Sunday 6 May 2012

Insults and Oppression

By: Liberate Zealot, Insidious Beast, Mirthful Misanthrope, and Mistress Malcontent

Content Warning: Sexism and slut-shaming, Ableism, Homophobia, Religious supremacy, transphobia, racism, fat shaming, ageism, gaslighting, every type of oppressive language we could think of 

So you're a progressive/feminist/queer/social justice activist and you're arguing with mean and insulting people and you want to insult them back without engaging in oppressive language. Because being good doesn't mean you always have to be nice.  Here's a post of non-oppressive insults.  But, we're doing a post on what insults are oppressive, and what type of oppression they fall under.  Because, it's a sad fact that our language and culture is so Kyriarchal that many of us don't even realize the oppressive roots of the words that are in common usage.

 Also some of these words have been reclaimed by the people they oppressive.  Please be aware of the difference between people within an oppressed group using words that are traditionally used to oppress them and an outside group using such language.  Religious supremacy is very tied to racism, just as body insults/policing and ableism are related, so those sections will be grouped together as some words fall under both both categories.  I'm separating classist and racist terms, but there is also a great deal on intersection between those as well (such as ratchet and ginger).  Also ageist is often linked with sexist slurs, same with sexist and classist slurs. Basically a lot of slurs are intersectional.

None of these slurs are positioned based on priority or seriousness of the slur.  All words are alphabetized, with non-English words at the bottom of the list.

Naturally we're going to miss some, if you have any to include please mention them in the comments!  We're trying to include ones from a variety of languages and countries, but because of our locations we're, unfortunately, English-centric.

Ableism, Fat-Phobia, and Body Policing
Butterface/Butherface
Cow
Crazy
Delusional
Dumb
Fatso
Fatty
Fugly
Hag
Idiot
Lame
Nasty
Pig
Psycho
Retarded (all words that use *tard)
Skeleton
Sow
Ugly

Sexist and Slut/Prude-Shaming

Bint
Bitch
Cunt
Dresses/acts/etc like a hooker/prostitute
Easy
Floosie
Frigid
Girl
Harlot
Hixen
Ho
Ho-bag
Home wrecker
Hussy
Jezebel
Loose
Man-whore
Mangina
Man Up
MILF
Nympho
Princess
Prude
Pussy
Skank
Slag
Slapper
Slattern
Slut
Tramp
Twat
Whore

Non - English:

Moll
Puta
Salope
Sharmuta
Vadia


Racism, Ethnic Insults, and Religious Supremacy

Barbarian
Bean
Beaner
Cat/Dog eater
Coon
Don\'t have a cow
Ginger
Gook
Gyp
Heathen
Holy Cow
Injun
Jap
Jimmies
Kike
Nigger
Oreo
Oriental
Paki
Red skin
Sand Nigger
Spear thrower
Spic(k)
Wetback
Wog


Homophobic/Biphobic/Transphobic

Carpet Muncher
Dyke
Fag(got)
Fairy
Gay
It
Ladyboy
Lesbo
Pillow biter
Queen
Queer
Shemale
T-girl/boy
Tranny


Classist

Bogan
Chav
Cheap
Hick
Junky
Ratchet
Red-neck
Trashy
White-trash


Ageism

Bag
Biddy
Cat-lady
Codger
Coot
Cooter
Crone
Dinosaur
Fart
Fossil
Girlie
Hag
Kid
Old hat
Old Maid
Spinster
Time to be an adult
Time to grow up


Gaslighting

Calm down dear
Don't be so emotional
Don't have a cow
Hysterical
Put on your big girl panties
Settle down
Shrill


Edited 5/8/12 for clarity and to add several words

1 comment:

  1. I wrote this about an internet debate on whether anti-Semitism is racism. It will turn up when you look for internet references to your post.

    ReplyDelete

If you're commenting on an older post (14 days old or more) a moderator will get to your comment as quickly as we can.