It’s not only about “reclaiming”. I don’t use any of these terms in a reclaiming manner, I use them (and accept their use by others within my minority group) because purely by the fact of being a member of the group, others know I do not mean it in a derogatory way. By being myself a lebenese (personal favvo term), I have automatically gotten the “free card” that all the hip-cool-liberal-lovely people whose black friends let say nigger, gay friends let say fag, etc, have earned through good behavior.
Does that make any sense? I get like “pre-approved” for the option of using derogatory terms as terms of affection. Same way as I will refer to random friends as “yer an awful bastard” etc.
It’s true, too. Women and various feminists are arguing back and forth about this point. I consider myself a feminist and I support the women on this issue, but cunt is the one word I have trouble bringing myself to say.
I have been thinking about this post all day, and want to make another comment (I assume that is ok).
What is really boils down to is what you let affect you. I am a white southerner, lower income, blue collar worker. Nothing impressive really, average intellegence, average wife, average home. If someone calls me a dirty redneck or a cracker I don’t let it bother me. As a matter of fact I will usually laugh it off and move on. The biggest problem with words like ‘lesbo’ and ‘nigger’ is that too many people let it bother them.
Marley23 said above “Not all black people use ‘nigger’… <snip> Some people won’t care, but Jesse Jackson wouldn’t tolerate it. Same goes for pretty much any other term with its respective group.”
If Jesse Jackson would laugh at the hateful, ignorant asshole who called him a nigger there wouldn’t be a problem. Hateful words only affect you if you let them, and if someone uses a word like that to you or yours then you know not to associate yourself with that person. Social paraiah’s don’t reproduce (we hope).
I spoke with Terry (my wifes best friend who I mentioned in my first post who just happens to be a lesbian) about this issue. She said that in most cases it doesn’t really bother her. Once she left the proverbial closet, she let things like ‘lesbos’ and ‘dyke’ slide right off. She said that usually if someone calls her a derogatory name she will get mock angry and yell “HETERO!!!” at them. She said it works about 80% of the time.
Remember, fighting ignorance sometimes means you have to laugh at the ignorant bastard.
On Pobitch they always say “lesbitarian.” It makes me laugh, because all I can think about then is Libertarian on these boards. Who I am pretty sure is male, and not a lesbian at all
I asked my friend, as promised, and she said she didn’t like the word because of the kind of people who generally used it, but that it wasn’t devastating to her. Her “family” doesn’t use the word.
I’ve very, very ocassionally heard it used as kind of a “between lesbians” joke with my friends. I’ve heard the wannabe-hip (described brilliantly above) use it, causing me to roll my eyes, and I’ve had assholes yell it at me, causing me to either flip them off or get the hell out of there, depending on relative size.
Odd. But some lady taught me that ‘lesbian’ comes from an island with the name of Lesbos:
" island Greece in the Aegean off NW Turkey area 630 square miles (1632 square kilometers), population 103,700" (Websters)
I wouldn’t get offended if someone called me a lesbo, partly because I’m stronger than that, partly because it would just show how stupid the name-caller is. In that way these hate words are quite useful - they bring the homophobes out of the closet woodwork.
handy, the pronunciation is entirely different.
Lezboss is the general pronunciation of Lesbos the island, where as lezBOZE is the pronunciation of the onebeing referred to here.
I would guess most of the people who use the word sincerely wouldn’t be able to point out greece on a map
I hate the word lesbian at all, it just has such an icky sound. I usually refer to myself (when the need arises) as gay. My fave variants of lesbian are lebenese and lebsian
