I really tried to ignore it and let it go as just another passing trend. It’s not my language, not my culture and not my battleground, but it’s hard. It hurt me seeing it slowly spreading and getting bigger. What made me decide to vent was reading someone talk about their struggles and seeing a familiar sentence that might be familiar to all: “I was a weird child”.
Being weird is not usually a problem, the issue usually is people being incapable to accept what they consider weird. Different is not wrong, queer is not wrong, expressing yourself and living the only way you know when it’s not hurting anyone around you is definitely not wrong, even if it doesn’t conform with society.
All these horrible people hate being called weird because it’s what they having been calling us the whole time, but in more specific ways. I feel using it as a slur now just reinforces the negative connotations and validate their view.
Update: semantic satiation to the rescue. Weird became a meme and a trend everyone wanted to take part and use regardless of it making sense.
Everytime discussions like this pop up, I can’t help but ponder upon how other people view language. Words are not universal. Perhaps it’s my neurodivergence or the fact that I’ve studied language, but I’ve always found it odd that others can prescribe such meaning to a single word, or for a word to have a strict definition absent context. I don’t know a single word in any language which only has a single definition- nearly every word has multiple definitions because it’s a reflection of how language is abstract. We create words to convey ideas, which are often ethereal in nature- they often lack clear boundaries.
But more than that, we internalize definitions much more often than we look them up. We use language based on how the people around us use language. We pick up their sayings, the slang they use, the way they structure grammar, the things they emphasize and minimize, and the words they borrow from other languages. Any slur that’s been used on you is something you will carry with you and will hold more weight that slurs which are used on others because the experience is tied to an emotional state. But it goes further than that, happy words which are tied to happy memories will have a different connotation than happy words which you’ve never used or never been exposed to. Language is inherently human and therefore inherently emotionally charged and socially defined.
Unfortunately you can never control how others use language. How you view a word cannot be the same as everyone else, because they haven’t lived your life. For some, weird may be empowering - a way to step into and own their eccentricity and difference; a celebration of diversity. Some may have never heard it used in the contexts you’ve mentioned. Others still may have experienced both othering and reclamation. Ultimately language will continue to be used whether you are comfortable with it or not. I’ve personally found that leaning into language which has been used against me negatively has helped to disempower it and the more I reclaim that language the less it bothers me and the more I view it as a source of pride.
Everything you’ve said here resonates with me. I’m also all for reclaiming words used to harm and repurposing for empowerment. One community that is really good at doing this is the drag/LGBTQ+ folx. Love this!