In defence of slur-using scumbags

Deep breath. This post is probably going to ruffle some feathers. I’m going to talk about slurs, and I’m going to push my usual “On the other hand…” perspective.

Some background: Language is an organic thing that changes over time, and we learn it through human interaction. The words we use come from our family and friends and, to a certain extent, the media we consume. There are words we don’t know because we never talk with certain people about certain topics – for me that would be lawyer jargon, Cockney slang, and so on. This means that no one can know every word in a language. There are areas of your mother tongue that might as well be Klingon to you*.

And this brings me to the subject of offensive language. Not swear words, I don’t care about those. I’m talking about words beginning with ‘N’, ‘T’ and ‘R’.

Now, some people know how to speak without being offensive, and others don’t. And I’m not interested in people who are hell bent on being offensive, even though they’ve been called out on it. They aren’t the issue in this blog post. I’m talking about the ones who accidentally say the wrong word because they don’t know any better – you know, the “piece of shit cishet white scumbag transphobes who should burn in hell”.

Well. I live in a small Swedish village, and I know some kind and generous people here. These kind and generous people sometimes say the “wrong” word, and still I wouldn’t call them either scumbags or transphobes.

Why? Because I have a Theory. (You knew I would, didn’t you?)

People who don’t fit in tend to move away from small towns and villages. This means that these smaller places end up with less diversity than the big cities. The people that remain may be haters, and they may not. Let’s focus on the non-haters.

Not all of the non-haters are specifically interested in LGBTQIA+ issues, so they don’t subscribe to that kind of blogs, and they don’t seek out information on their own – the same way I wouldn’t seek out information on Latvian politics. I have nothing against Latvia, and I hope their government does a good job, but you know. I have other interests.

So these people, who live and let live and wouldn’t dream of hurting anyone, still run a risk of doing so, because they learn language from the people they interact with. This means that if these people’s friends and family use words that may be considered offensive – simply because historically, that was how everyone spoke – they will too, unless told not to by someone they don’t know.

Let me say that again: they need to be called out by someone they don’t know. Someone outside of their circle of friends. Someone who probably never hears them speak at all.

What it doesn’t mean is that the accidental slur-users are automatically phobic of the people they’ve offended. Their only access to new rules about language is through TV and newspapers, so even though they don’t want to put their foot in it, they do. Because journalists and celebrities do.

Example: official LGBTQIA people in my country used our version of the ‘T’ word in a wildly popular movie a few years back. How the hell is the man on the street to know that it’s not okay anymore? Did ordinary, kind people turn into transphobes overnight because there was a shift in how language was used in Stockholm?

Another example: my first language isn’t English. Native English speakers tend to be impressed with non-natives’ language skills, but what they may not be aware of is that even if someone is a whizz at writing books about economics or giving lectures on gastrointestinal diseases, they may have linguistic gaps that they don’t even know about, simply because they don’t live in an English-speaking culture. This especially applies to banal, everyday social greetings and niceties that these non-natives don’t encounter in their daily lives. A Londoner with loads of friends is in a good position to learn about the latest shift in meaning and adjust their language accordingly. Do you think a miner in Laisvall has the same privilege?

Yes, I said it: privilege. Every single non-native English speaker in the entire world is less privileged than native speakers, because it’s the Lingua Franca of practically everything. In every business transaction and political deliberation, we’re the underdogs. Why did that Swedish CEO cause an uproar a few years back by using the phrase “little people” about I forget who, but probably ordinary citizens? Because that phrase is not fucking offensive in fucking Swedish, okay? We try, goddammit.

But the only way us non-native speakers can learn English is through other people – friends, TV, books, and so on. And guess what? I learned most of the English I know when I was between eight and fifteen years old. This means that I learned the words I still use between 1983 and 1990. Has language changed since then? Of course it has. Has the world changed? Boy, has it. Have some words become offensive since then? I’m sure they have. But I learned English in that era, in that climate, which means that in some ways, I still speak and write in that era and climate.

Of course, I learn. As a writer, I have a responsibility not only to make my books intelligible but also non-offensive. But just like the people in small villages, I have a disadvantage: sometimes I don’t even know that there’s something I don’t know, and if I don’t surround myself with the right English-speaking friends or visit the right websites, I’ll never know that I’m doing something wrong until someone flips their lid at me. (This hasn’t happened, by the way, but I know it happens to other people.)

In a recent revision of a book, I stumbled on the ‘R’ word. Since I wrote that book, I’ve been educated in the offensiveness of the word, so I cut it – even though the character might very well have said it at the time, being who he was and times being what they were, but I just didn’t want the drama. To me, it’s just a word, I can cut it and no harm done. But am I an ableist piece of shit for writing it in the first place?

Sometimes there’s even a perfectly fine word in my own language that’s considered offensive in English. The same word, you see? Loan words and all that. But they have different flavours in different languages, and even though they sort of mean the same thing, they’re actually false friends.

So how much do you know about what’s considered offensive in Spanish or French? As far as I know, the word “gay” is fine in English – but is it okay in Swedish? We have the loan word, but when can you use it? What connotations does it carry? Who would you trust to tell you the “truth”? Me? And if not me, how many other Swedish people do you know? Which websites would you consult?

This sounds like whining. That’s not really my goal. It’s also not my goal to be defensive about any offensive slip-ups in my books, although to be honest, I kind of am. Sorry about that. My actual goal is to declare that language is a dynamic, ever-changing beast, and just because inner city hipsters get the memo on What You Can Say, everyone else (you know, the 99%) just doesn’t.

“The rudeness that hath appeared in me have I learned from my entertainment” (Shakespeare, Twelfth Night).

 

*Obviously this figure of speech doesn’t work if you know Klingon, but you know what I mean.