Our use of the word is meant to misappropriate its meaning, individual words do not have static meaning, the way that we use the word empowers people to create a change in how we think

However, Butler also argues that the daily, repeated use of words opens a space for another, more empowering kind of performance. This alternative performance, Butler insists, can be "the occasion for something we might still call agency, the repetition of an original subordination for another purpose, one whose future is partially open" (p. 38). To think of words as having an "open" future is to recognize that their authority lies less in their historical than in their present uses; it is to acknowledge that people can revise the meaning of words even as we repeat them; it is to embrace the notion that the instability of words opens the possibility that we can use them to (re)construct a more humane future for ourselves and others. Because words can be revised, Butler contends that it would be counterproductive simply to stop using terms that we would deem injurious or oppressive. For when we choose not to use offensive words under any circumstance, we preserve their existing meanings as well as their power to injure. If as teachers, for instance, we were simply to forbid the use of speech that is hurtful to LGBT students we would be effectively denying the fact that such language still exists. To ignore words in this way, Butler insists, won't make them go away. Butler thus suggests that we actually use these words in thoughtful conversation in which we work through the injuries they cause (p. 1.02). Indeed, Butler insists that if we are to reclaim the power that oppressive speech robs from us, we must use, confront, and interrogate terms like "queer." We must ask how such terms affect both the speaker and the subject, what the purpose of their use is, and how their meaning can be altered to empower those whom they name. Thus, as Butler helps us see, language is violence, but only if we allow it to be. She encourages us to believe that words can take on new meanings-ones which forbid stasis, challenge our habits, and open the possibility that teachers and students might be able to create spaces for learning in which everyone feels safe.