I would personally consider it quite disrespectful if I were to ask someone not to use a slur around me and they continued to use it. In my opinion it would be on par with continuing to use profanity around someone who had requested you didn't. That's not to say I would be asking someone to never use it, or telling them that they weren't allowed to, I would just request they didn't use it around me and I don't think that's an unreasonable request. I don't think that some of this answer really answers what I'm asking, though I agree with the parts that do.

@Groggo take a minute to think about it from someone else's perspective.

@Groggo So what if you and apaul were friends? You dislike the term and he uses it to describe himself... Surely he's allowed to define his sexuality just as you are? Why is it appropriate for you to ask him not to use the word he feels best describes who he is? The point of apaul's answer, which I think is a very good one, is that you are perfectly correct to ask him (or anyone) not to use the term to describe you... but going further than that leads to problems.

+1 because you need to always allow people to define themselves. Imagine if someone asked you not to call yourself "gay" because they weren't comfortable with it. It might not be as harsh coming from someone of the LGBTQ+, BUT, people who call themselves queer feel like they can't be defined as "lesbian", "gay", etc... And they deserve a word to define themselves, even if it's not one you choose to take on yourself.

@Catija I think there are plenty of words to describe sexuality that don't contain slurs, for example he already used the term "pansexuality". Please consider it from my perspective, all I would be asking is that for a few minutes someone didn't use a particular word, I wouldn't be saying that they couldn't use it at all, nor would I be saying that they couldn't identify that way. What I would be asking is that they didn't use that word around me.

@JessK. - Quite. One of my kids describes herself, when pressed, as "pansexual", and prefers "queer" for exactly that reason. Otherwise, how do you identify a person who has dated male, female, and trans people? So I use queer because that's how she has asked to be identified, and I'm respecting her wishes.

@Groggo - If they are straight, I'd still say that's a reasonable request from you. If that's how they self-identify, I'd say you are on very shaky ground there. More to the point, language changes over time, and long term, you should prepare yourself for the possibility of losing this battle over this one word. My grandmother went to her grave POed that the word "gay" got completely taken over by the homosexual meaning.

@T.E.D. it sounds like you're a good parent, just thought someone should say that.

@apaul - I appreciate that, but I'm never really certain that I deserve praise simply for not being a total jerk to my own kids (and the fact that other do feel that way kinda breaks my heart). Its the other people in the LBGTQ community I keep bumping into now and then who don't even know her but will still love my daughter for who she is that always bring a tear to my eye. It can be a really rough world out there.

I understand the logic behind reappropriation and I think it's powerful. But what if I disagreed? It's not unreasonable to be concerned that reappropriation is ineffective as a political strategy at best and at worst a self-humiliating sign that the bullies have succeeded in defining the "out-group". I personally don't think so, but again, it is not an unreasonable concern, probably shared by the more "old-school" folks. The retort "everybody should be allowed to define themselves", while certainly plausible, doesn't even engage with this issue. That's kind of a sad, self-absorbed debate .

@henning It seems like this ought to be fairly well-trod territory that you could fully examine just by looking at the decades'-old argument among black people about their reappropriation of the N-word amongst themselves.

@T.E.D. Exactly. I guess (I'm white) it must have been at least bizarre if not hurtful for black people of older generations to hear the N-word being used in self-designation by their own grandchildren.