Yikes! It looks like I scheduled this to go out on the wrong day! (I intended it to be published yesterday.)
I'm going to double-check the Sunday Summary, also incorrectly scheduled, and push that to publication. It means that this piece will be at the top of the posts for only a short time, but since it will also be in the Sunday Summary, I hope it won't actually be hidden from the people who need to see it. Your shares might be more important than normal on this one, however, because of my scheduling woes.
As a person who helped reclaim the word Queer back in the early 90s as an activist with ACT-UP and Queer Nation, back when I thought that I was just a GNC bi 'guy', I'm well aware of the power of words. I love how Laura Jane Grace unabashedly reclaimed the T slur in her autobiography about her journey. (For anyone who doesn't know, Laura Jane Grace is the lead singer of Against Me! and I'm 2016 her book Tranny: Confessions of Punk Rock's Most Infamous Anarchist Sellout was published. She's probably the most visible trans musician.)
That said, WHO is using the word and in what context still definitely matters, and it'll be a long time before hearing it/seeing it from someone you don't know will continue to sting.
Btw I grew up in NYC reading the NY times as a kid and one column I loved was by William Safire. His politics aside, as he was a speech writer, he loved to write about words. Your exploration above triggered memories for me as you obviously share the passion.
As much as I differ with his politics, I actually very much appreciated his ability to deeply engage with words both individually and in the context of communication as tools of the writer's craft.
Thank you for this excellent article - it’s challenging to articulate these things, especially in writing, but I think you did a wonderful job. This is important work!
-I consider the word "tranny" among us trans folk like the n-word ending in "-a" for black folk and like the n-word ending in "-er" among bigots. That is, a word that oppressed people use to call themselves in an endearing fashion and a word that bigots use to oppress (and even kill, as you point out). That being said, even among my transfem friends and acquaintances some of them don't even want to use the T-slur in a reclamative fashion due to its sordid history that you laid out. However, there are non-slurs that are uplifting and even more endearing which contain the same meaning as the slur used among the community it disparages but without the baggage (disparage baggage? "dis-baggage"?). I mean words like "brother" among the black community (which, like I said, contains no disparagement in its connotations!). Having spent a lot on time on the social network Bluesky (which is like twitter without the Nazis, and with far, *far* more transfeminine people as well as other queer people such as transmasculine people and non-binary folk), and I came across the trans woman equivalent to the Black American "brother": "doll". It's endearing, it's uplifting, and even cis people can use it 🥰!
(Note, I haven't even gotten into intersectionality, in which there are sisters who are dolls!)
-I've noticed another anti-trans slur: "He/She". This is a slur specifically against AMAB transfems and trans women. While I can't think of any trans person killed using this slur off the top of my head, I do remember a Gawker or a Kotaku article pre-2013 that referred to a gender-non-conforming transfem as a "he/she" in an extremely disparaging and dehumanizing sense, similar to how a cis anti-trans bigot would use the word "shemale" or "tranny", as if to say we trans women are not "real" women.
Slurs evolve as language changes. You rarely hear the r-word any more (thankfully). But the kids these days will call someone “acoustic” to imply someone is autistic, spastic, or learning or developmentally disabled.
As a cis woman, I’ve been called all sorts of slurs - fish, slash, gash, whore, slut, bitch, the c-word - any and every gendered slur out there. My child had just turned 6 the first time a neighbor kid called her a gendered slur. It was meant to shut her up, as a way of trying to control her, to exert power.
After being raised in the Midwest Bible Belt,that is Missouri, I went to San Francisco in 1981 for summer vacation. My first day while riding a bus up Market Street to find Haight street on a completely empty bus, someone got on and sat down right next to me. I smelled Jovan Musk perfume and turned to comment ‘my sister wears your perfume’ and noticed facial stubble peaking through heavy makeup… my first encounter with drag or a trans person. I love people so I went with it and smiled big. I did not know what name to call her when reflecting on that eye opening experience, so I said she/he when telling the story to my mom. Is She/he or He/she a slur?
