“Bigot” is a slur

“Bigot” is a slur:

A tweet saying: “Bigot is a term of abuse. It makes discussion impossible”

“Racist” is a slur:

Tweet saying: “If a person does not identify as a racist, then calling them racist is a slur”

“Nazi” is a slur:

Tweet saying “The Nazi insult… just an ethnic slur for uppity whites”

“Homophobe” is a slur:

Tweet quoting Mike Huckabee as saying that it is a slur to call someone a homophobe

“Transphobe” is a slur:

Tweet saying “Transphobe is a slur. Is there some non-derogatory use of transphobe”

That’s probably enough examples. My point here is that people are exploiting the multiple meanings of the word “slur” — a kind of bait-and-switch.

Obviously these words are all “slurs” in the sense of being negative qualities, and thus derogatory, disparaging, insulting, etc.

But… what people intend when they say “X is a slur!” is “X is hate speech that you aren’t allowed to use. You may not call anyone that, and you are a bad person for doing so!”.

But that’s a different usage of the word, involving power dynamics and history:

Slurring is a kind of hate speech that has special properties. There are thousands of terms that are identified as slurs, including those based on race, gender, nationality, and sexuality. Slurs can harm and degrade their targets, making them feel humiliated, dehumanised, disempowered, and silenced.

See also The Instability of Slurs by David & McCready — thanks to @ButNotTheCity for the reference.

A defining quality of ‘hate speech slurs’ is that there will always be a more neutral, less hateful term you can use instead. There’s no ‘more neutral’ word than “bigot” or “homophobe” or “racist” though:

“…If pejoratives do indeed carry colouring conventionally, it is partly because they exist in the language as alternatives to other words with the same denotations…” — Value and Implicature by Stephen Finlay. Thanks to @OneWeirdAngel for this reference.

This is also discussed in “Busting the Ghost of Neutral Counterparts” by Jennifer Foster, who says the term “neutral counterparts” is widely accepted, and also introduces “non-pejorative associates”.

See also Beyond “Mention vs. Use”: The Linguistics of Slurs by Caitlin Green on the strawman arguments about slurs from the “Intellectual Dark Web” — disingenuously claiming that even mentioning a slur in a valid non-hateful context is being punished.

The bait-and-switch is that people are using a (usually carefully cherry-picked) dictionary definition to claim that a term is a “slur” (“a derogatory term” or similar), but then using this to attempt to shut down their opponent in a debate, which is only appropriate under the other definition, i.e. hate speech.

As per the quote above, ‘hate slurs’ typically (though not exclusively) target immutable properties of a group: race, gender, nationality, sexuality — attacking someone’s very identity.

Whereas bigotry is mutable; a choice.

Of course it’s “derogatory” to call someone a bigot. Because a bigot is a bad thing to be! And it’s not wrong or hateful to point that out. Just stop being a bigot!

Claiming that “bigot is a slur” is simply a dishonest tactic of bigots to evade responsibility and claim victim status; it is a form of DARVO:

DARVO is an acronym for “deny, attack, and reverse victim and offender”. It is a common manipulation strategy of psychological abusers. The abuser denies the abuse ever took place, attacks the victim for attempting to hold the abuser accountable, and claims that they, the abuser, are actually the victim in the situation, thus reversing the reality of the victim and offender.