‘Faggot’ Used More Than 2.5 Million Times Since July On Twitter
When it comes to social media sites like Twitter, words used and trending topics can offend anyone. Because of real time updates, many things come across your feed so often you never keep track of- like the word ‘faggot.’
Earlier this week the University of Alberta and its Institute for Sexual Minority Studies and Services launched an innovative campaign that brings awareness to homophobic slurs online. Created by Kristopher Wells, he calls “casual homophobia,” the unthinking anti-gay slurs that people, especially young people, use to pepper their conversation, whether in person or online.
The U of A’s new website, nohomophobes.com will track and curate the use of these slang or hateful phrases on Twitter. In real time, the tweet counts are logged and numbered.
“I thought we’d get a couple of hundred a day. But watching the site, it’s mesmerizing,” says Wells, an assistant professor with the institute, part of the Faculty of Education.
The purpose of the web site states:
This website is designed as a social mirror to show the prevalence of casual homophobia in our society. Words and phrases like “faggot,” “dyke,” “no homo,” and “so gay” are used casually in everyday language, despite promoting the continued alienation, isolation and — in some tragic cases — suicide of sexual and gender minority (LGBTQ) youth.
We no longer tolerate racist language, we’re getting better at dealing with sexist language, but sadly we’re still not actively addressing homophobic and transphobic language in our society.
Before the opening the site captured 15,186 tweets that used the phrase “no homo,” 11,975 that used the words “so gay,” 3,377 tweets with the slur “faggot” and 4,343 instances of “dyke.”
“Words have the power to hurt,” Wells says. “They also have the power to heal. Your words do have power, and you need to think carefully about what you say.”
