So this week, my corner of twitter was talking about CENSORSHIP and how HORRIBLE it is that people are just not allowed to say the n-word. No, not even to say not to use it. HOW WILL PEOPLE LEARN.

Let me tell you how I learned about a different word (1/20)

I was 12 when I moved to the states. My first year here, I wasn’t able to take any electives because they put me in two simultaneous ESOL classes on top of regular English. 8th grade. On 9th and 10th, they swapped one ESOL for basic Spanish because bureaucracy (2/20)

In this weird language immersion space, most of my friends were fellow ESOL students who didn’t speak Spanish. We were supposed to figure English out among us. I had a particularly good friend who was Italian and we could sorta understand each other. (3/20)

We had a third friend who was Filipino, and we 3 took the bus together. We actually had some (incredibly basic) race/ethnicity questions as we learned about the US. Why was I Hispanic, which in some contexts put me in a closer box to our Filipino friend than the Italian? (4/20)

A lot of our English learning process relied heavily on music. The censored music on the school bus and on the music channels on TV, but also on uncensored CDs and torrents.

Music still helps me learn languages, it’s def helping my Galician. (5/20)

So, at some point within these “figure English out” days, I picked up a slur for gay men.

This word is a horrible slur in some contexts, a kinship term in others. As an adult, I also used it as my label for several years. At this time, however, I learned it as an insult. (6/20)

In hindsight, I think I picked it up from the Italian guy who would call me a variety of gay slurs. Or a Korean friend who was really into Eminem, as was I. The immigrant experience (7/20)

So, toward 10th grade I started making some USian friends. This was a queer-and-queer-adjacent group and when I started actually putting labels on myself because up until then I hadn’t thought they were important. (8/20)

And one day I was with one of these queer friends and a guy who had sexually harassed me for a couple years (put a pin on that) walked by. And I still remember my confusion when I said “he’s such a f—” and her answer was “but... wouldn’t he be the opposite of that?” (9/20)

That’s it! She didn’t need to repeat the term, which isn’t even ““banned.”” Nobody sat me down and said “these are the words you must never say.” She heard me use it and told me what it meant. It’s an insult for gay people.

And I got it and never used it as an insult again. (10/

Just one tweet on the sexual harassment: for those 2-3 years I tried to tell teachers and advisors that he kept touching me but my English wasn’t that good and they didn’t have interpreters and FUCK THAT, I deserved an interpreter and I deserved to be protected. JESUS. (11/20)//

My point is: why are you so desperate to say these words? Where do these words stop? Are you gonna give every new English-speaker a list of “silly” to full-on damaging slurs tied to generational trauma?

And what do you THINK they will do with that list? (12/20)

Another story from this 9th-10th grade time. I had a Thai friend who was in all my ESOL classes and she loved to draw. I remember her being great. Her name started with a G, and it was pretty long (her words not mine). (13/20)

So G would sign her art with a 4-letter word that starts with a G. She’d been doing this for years back home, it was her nickname and she loved it. Our teachers knew. Our schoolmates knew.

I was in college when I learned it’s a slur against SE Asian people. (14/20)

What does this g— have in common with fag, in the context of these stories? That our teachers should have TOLD US. Particularly the ESOL ones, but really all of them. I am absolutely not saying teachers shouldn’t teach. (15/20)

But this is truly not about a list, because I doubt this g— would have made it on the list.

Educators need to let people know what words mean, whether we’re L2 or L1, and you can have these conversations without repeating the words. (16/20)

Having a word with G after class and telling her, hey, let’s talk about your nickname. You should know that here, in the States, it’s a slur. You can keep using it, but we can also find different options if you’d like. (17/20)

Having a word with me at any point and saying, hey, do you know what that word means? Why are you using it in this context? What harm are you causing through your words? (18/20)

If you give a class of ESOL kids a list of slurs and curse words, they are going to use those slurs. I know because the first thing these kids shared of their own languages were the slurs and curse words. We were teens, we wanted to be “bad.” (19/20)

If your pedagogy relies on saying/writing every single word yourself, on people memorizing sounds that they’ll probably forget by next year... That’s not pedagogy.

And asking you to not repeat a few concrete slurs with generational trauma attached isn’t censorship. (20/20)

Inb4 y’all condescending that I’m totes engaging in censorship.

Call WaPo and tell them to tell the US, maybe get an interview with CNN, write a song for the radio.

I’m not popular enough to change US culture myself (nor do I want to, I think this is a sensible approach).