Who Are We to Decide?
As long as there has been language,
there have been words to bring others down. As part of the different activist movements
people have begun “reclaiming” the words that have been used against and
finding empowerment in using them to describe themselves. This is a concept
that I am not sure I completely agree with.
For instance, the word queer was and still is used by a
number of people as a negative term referring to people who do not identify, or
seem to not identify as heterosexual. I personally have never had this term
used against me but have a lot of close friends who have issues with the word
because of past experiences. Things like reclaiming words get sticky because
there is no real line distinguishing that words can be reclaimed and which ones
should just stay offensive and never be said. For instance “the N word” is
never going to be acceptable to say out loud, but the word “fag” which was used
against gay men, is still vocalized all the time.
Who
are we in this generation to decide that words like queer can be empowering? I
think it is insulting to those who came before us to start using words that
were used to demean our communities. By using words that were created out of
hate, that may still trigger people who have had them used against them, are we
belittling the struggle of early activists, or are we creating change?
I
think it is a really slippery slope. Once you decide to reclaim a word, you
then have to decide who gets to use it. For example, my friends call me queer, or refer to my hair
as my “dyke spike”, but I get really offended hearing it come from other
people. So, why is it ok for some and not for others? Why are we still using
these words when the English language is so easy to adapt? If the idea of
activist movements is to move people’s thinking forwards, why do we keep going
back?
The above link is to a running feed of how many people have
used homophobic speech on twitter today, if words are still being thrown around
like this have we really actually reclaimed them?
