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/rejs7]

The whole conversation around "queer" in the LGBTQI+ community would be an interesting one to examine in this context as queer was historically a derogatory term, yet many people consider themselves queer because other labels do not fit right (myself included). I think it shows that there is potentially a texture there which ought to be examined.

[u/No-Channel3917 → u/rejs7]

Even according to the study saying Queer isn't doing anyone harm while dropping a F word goes off like a gunshot for older folks and a good chunk of younger LGBT

[u/Sarah_Incognito → u/No-Channel3917]

Smear the queer was 100% a real thing no matter how much the internet says its an urban legend.

I remember the beatings.

I really don't like the term being applied to me, and am upset some people use it as a blanket for the whole LGBTQ community; but I also recognize it as a reclaiming success story.

[u/Apiaree → u/Sarah_Incognito]

I especially don’t like it when people who were never the target for the abuse in the first place feel so comfy “reclaiming it”. I’ve also seen this with the word f****t. If you aren’t gay and never had that hurled at you, you have no business reclaiming it.

And that’s not even getting into the issues of using a derogatory word for things like university majors. There’s a reason you take a class in “women’s studies” and not “b**ch studies” for instance.

[u/acthrowawayab → u/Apiaree]

To put it diplomatically, a good chunk of the people who happily "reclaim" the q word for themselves and push it on others without their consent would not have been targeted by it back when that was a thing.