In writing with that slash, it absolutely is not. In spoken English "heshe" used to be used as an insult that I would avoid, but it was pronounced as a single word.
I think that as long as in writing you use the slash and when speaking you use a tone of voice that communicates respect that you'll be fine.
Wish I had read this comment when I made that comment above, since I have seen "he/she" used circa 2010 in a Kotaku article that mocked a transfem or gender-nonconforming person, and the sense I got was that "he/she" was interchangeable with "tranny", "shemale", or even "faggot".
This is a great writeup! I do have - not exactly disagreement - but concern, I guess, about how you define the difference between a slur and an insult. I am worried that people who aren't very familiar with the general concepts about how systemic oppression works might take your example literally, in that their perception now of the difference between a slur and an insult is whether use of the word in question creates a reasonable fear that someone may be killed. I agree completely that some slurs are much more dangerous/threatening than others. That being said, I believe that using the criteria that the word must invoke a reasonable fear of immediate physical danger sets the bar for "slur" too high. For example, many of the slurs commonly used against disable and Deaf/deaf/HOH people do not necessarily carry that immediate threat, they still clearly signal that the target of slur is deficient, defective, not worthy of the same respect and empathy as everyone else. While that signaling may not invoke an immediate threat, it most certainly perpetuates cultural stigma and biases that are harmful, rather than merely insulting. I feel it is important to include that consideration, especially when the purpose of discussion is to educate people who aren't aware of the why/how specific language can be harmful to marginalized groups targeted by it. These are quite often the same people who interpret "isms" to be only the most overt and violent acts as being representative of the problem, and don't understand that it is the less overt culturally biased environment that allows, or even encourages, the more overtly violent actions.
>> I am worried that people who aren't very familiar with the general concepts about how systemic oppression works might take your example literally, in that their perception now of the difference between a slur and an insult is whether use of the word in question creates a reasonable fear that someone may be killed. <<
Okay, I had a chance to review my exact wording in the section that attempts to define slurs and distinguish them from insults. While I see how casual readers could misinterpret the later bit about associations with violence being more common than one might think, I think what I wrote, as is, says what I meant it to say. For now, I'll trust my readers to be careful, intelligent folk. If I end up getting an unusual number of questions or comments that seem to have problems with the definition, I'll handle that then.
Despite my decision to leave the OP as it is (for now), I'm thankful that you brought this up and we had a chance to talk about it.
This is a good point. I think the key difference between a slur and an insult (as the article explains) is that slurs are *inherently dehumanizing*. Whether that dehumanization is actually followed by violence is not important.
Its not always easy for "outsiders" to understand what makes language dehumanizing. Using the example of "usually part of a threat" or "often followed by violence" is a pretty easy thing to grasp. If your listener gets that part, then you can start talking nuance. If they don't, then you might be wasting your time.
That's a good point, too: that, depending on your audience, including more nuance might just be a waste of energy. I think that's one big challenge to educating people about oppression; it's really hard to talk about it accurately in a generalized way, and it's also too confusing or overwhelming for people to hear the nuanced explanations if they're not already somewhat familiar. I'm glad that there are spaces like this where we can have the discussions that help to unravel that to some extent.
I frequently feel like I am overburdening readers with detail, and yet I'm still winnowing down to an edited, more limited version of my original thoughts. It's hard to know exactly how much discussion to include. Below a certain point, more is definitely better, but if it's too long for people to read, then less is better -- you'd rather have people get something rather than be intimidated out of reading and get nothing.
Comments become crucial for some of this, since that allows for greater exploration for the folks who do want more precision without discouraging people who want a reasonable amount of info in a limited amount of time.
>> That being said, I believe that using the criteria that the word must invoke a reasonable fear of immediate physical danger sets the bar for "slur" too high. <<
This was ... not what I intended. I'll reread what I said in the article above and see if it needs adjustment.
I also thought of adding to the definition a component that required a "slur" to be derogatory for being the name of a disfavoured group and not for any other reason. While that helps understand an aspect of the power of slurs, I think it goes too far to require that. (See, for example, "trap" in the main article.)
