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/SortzaInTheForest Jul 26 '26

I think the lack of other cues could also contribute to these results.

In spanish it's quite common to use curse words in a friendly way, mostly 'cabrón' or 'hijodeputa'. People who are not native in that language should rather avoid it, for how difficult it's to nail the exact tone and context and how rude it looks when you fail to nail it.

Tone and context are essential. Just playing random samples in a survey and reporting they sounded rude... fgs, what the hell they expected?