I am very disappointed to see many people I otherwise respect deciding that they have an intrinsic right to word police the rest of this community.

I am disappointed that there is a growing consensus that the particular language culture that has developed in certain circles on tumblr is inherently more ethical than the language that has developed here, and that no argument needs to be presented to support this claim.

More than that though I am upset and offended that any disagreement with this (extremely polymorphic) viewpoint brands one a bigot, a Tom, a troll, or otherwise an avatar of hate.

I am trans. I am a girl with a penis. I was born with intersex characteristics. I am in a same sex relationship. I am a queer rights activist. And I am disgusted that I need to present these intimate facts about myself like some sort of membership card to even be welcomed into a discussion. It is invasive of my identity and it is a fallacy to judge my arguments differently based on these facts. I suspect I've suffered a lot more at the hands of prejudice than most of the trendy armchair liberals picking fights with people over this online.

And yet I feel rejected in my own safe spaces, because I get called a bigot for something so trivial as casually describing myself as a "dickgirl", despite the fact that the word couldn't be any more literally descriptive, and does not even have any meaningfully negative history in popular culture.

The fact of the matter is that so long as we are in a marginalized position within society, any word used to refer to our demographics will take on a pejorative connotation over time. Any word can be used as a slur. The meaning of a word is a combination of its usage and (critically) its intention. This is obvious, this is documented by academic linguistics, this is how language works. Heteronormativity is the disease; Aggressive words are just the symptoms.

To blame the words for bigotry when the intention is to blame is to exonerate bigots.

Words get reclaimed. This is healthy. This is liberating for the people who do it. The words can still be judged by intention. You wouldn't jump down someone's throat for playfully calling themselves a fag, because it's obviously different than when a bigot calls them a fag as a directed insult.

People will find outlets for their aggressions (micro or otherwise) regardless of how much of their vocabulary you demonize, because the aggression itself will remain regardless.

I'm even more concerned about how this self-defeating battle for public perception is having a net negative effect on how people perceive us. The average well-meaning person is not going to pick up on the vague subtext of a word that they have never learned the etymology of, they're just going to see a bunch of people from a community they've never participated in yelling at them for reasons they don't understand. More often than not I see this mixed with hateful language toward cis/hetero people, which is equally unacceptable. This alienates the public and solidifies our cultural position as "other". You are causing us to be othered more rather than less.

And in case the double-standard wasn't already apparent: You don't get to tell me what I call myself any more than you get to tell me what pronouns I use.

I'll be over here writing letters, attending rallies, and making donations while you're busy scaring off potential allies with semantic bickering.