All of this can get tricky, which is one reason you don't get serious discussions of this stuff very often. People would rather avoid being publicly wrong than advance discussion on important topics while making the occasional mistake.
Thank you for speaking up and adding to understanding.
I should have been more clear in my statement, because i can see from this that i implied that you intended the interpretation that concerns me. What i meant to say is that I agree completely with what you said, and also I am concerned that people who don't already have an understanding of the complexity of systemic oppression might be likely to interpret what you wrote in a more black-and-white way. I really like your point about people being afraid of being wrong. I think that fear is one of the biggest obstacles to having in depth, nuanced conversations about all this stuff, so I greatly appreciate that you do that. In fact, that's one reason I felt up to sharing my perspective here, because these days, I'm usually not up to defensive debates, and I trust you to be curious and open to these ideas, and I think that is wonderful. Thank you!
In re-reading my comment, I think what I did was that I started out discussing how I thought your explanation might be interpreted, but then I kind of fell into it and forgot that I was writing about my concern with interpretation, and got on my soap box, and off I went... So sorry!
CP, your definition of slur as a term wielding a threat of violence was an ah-ha moment for me. It seems completely obvious I realize now, but it’s not how I would’ve understood to define it before. Which, I think, means I am very lucky.
This is a heavy article and as usual I learned a lot.
When I was a teacher a student asked me why it is bad for him to use the n-word and not for rappers who he wanted to sing along with. So I explained the contextual difference with the reclaimed one ending in -a while the slur is always -er.
Yikes! It looks like I scheduled this to go out on the wrong day! (I intended it to be published yesterday.)
I'm going to double-check the Sunday Summary, also incorrectly scheduled, and push that to publication. It means that this piece will be at the top of the posts for only a short time, but since it will also be in the Sunday Summary, I hope it won't actually be hidden from the people who need to see it. Your shares might be more important than normal on this one, however, because of my scheduling woes.
Understand totally! I will do my part!
As a person who helped reclaim the word Queer back in the early 90s as an activist with ACT-UP and Queer Nation, back when I thought that I was just a GNC bi 'guy', I'm well aware of the power of words. I love how Laura Jane Grace unabashedly reclaimed the T slur in her autobiography about her journey. (For anyone who doesn't know, Laura Jane Grace is the lead singer of Against Me! and I'm 2016 her book Tranny: Confessions of Punk Rock's Most Infamous Anarchist Sellout was published. She's probably the most visible trans musician.)
That said, WHO is using the word and in what context still definitely matters, and it'll be a long time before hearing it/seeing it from someone you don't know will continue to sting.
Btw I grew up in NYC reading the NY times as a kid and one column I loved was by William Safire. His politics aside, as he was a speech writer, he loved to write about words. Your exploration above triggered memories for me as you obviously share the passion.
I do!
As much as I differ with his politics, I actually very much appreciated his ability to deeply engage with words both individually and in the context of communication as tools of the writer's craft.
Thank you for this excellent article - it’s challenging to articulate these things, especially in writing, but I think you did a wonderful job. This is important work!
A few thoughts:
-I consider the word "tranny" among us trans folk like the n-word ending in "-a" for black folk and like the n-word ending in "-er" among bigots. That is, a word that oppressed people use to call themselves in an endearing fashion and a word that bigots use to oppress (and even kill, as you point out). That being said, even among my transfem friends and acquaintances some of them don't even want to use the T-slur in a reclamative fashion due to its sordid history that you laid out. However, there are non-slurs that are uplifting and even more endearing which contain the same meaning as the slur used among the community it disparages but without the baggage (disparage baggage? "dis-baggage"?). I mean words like "brother" among the black community (which, like I said, contains no disparagement in its connotations!). Having spent a lot on time on the social network Bluesky (which is like twitter without the Nazis, and with far, *far* more transfeminine people as well as other queer people such as transmasculine people and non-binary folk), and I came across the trans woman equivalent to the Black American "brother": "doll". It's endearing, it's uplifting, and even cis people can use it 🥰!
