Notes
I have adapted this rough definition of “slur” from Jeshion (2013, 232). Hom (2010, 165), Anderson and Lepore (2013a, 25), and Bianchi (2014, 12) provide a similar gloss. Anderson and Lepore (2013b) distinguish acts of slurring from slurring words. The former, which may include offensive jokes, need not constitutively involve the use of conventional slurring words, such as “dago” and “kike.” I will restrict my discussion here to conventional slurs and bracket questions about other slurring acts.
One alleged difference is that slurs have neutral counterparts, whereas particularistic pejoratives do not (see, e.g., Hay 2013, 456). A neutral counterpart of a slur s is a non-evaluative term that refers to s’ target group, e.g., “Italian” is a neutral counterpart to “wop” (Hornsby 2001). However, Ashwell (2016) argues that having a possible neutral counterpart is not a necessary condition on a word’s being a slur.
Camp (2013, 338) claims that slurs function to distance speakers from targets.
Bell (2013) argues that responding to people who manifest certain vices with contempt is a good way to protest their failure to meet standards one cares about and to thereby maintain one’s own integrity. My argument here does not depend on the success of Bell’s. If she is right, contempt is one form of protest, yet protest need not be contemptuous (see, e.g., Hill 1979). While some theorists hold that slurs are conventional vehicles for expressing contempt (see, e.g., Richard 2008), a number of theorists deny this (see, e.g., Anderson and Lepore 2013a and Camp 2013). In any event, my aim here is not to motivate having a certain reactive attitude such as contempt but rather to defend the practice of slurring certain groups.
Bernard Boxill suggests that to protest the violation of one’s rights is not necessarily to argue that one has the rights in question, and that often “people protest when the time for argument and persuasion is past” (Boxill 1976, 63).
Smiley (2010) attributes to Tuomela (1989) the view that crowds and mobs may be collectively responsible for harm and destruction, despite the fact that members may not intend to perform group actions, as long as some of the members directly contribute to harm and others either facilitate these contributions or fail to prevent them.
We can also imagine antinatalists using “breeder” as a slur for anyone who reproduces, rather than heterosexuals specifically.
Here I am following the convention, suggested by Padden and Humphries (1990), of using “Deaf” to refer to a cultural group consisting of people who use a sign language and feel a shared sense of solidarity, and using "deaf" to refer to individuals who have the audiological condition of being unable to hear yet do not necessarily consider themselves members of a Deaf community.
McIntosh (2000) articulates a number of privileges afforded to people on the basis of their perceived whiteness.
I take it one can ridicule someone on the basis of membership in a white supremacist group without also disparaging them on the basis of membership in an innocent vulnerable group (e.g., being unemployed or living below the poverty line).
However, we can imagine beings that ought to be vulnerable because of the kind of beings they are (cf. May 2005). Suppose a “race” of parasitic alien invaders show up to Earth. Arguably, the use of slurs intended to make this group vulnerable need not be objectionable.
This is not to suggest that the use of slurs is wrong only to the extent that targets are offended. As I noted above, the use of a slur may be impermissible because of its role in cultivating an objectionable identity, and utterances of a slur may do this independently of whether anyone finds them insulting.
Cf. hooks (1995, 13) on the dangers of expressing rage as a member of a marginalized group: “We learned when we were very little that black people could die from feeling rage and expressing it to the wrong white folks. …Rage was reserved for life at home—for one another.”
I will leave it open whether people whose hearing is typical and are not vulnerable in other ways are morally permissible ostensible targets of the ORAL slur.
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DiFranco, R. Appropriate Slurs. Acta Anal 32, 371–384 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-016-0313-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-016-0313-0