this post was submitted on 14 Jan 2024
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No, it's very much justified in my books. Who am I to tell you what to find offensive or not? It's very much subjective at the end of the day. As a queer person myself, I do agree with you that language as a whole should be striving to be as inclusive as possible and using words like "gay" as an insult definitely doesn't help. Wasn't insinuating that I find their using it that way ok.
I see people using the r-word as an insult on here quite often, for example, and am always happy to point it out and pick a fight. So no worries. I get you.
Right back at you. It shows that you've been thinking about these subjects a lot, and that's awesome.
Yea, for sure. I'm a cis male, but I do enjoy me some nail polish, ear piercings, and some light makeup from time to time. Most of the people I'm around know me well and are based enough to know not to point that out or ridicule it - most, if not all of them, encourage it even - but there are always people, even my family members, who make it their job to comment on it and add their unwanted opinions. I usually just let them talk their bigotry and don't mind it, but sometimes it gets to you. So I get why said something and am happy about it.
Even before touching all of these "heavy" subjects, we can do so much by just being inclusive in the way we communicate with one another.
Fun fact: It's been a really big debate in Germany for the past couple years whether it's "appropriate" to use gender-inclusive versions of words that historically have been used in their masculine-neutral form in order to foster inclusivity, or if it's damaging to the German language (it's not, shut up lol). Stuff like that exists in all languages, I think, and English being a lingua franca, it should be possible to use it as neutrally as possible in such circumstances because it's just not that big a deal to not use these notoriously bigoted words.
Does the last paragraph even make sense?! Sorry, pretty much just rambling.
Totally agree with your first couple paragraphs. Language is ever-evolving and that's good. Descriptivism vs. prescriptivism is what I tell people when they act out about "non-proper" usage of language or contemporary teen language. Language is a tool to be used by us and is forged by our needs. It should also be adaptable to not exclude people on their very personal beliefs, be they of sexual prefence, political or religious orientation, and everything else similar to these.
It's cool to have a heart-to-heart about language with people on Lemmy - it should be discussed way more on here. Do you know of any good linguistics communities on here?