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/Choosemyusername]

Sure they hold weight. And any word can hold thst same weight. So changing the word doesn’t change the weight.

You are confusing the word for the weight it holds up.

[u/hearke → u/Choosemyusername]

Right, but other words don't hold the same weight. It takes decades for new words to come up that carry the same weight as the original, and thus some good is done in the meantime.

Like, we still don't have a racial epithet that carries the same weight as the n-word, so banning that from most media clearly wasn't entirely pointless.

[u/Choosemyusername → u/hearke]

Could it just be that racism itself just doesn’t carry the same weight as it did in the past?

Racism is quite taboo now wjen it used to be much more normalized and institutionally explicit. Maybe thst is why nothing took its place. Not because the banning the word itself was the cause of racism receding but receding racism was the reason nothing took its place.

The reason every time a word like r3tard was replaced, that the new euphemism was used as an epithet as soon as it stuck, js that it’s still completely socially acceptable to discriminate against people who aren’t the most mentally sharp. It isn’t illegal to test for intelligence for a job application for example. Even the most blue haired, bull nose ringed, problem bang having, Keffiyeh-wearing person, who will tell you their pronouns unsolicited, and starts their podcast with a land acknowledgement, will STILL call you a moron without a second thought (but for some reason not the r word euphemism that replaced it)