By adopting this growing strategy of using gay coded innuendo as a weapon - we are telling the maga crowd that we respect it as a weapon, we are validating that we think it has power.

What you mistake for "oh the soft weak left has a no-no list that holds us back" was us not reacting and thus not giving power to using gay innuendo as a weapon, so that lgbt peoples existence isn't thought of as a weapon.

We were quite close too - I Haven't heard much anti gay rhetoric used as insults by the right, no where neat as much as 10 20 30 years ago. The right had realized that that stuff had lost effectiveness and thus switched to different insults.

But here with these stupid memes and signs that I see more and more often are re-weaponizing anti-gay discourse and I hate it and it definitely will lead to a lower quality of life for lgbt people, it will definitely keep more lgbt people in the closet, and all the knock on effects of that including suicide.

Words have power, and we give them power by using them. Think about what you are giving power to.

[+] solsangraal@lemmy.zip 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

[deleted]

[–] naught@sh.itjust.works 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

At the end of the day, we are arguing your right to say "removed" here. We aren't defeating fascism by saying "removed." Not remotely. "removed" is insulting because not only is it a dog, but a female dog. It's completely loaded with misogyny, and attempting to "reclaim" the language doesn't work here. Fuck is a completely different scenario. The gay/ball gurgle problem has already been excellently pointed out above. It also applies to women.

I'm not worried gramma is going to have a heart attack. I'm worried that we are instinctively using language that inherently insults and denigrates minorities. How we use language shapes how we think, and vice versa. There are plenty of other insults we can hurl