Advertisement Hide
Bean Dad went on to address his past use of racial slurs and anti-Semitism, as well as repeated rape jokes throughout his Twitter feed, claiming “all of those tweets were intended to be ironic, sarcastic. I thought then that being an ally meant taking the slurs of the oppressors and flipping them to mock racism, sexism, homophobia, and bigotry.” Eventually, he says, friends persuaded him that “my status as a straight white male didn’t permit me to ‘repurpose’ those slurs as people from disenfranchised communities might do. They were injurious regardless of my intent, because the words themselves have power and because actual violence is often prefaced by people saying, ‘I’m not racist, but… ” He says he has stopped using such language.