12:12pm August 2, 2013

➸ Social skills for autonomous people: Avoiding slurs is not about sanitizing language

realsocialskills:

Cussing is important. Here are some uses:

• Expressing boundaries in forceful language
• Expressing emphatic contempt
• Expressing distress

Sometimes it’s ok to insult people. Sometimes it’s important to be rude.

Slurs aren’t part of this, though. It’s not ok to insult someone by comparing them to…

Yes this.

I also wish more people knew what a slur is.

It’s not just an insulting word. Even if it references an oppressed group.
It has to be specific to an oppressed group.

And it has to basically reduce people in the group to something truly subhuman.

There are words that aren’t quite slurs that lots of people around here call slurs.

There are lots of words that aren’t even close to slurs that lots of people call slurs.

Just because something is insulting and often used against an oppressed group, or ties back to an oppressed group through real or folk etymology, does not make it a slur

Stupid and idiot are not slurs. They are appropriate in some contexts and horrible in others. But they’re not slurs the way retard or vegetable (when used on a human being) are.

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