We have offense – silentism is net worse and makes infractions more violent when they do happen
Claudia Bianchi 13, teaches Philosophy of Language and Cognition and Communication (graduate course) at the University San Raffaele, Milan, “Slurs and appropriation: An echoic account”, Journal of Pragmatics 66 (2014) 35—44, Sept 3 2013, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378216614000526?via%3Dihub
**changed language -denoted by strikethrough and/or brackets
Third, my proposal accounts for the fact that appropriated uses may eventually extend to out-groups. Anderson and Lepore envision this very extension, but for mysterious reasons: why should an embargo admit escape clauses, and why should it open to out-groups? The hope that an embargo may, in time, soften the offensive potential of slurs seems even more mysterious to me: silentists’ drastic prohibitions cannot but emotionally charge expressions banned from the language.28 In my view, on the contrary, highly controlled conditions and selected speakers create contexts making the out-groups’ open and public dissociation from derogatory contents (expressed or conveyed) self-evident. Just think of the academic community, which was first to start using the term ‘queer’ in ways authorized by the homosexual community, or white kids using ‘nigga’ toward each other -where their respect for the hip-hop culture is made manifest by a way of dressing, walking and talking.29