A fundamental thing lacking in your understanding of slurs is your insistance that their existence is a full negative for the community that they are levied against. It is more useful to look at the designation of slurs almost more as a form of technology those communities use both as a form of self advocacy to spread awareness of underlying prejudices and to identify individuals and groups who hold them particular opposition or threat. They aren’t just about “getting upset” or giving people an avenue to press buttons.
Consider the “N-slur” in light of it being a technology. Those who use it are either :
Identifying themselves as a member of the ‘in’ group and using it as a means of solidarity.
Identifying themselves as an individual that believes they have “the right” to use the slur companionably thus often identifying themselves as a problem who at best doesn’t quite understand the assignment or at worst believes they can make unilateral decisions as part of a group to which they do not belong presenting a threat
Identifying themselves as a legitimate threat by using the word with the full weight of it’s oppressive and derogatory context.
Those who are using this can track this use if this slur to figure out who their allies are, what are safe communities, which of their associates can be counted on to help and who is setting themselves up as an enemy. This is legitimately words as weapons of war. A technique hit upon by modern civil rights movements as a means of fighting back. The meeting place of sociology and etymology where people started looking at words beyond strict meaning. What you are attempting to do is disarm a community making use of this but in reality you are identifying yourself using this tech as the second form of threat. The one that treats advocacy as a lost cause because the idea of implicit inferiority is so ingrained you can’t see the paternalism.
A fundamental thing lacking in your understanding of slurs is your insistance that their existence is a full negative for the community that they are levied against. It is more useful to look at the designation of slurs almost more as a form of technology those communities use both as a form of self advocacy to spread awareness of underlying prejudices and to identify individuals and groups who hold them particular opposition or threat. They aren’t just about “getting upset” or giving people an avenue to press buttons.
Consider the “N-slur” in light of it being a technology. Those who use it are either :
Identifying themselves as a member of the ‘in’ group and using it as a means of solidarity.
Identifying themselves as an individual that believes they have “the right” to use the slur companionably thus often identifying themselves as a problem who at best doesn’t quite understand the assignment or at worst believes they can make unilateral decisions as part of a group to which they do not belong presenting a threat
Identifying themselves as a legitimate threat by using the word with the full weight of it’s oppressive and derogatory context.
Those who are using this can track this use if this slur to figure out who their allies are, what are safe communities, which of their associates can be counted on to help and who is setting themselves up as an enemy. This is legitimately words as weapons of war. A technique hit upon by modern civil rights movements as a means of fighting back. The meeting place of sociology and etymology where people started looking at words beyond strict meaning. What you are attempting to do is disarm a community making use of this but in reality you are identifying yourself using this tech as the second form of threat. The one that treats advocacy as a lost cause because the idea of implicit inferiority is so ingrained you can’t see the paternalism.