👏if you want to censor something, don’t write it 👏

Writing is a tool for communication. Writing something implies your desire to communicate it.

This might land a little controversial but I’ll go one step further and say you should not censor racial/homophobic slurs if they are not being used for offense. For example:

“I hate my cop neighbor, I heard he called my niece a f***ot”

(I obviously censored it here because lemmy prob. has a filter for that shit.)

In this sentence, I am not attacking anyone and I am simply trying to communicate a bad act done by somebody else. The message of the sentence is not homophobic in any way and me censoring the nasty word definitely didn’t change anything about the message. People can still hear that word loud and clear.

So if you think including the word would be offensive for people, and think it’s not a crucial part of your message, simply don’t write it.

“I hate my cop neighbor, I heard he called my niece a homophobic slur”

There you go. You did not communicate the word f***ot and your audience did not receive it. A successful example of self censorship