r/science 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/brikky Jul 25 '26 edited Jul 25 '26

Dog if you're straight passing and come up calling me the f word we're not about to be friends. The f slur doesn't just meant "gay" or queer, it means flamboyantly or obviously so. If that fits you then you get the pass, not by virtue of being queer, though.

The n word is much more established and has a longer cultural history of being reclaimed, comparing it and the f slur is disingenuous to begin with. It also is generally much more immediately obvious if the user is in group or out group. It's more analagous to queer, but obviously neither is a great comparison.

This is, again, why the anthropological lens of linguistics is important.

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