(Note, I haven't even gotten into intersectionality, in which there are sisters who are dolls!)
-I've noticed another anti-trans slur: "He/She". This is a slur specifically against AMAB transfems and trans women. While I can't think of any trans person killed using this slur off the top of my head, I do remember a Gawker or a Kotaku article pre-2013 that referred to a gender-non-conforming transfem as a "he/she" in an extremely disparaging and dehumanizing sense, similar to how a cis anti-trans bigot would use the word "shemale" or "tranny", as if to say we trans women are not "real" women.
I learned a lot also.But as an ancient dyke I get lost on new abbreviations: DV?
Thank you.
Domestic Violence.
Sorry. I worked in women's shelters and at crisis lines for so long that this one in particular I very, very frequently forget to spell out.
Slurs evolve as language changes. You rarely hear the r-word any more (thankfully). But the kids these days will call someone “acoustic” to imply someone is autistic, spastic, or learning or developmentally disabled.
As a cis woman, I’ve been called all sorts of slurs - fish, slash, gash, whore, slut, bitch, the c-word - any and every gendered slur out there. My child had just turned 6 the first time a neighbor kid called her a gendered slur. It was meant to shut her up, as a way of trying to control her, to exert power.
After being raised in the Midwest Bible Belt,that is Missouri, I went to San Francisco in 1981 for summer vacation. My first day while riding a bus up Market Street to find Haight street on a completely empty bus, someone got on and sat down right next to me. I smelled Jovan Musk perfume and turned to comment ‘my sister wears your perfume’ and noticed facial stubble peaking through heavy makeup… my first encounter with drag or a trans person. I love people so I went with it and smiled big. I did not know what name to call her when reflecting on that eye opening experience, so I said she/he when telling the story to my mom. Is She/he or He/she a slur?
In writing with that slash, it absolutely is not. In spoken English "heshe" used to be used as an insult that I would avoid, but it was pronounced as a single word.
I think that as long as in writing you use the slash and when speaking you use a tone of voice that communicates respect that you'll be fine.
Wish I had read this comment when I made that comment above, since I have seen "he/she" used circa 2010 in a Kotaku article that mocked a transfem or gender-nonconforming person, and the sense I got was that "he/she" was interchangeable with "tranny", "shemale", or even "faggot".
This is a great writeup! I do have - not exactly disagreement - but concern, I guess, about how you define the difference between a slur and an insult. I am worried that people who aren't very familiar with the general concepts about how systemic oppression works might take your example literally, in that their perception now of the difference between a slur and an insult is whether use of the word in question creates a reasonable fear that someone may be killed. I agree completely that some slurs are much more dangerous/threatening than others. That being said, I believe that using the criteria that the word must invoke a reasonable fear of immediate physical danger sets the bar for "slur" too high. For example, many of the slurs commonly used against disable and Deaf/deaf/HOH people do not necessarily carry that immediate threat, they still clearly signal that the target of slur is deficient, defective, not worthy of the same respect and empathy as everyone else. While that signaling may not invoke an immediate threat, it most certainly perpetuates cultural stigma and biases that are harmful, rather than merely insulting. I feel it is important to include that consideration, especially when the purpose of discussion is to educate people who aren't aware of the why/how specific language can be harmful to marginalized groups targeted by it. These are quite often the same people who interpret "isms" to be only the most overt and violent acts as being representative of the problem, and don't understand that it is the less overt culturally biased environment that allows, or even encourages, the more overtly violent actions.
>> I am worried that people who aren't very familiar with the general concepts about how systemic oppression works might take your example literally, in that their perception now of the difference between a slur and an insult is whether use of the word in question creates a reasonable fear that someone may be killed. <<
Okay, I had a chance to review my exact wording in the section that attempts to define slurs and distinguish them from insults. While I see how casual readers could misinterpret the later bit about associations with violence being more common than one might think, I think what I wrote, as is, says what I meant it to say. For now, I'll trust my readers to be careful, intelligent folk. If I end up getting an unusual number of questions or comments that seem to have problems with the definition, I'll handle that then.
