Language shapes communication, and it leads to shaping thoughts, ideas, actions, and ultimately culture and society as a whole. Language is extremely powerful, and while it can be used for good it can also be incredibly damaging.

Slurs aren't just simple words that "are just a joke, lighten up" and can be thrown around like they're some kind of inconsequential thing because everyone else seems to be doing it so hey it's okay! I'm not hurting anyone! (Yes- you are, by the way. You don't need to directly punch someone in the face to be propagating something harmful or negative)

Using specific words in a derogatory or negative way, whether or not you're aware of that and whether or not you're doing so with a deliberate intention to harm or to put a person or a collective group of people down, isn't just something small to brush off. Yes, it's almost inevitable to slip up or to not know that something that's part of your daily vocabulary is actually really damaging, but there's also a responsibility to educate yourself and stop using it, and if it's inconvenient for you just to simply stop saying a word it's a million times more inconvenient for the people whom that slur directly affects.

There are words out there so tainted with a history of violence and severe discrimination that you might as well be throwing a punch by using them as casually as if you were just saying hello or goodbye.

Furthermore, not just regarding slurs but regarding how some words are used- there are words out there, words supposed to be as simple and used as easily "I'm American/a student/sixteen," that have been used so long with a negative or disgusted tone and implication that there is no way that I can use them to describe myself (even though they're very much part of my identity) without my stomach churning and skin crawling. It's not funny at all. I should be able to tell someone to please stop throwing a word around as an insult or a joke without feeling like I'm the one ashamedly begging a favour and hoping that person B doesn't think I'm stuck up and just ends up laughing. There is something fundamentally skewered with that power dynamic.

It's not just what you say, it's also how you say it and how you use it.

All these slurs and words and "small things" get normalized, get passed on, get shaped into every day language and life, fuels straight into thought patterns, beliefs, and then very much into violent and toxic discrimination and stigmatization- not to mention that they can be strongly internalized by exactly the people you claim to not be hurting. Language is so extremely powerful. The connotations and messages and beliefs that underlie language is unimaginably influential. The only people who get a say in any of this is not you but the group of people for whom the word or language is directly applicable and relevant and affects.

Microaggressions (and not just in the form of slurs and so forth-though the whole point I'm trying to make here is that slurs is most definitely a hugely significant part) are reflections of much bigger structures of discrimination and indeed propagate those toxic beliefs even further-beliefs that don't just lead to occasional bullying in schools, but are pillars that uphold societal discrimination, stigmatization, it leads to whole collectives of people being looked down upon, beaten up, and killed.

Stop using and throwing around a certain word or a slur or a phrase even after you were called out on it. If you didn't know, fine, but if you've already been told and you still continue going on like it's no big deal, then it really is your problem and you are part of the problem, no matter how small. And you can very much easily stop being part of the problem at least in this way. It really isn't that difficult to stop being an asshole.

I'm talking mostly only about slurs here and how specific words are used, but many other aspects of language and how they are used in daily life, when talking about certain issues, when in certain situations and contexts, are also just as important.