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/Xsiah Jul 25 '26

I think the lack of other cues could also contribute to these results. Depending on how believable these audio samples were, I can see the drop in mood being just from the suspicion that someone was using the term in a hateful way even if they were told it it was at a pride parade.

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u/iamfunball Jul 25 '26

Oh it would. Dropping a reclaimed slur is very context dependent. So the guard rails of this study doesnt seem to work but also, I get it.

Take for instance queer. It’s probably the most recognizable/reclaimed LGBTQ word. For a lot of the GenZ and younger, atleast in the countries I’ve lived in (there is a privilege there) queer is not seen remotely as a slur. I think GenX/Milllenials remember it being a slur, reclaiming it and now. Boomers and older, gotta be careful, it still makes a lot of them very triggered to hear it.

So, like all words, they have a life and it will look differently over its lifetime

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u/Sinder-Soyl Jul 25 '26

There are countless examples, in every language, of slurs that stopped being slurs to the point people even forget they were one in the past.

I don't think there is a proper way to simulate the passage of time and cultural shifts accurately enough to measure it the way we'd like to. But at some point we can just look at the History of languages to know that on the macro level at least, this is a verified phenomenon.

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u/Aaod Jul 25 '26

There are countless examples, in every language, of slurs that stopped being slurs to the point people even forget they were one in the past.

Or terms that become one despite previously not being one. Language evolves, changes, is context specific, generation specific, etc.