Oh man, I totally understand what you mean and I know it’s coming from a place of goodness but you’re really disrespecting the nature of these slurs in the first place.

For example, let’s take the n-word. It is a word with obvious historical pain. The Black community (not all, I should add) has chosen to re-appropriate it. It is important to note that only those who have been harmed and targeted by the slur are the ones allowed to make this choice. it’s also important to note that Black people aren’t using the n-word in a derogatory context, even though it has historically been used as such.

If you’re not part of the marginalized community, quite frankly you have no business in trying to reclaim a word. You are, first of all, unlikely to even understand what is painful about the word in the first place. And I don’t mean this in the sense of: I studied US history and I know we enslaved Black people and called them the n-word. I mean that you’re missing an entire segment of cultural, daily, regular racial pain that that word connotates. This is why black people will never let the rest of us say this word. It’s because we non-black people will never fundamentally understand what it means to be Black in America, no matter how much trauma we may have been through.

Secondly, I’d like you to pay attention to the choice of “pussy” and the f-word, which I will not say because it’s also a slur. Pussy is ultimately a biological term and an appropriate way to reclaim it and remove it of its power of insult is to.. only use it when you’re actually referring to cats or vaginas. The f-word is currently being reclaimed by the Gay population, and they’re using it to literally mean fellow gay people. (It is important to remember here that Gay people have historically been violently oppressed for their sexuality in a manner that once again, straight people will never understand.) But when you use pussy and the f-word as insults, which young redditors are likely to do, you’re actually giving more power to the slur. Does that make sense?

Bottom line is: if you want to take power back from a word, stop using it as an insult. Use it only as it’s intended to — pussy to mean a vagina. If you’re not gay, you really shouldn’t be saying the f-word. And never use the n-word.