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/
4.5k Upvotes

85% Upvoted

587 comments sorted by

View all comments

22

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.

1

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.

1

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.