However, on the other hand, I love Buffstas and their pets--

Brenda, Lu looks absolutely wonderful!

Look at Lucy all ambulatory! Go, baby, go!

Yay, Lu! She looks marvelous.

I love you Barb. Rock on witchyrbadself. Good on ya for not letting a teaching moment pass.

And can I just say what delight it brought to my heart to see Lucy getting on with her bad self? Yay for all of you Brenda. Just YAY.

Sometimes nappy head(ed) can be a term of endearment/insult amongst friends, it was not necessarily meant as a put-down

Yeah, vortex, I know, and maybe I'm guilty of my own sense of prejudice, but I took offense at two white guys using it, especially since the guy they were talking about obviously wasn't around.

Regardless of the intent, it can't be a bad thing to have a reminder that you need to consider your potential audience if you're going to throw around phrases like that.

Thanks you guys. It's so good to see her bopping around again. Though she can stop barking at the mailman anytime now.

God, words can be such a minefield. I HATEhateHATE to hear my kids use the n word. Thankfully (I guess?) I hear it used by black kids or, used to, by my little gangster Hispanic kids as refering to their crew ("my niggas") but I HATED it and forbid its use. I think it's a hateful perjorative with a bad history.

I've read all the relclaiming arguments, and I get it, but I just can't agree. It just feels so hateful to me.

OTOH, and it really makes me crazy with myself, I have no compunctions about using "bitch" to refer to myself or my girlfriends, in the same sense, I think, that the n word is used by my kids. It's completely hypocritical and has no internal logic, but calling my girlfriends bitch or bitchface or my bitches is ok to me. It probably shouldn't

I have thought about this weirdness too many times, but I still can't even say the n word, even in in conversation's TALKING about this issue. If I say or even type "nigger" (ugh -- visceral shudder) I feel filthy. And not, ooh, I say a bad word, but soul-filthy.

Note that Katha Pollitt has the same reaction to reclaiming "Bitch" that you do to reclaiming "n-r". I think to some extent it is pragmatic judgment. Can the term really be proclaimed, or are "legit" uses just providing excuses for bigots to pretend they are part of the "reclamation". An argument could be made the "bitch" is easier to reclaim than "n-r" simply because 50% of the U.S> population are women, and if they use the word in a non-bigoted way, they have pretty good odds of reclaiming it. Whereas Black people are outnumber by a hell of a lot in this country - so widespread use of the N word among black people probably won't transform the connotation. At least I don't think it has so far.