Recent events have me thinking again about self-censorship and bowdlerization. I've never read any of the Brontës, but I'll quote Charlotte Brontë in expressing my discomfort with defanging venomous words by replacing them with obvious stand-ins.

“The practice of hinting by single letters those expletives with which profane and violent people are wont to garnish their discourse, strikes me as a proceeding which, however well meant, is weak and futile.” -Charlotte Bronte

This (self-censorship) is one of a few examples of practices I follow because they have become socially necessary to avoid hurting other people and provoking anger, but with which I fundamentally disagree. (This is not to say I am right or wrong in that disagreement. It may be that I am lacking information or have failed to fully consider the information I have.) This is true from both an outside and inside perspective. When I think of slurs that could be applied to me, the idea that people who have already chosen to use hateful and hurtful language, or those who don't generally have any need to think about the hurt such language can cause, should be spared from facing up to those slurs if I decide to write or talk about what they've said about me is frustrating. It feels like I am taking power away from myself and ceding it to them.

Either I self-censor in ways that make me feel like my communication is less effective and that I have been disempowered, or I become the subject of anger and potential ostracism by people, groups, and communities that I otherwise might support or find togetherness with. This stuff is really hard for me to navigate and is reminiscent of similar issues that I often encounter when thinking about whether I can feel like a part of progressive, activist communities. I'm so naturally inclined to disagreement and analytical discussion, and there's always *something* a group espouses that I disagree with.

"...it's the suppression of the word that gives it the power, the violence, the viciousness." -Lenny Bruce

Politico is one of the only sources, and by far the most frequent one, that I read news from. This is the most poorly constructed sentence I have ever seen in a story there.

"That history meant that a disastrous 2018 election for California Republicans, in which Democrats flipped seven formerly GOP House seats, yielding a once-unimaginable outcome: There is not a single Republican representing Orange County, which lies between Los Angeles and San Diego, in Congress."

https://www.politico.com/states/california/story/2019/08/07/in-reagans-california-democrats-overtake-republicans-1132678

I wrote this in response to a discussion on Facebook and some thinking I did afterward about what it is for a word to be a slur and how language is a political battleground. It started with a meme that said both that TERF is not a slur, and that all TERFs should be drop-kicked into the sun, thoughts that seemed incompatable to me. I had a discussion about that with a couple people, then wrote this this morning. Sorry if any of it seems out of context.

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I've thought about this over the last evening and worked on integrating some of what people have said about it. Here are some thoughts on the political fight over language and what it means for something to be a slur:

It seems like whether or not a word that is a true descriptor of a group can be a slur is a fairly minor issue in the grand scheme of things. I won't object to people saying it's not a slur on those grounds. However, I feel that saying so is, in a small way, ceding some ground. I expressed earlier that I don't think using a slur is inherently a bad thing, and TERFs should stop being ignorant assholes if they don't want their name to be a slur. But it seems easier and simpler to allow the word to become a thing that inherently reflects negatively on the user. I'll accept that.

To more fully explore my thoughts on this:

The ability to define and redefine words in the popular consciousness is a huge, huge part of politics. Meaning drift sometimes happens organically and unintentionally, but when it comes to politics, in most cases there is a concerted, conscious effort by one group to associate particular concepts with particular words. One that really gets me, for instance, is the way that 'entitlements' has been turned into something negative by the right wing to the point where there are numerous memes decrying the description of social security as an entitlement. My thoughts are always something like "Damn right it's an entitlement, and people receiving it are damned well entitled to it." I hate to give up the battle over the meaning of a word like that.

There are a couple of reasons why TERF in particular feels so complicated to me. The one relevant to this discussion is that I feel like it's disingenuous to say that TERF is not a slur because of the connotations of the word. Negro and colored were once polite descriptors referring to Blacks, but because of pervasive hostile use, they have become rude and disrespectful. In that sense, they are slurs. I have seen TERF used in a very dismissive, dehumanizing way, just as slurs like nigger and faggot are. For example:

"TERFs are fixated on dick and worship patriarchy." (https://medium.com/@sealinc2/terfs-are-fixated-on-dick-and-worship-patriarchy-d01a66337c8e)

"tbh TERFs are literal inhuman scum that deserve to burn w/ the nazis and japs for what they did to the transgender community"

(A representative, though particularly offensive, comment here: https://gendertrender.wordpress.com/2015/02/04/you-are-a-terf-terf-terf/)

Clearly TERF is sometimes used to be intentionally offensive, dehumanizing, and dismissive. In that sense, it is a slur. It feels to me that, in saying that TERF is not a slur while some people use it in a vicous and dismissive way is trying to have your cake and eat it too.

It's very important that people are able to define their own identity and the terms used for that identity. Native people who are fighting back against the derogatory names that have been applied to them for so long by colonizers, for example: Inuit instead of Eskimo. It's a matter of respect for identity. Calling a group of people something that they have said that they object to being called, in this case TERFs, is an inescapably disrespectful act. Saying that TERF is not a slur while some people on the left use it as a slur is difficult to reconcile.

I'm not saying that they don't deserve disrespect. It certainly is satisfying, and TERFs are dead wrong. Maybe it comes down to what is trying to be accomplished. I have a feeling that talking to TERFs and calling them TERFs is going to get things off on the wrong foot right from the beginning. If we want to have a dialog, it might be better to find some mutually agreeable way to refer to them. (It is possible that there is no mutually agreeable way I suppose, in which case conflict over self-identity of TERFs and imposed identity by those interacting with them would be unavoidable.) I just feel that if a group feels attacked by a particular term, and others continue to use that term over said groups obejctions, it will serve to further cement an attitude of unified group defense against attackers. It makes it that much more important for them to stick with their brethren against a hostile world.

I'm not saying it is, or is not, a good thing to keep calling TERFs TERFs. (You may note that I am doing so here.) I don't really know what the other options are, or what will help most in the long run, or any of that stuff. It's above my pay grade. It's just the stuff I'm thinking about. I'd welcome comments.

Responding to a meme about how to respond to various expressions of holiday wishes, an analogy occurred to me.

If I was a gay man, and someone asked me how my girlfriend/wife was, I'd probably say something like "It's my boyfriend/husband actually, but he's fine. Thanks for asking!" That's polite, right?

If someone says 'merry Christmas' to someone who is not a member of a faith that acknowledges Christmas, it's rather like that in my view. I recognize the good intent and appreciate it. However, not mentioning that the expression doesn't apply to you is reinforcing cultural hegemony. It should similarly be polite for my Jewish family members to say something like "I don't celebrate Christmas, but thanks for the well-wishes!"