Despite my decision to leave the OP as it is (for now), I'm thankful that you brought this up and we had a chance to talk about it.
This is a good point. I think the key difference between a slur and an insult (as the article explains) is that slurs are *inherently dehumanizing*. Whether that dehumanization is actually followed by violence is not important.
Its not always easy for "outsiders" to understand what makes language dehumanizing. Using the example of "usually part of a threat" or "often followed by violence" is a pretty easy thing to grasp. If your listener gets that part, then you can start talking nuance. If they don't, then you might be wasting your time.
That's a good point, too: that, depending on your audience, including more nuance might just be a waste of energy. I think that's one big challenge to educating people about oppression; it's really hard to talk about it accurately in a generalized way, and it's also too confusing or overwhelming for people to hear the nuanced explanations if they're not already somewhat familiar. I'm glad that there are spaces like this where we can have the discussions that help to unravel that to some extent.
I frequently feel like I am overburdening readers with detail, and yet I'm still winnowing down to an edited, more limited version of my original thoughts. It's hard to know exactly how much discussion to include. Below a certain point, more is definitely better, but if it's too long for people to read, then less is better -- you'd rather have people get something rather than be intimidated out of reading and get nothing.
Comments become crucial for some of this, since that allows for greater exploration for the folks who do want more precision without discouraging people who want a reasonable amount of info in a limited amount of time.
I hadn't thought before about comments serving that function. Thanks for pointing it out.
>> That being said, I believe that using the criteria that the word must invoke a reasonable fear of immediate physical danger sets the bar for "slur" too high. <<
This was ... not what I intended. I'll reread what I said in the article above and see if it needs adjustment.
I also thought of adding to the definition a component that required a "slur" to be derogatory for being the name of a disfavoured group and not for any other reason. While that helps understand an aspect of the power of slurs, I think it goes too far to require that. (See, for example, "trap" in the main article.)
All of this can get tricky, which is one reason you don't get serious discussions of this stuff very often. People would rather avoid being publicly wrong than advance discussion on important topics while making the occasional mistake.
Thank you for speaking up and adding to understanding.
I should have been more clear in my statement, because i can see from this that i implied that you intended the interpretation that concerns me. What i meant to say is that I agree completely with what you said, and also I am concerned that people who don't already have an understanding of the complexity of systemic oppression might be likely to interpret what you wrote in a more black-and-white way. I really like your point about people being afraid of being wrong. I think that fear is one of the biggest obstacles to having in depth, nuanced conversations about all this stuff, so I greatly appreciate that you do that. In fact, that's one reason I felt up to sharing my perspective here, because these days, I'm usually not up to defensive debates, and I trust you to be curious and open to these ideas, and I think that is wonderful. Thank you!
In re-reading my comment, I think what I did was that I started out discussing how I thought your explanation might be interpreted, but then I kind of fell into it and forgot that I was writing about my concern with interpretation, and got on my soap box, and off I went... So sorry!
Never a problem.
I appreciate this discussion, thank you both.
CP, your definition of slur as a term wielding a threat of violence was an ah-ha moment for me. It seems completely obvious I realize now, but it’s not how I would’ve understood to define it before. Which, I think, means I am very lucky.
I truly did not know that hermaphrodite was a slur. I definitely thought it was a medical term; old-fashioned, maybe.
The rest, I totally get and thank you for explaining.
There are a lot of old-fashioned medical terms that have become insults and slurs.
I also wasn't aware that hermaphrodite was one of them, but I would not be surprised.
Glad that you're capitalizing "Black", Crip. https://johnmendelssohn.substack.com/p/woker-than-thou
This is a heavy article and as usual I learned a lot.
When I was a teacher a student asked me why it is bad for him to use the n-word and not for rappers who he wanted to sing along with. So I explained the contextual difference with the reclaimed one ending in -a while the slur is always -er.
Thanks for this article!