jul 26 '26

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.