March 21- Not As Promised

Alright so this is not going to be an explanation of my last post because I found something better to talk about.

So just now I was on Facebook and scrolling down my home and there was a post saying that bad words are only bad because we give them power, and are we going to be overpowered by words. And I realize that many people may find this inspirational and uplifting, but I'm going to wager a guess that the next time someone slings a homosexual or racial or whateveral slur at them, they are still going to be irritated, and I think I've come up with a pretty good explanation of why.

It's because the above quotation, while very well meaning, is wrong. The words aren't even a factor in the long run. If you are walking down the street with your same sex partner, being entirely considerate to those around you and not focusing on eating each others so much that you barrel over some form of guard railing, and yet some lady looks at you like you're the devil and whispers something to someone next to her, you certainly are not going to feel like someone just told you they used your cat to clean up an oil spill because of her words. You have no idea what she said.

Calling me fat doesn't hurt because I was previously completely unaware that my belly (not my stomach, that is an organ and it should never ever be within your line of sight) was moderately spherical. Calling me queer or less harsh words I am not going to type out does not hurt because I was previously unaware that I was attracted to my boyfriend. Words like that hurt because  when people say them, they are bunching up dislike and aggression and tossing in a hunk of something that you are probably already extremely self conscious about and they are lobbing it at you at full force. It hurts because of the negativity that comes with it, it hurts because the person is communicating to you in an aggressive manner that they don't like something about you, that there is something wrong with you. Maybe the person calling you fat doesn't even think of fat people as a whole in a negative light. The words they choose are all just combinations of letters that we as a society have come to accept as effective carriers of dislike, and disgust, and hatred, and anger, that a person can spit out the instant they see someone they have a problem with.

No matter what you say to inspire yourself and toughen yourself up, bad words will always hurt us because being hated will always hurt us. It isn't the meaning of the word, or the usage of the word, or how we interpret the word that needs to be changed - it is the deeper feelings, the motivations for even wanting to use the word in the first place. 

At least, this is how I think about it.