WARNING: To those that go further... there will be a lot of unpleasant words below.
Please, PLEASE do not enter and then later claim you got duped.
The channel changer is in your hands and this is your opportunity to go elsewhere.
With that out of the way...
...can we be brutally honest about words? Specifically hate words?
The written letter set "K*ke" is exactly the same in both connotative and denotative meaning as the word Kike.
Removing the "i" and replacing it with the "*" changes absolutely and exactly nothing.
The intent in both cases is to clearly transmit a pejorative term for a jewish person from the written page (or screen, in the case of a blog) to the reader.
Likewise, c*nt is cunt, n*gg*r is nigger, f*gg*t is faggot and b*tch is bitch.
There are no style points with hate words.
You're either using them or you're not.
Further... all of those words are completely voluntary.
They are chosen by the writer for the express purpose of communicating a feeling of anger or disgust or hatred or, in some very limited cases, where the user is trying to redefine the meaning, for humor.
Where this last point is concerned, the general rule appears to be that ONLY those victimized by the word have the right of reappropriation.
This may be fair... maybe not... but I'd be hard pressed to really argue it.
I have, tongue-in-cheek, taken on the phrase "using profanity for good since 2004" as my, I don't know, credo and I do that because in the first SYFPH diary I wrote:
Shut your fucking pie-hole... if the word "fucking" has you in a tizzy. Fucking is the reason you and I are here today. It is a word without nuance and I chose it EXACTLY for that reason. There is no way to escape its denotation or connotation or are-you-absolutely-paying-attention?
Looking back, I denounce (or renounce or whatever the word is now) the first half of that statement because if the word "fucking" put someone in a tizzy I damn well should have been ready and willing to accept that fact.
Otherwise I could have gone with "fricking" or "fracking" or "f'ing".
But "fucking" was the word I wanted and "fucking" is what I meant and it was an attempt to start a fight, which... well... I accomplished... for some good and some ill.
See, I absolutely love words, because they are my stock in trade... because the choice between "walks" and "saunters" and "meanders" can reinvent an entire paragraph... because I'm utterly and stupidly dyslexic and so simply getting the damn letters from my brain to the keyboard an onto the screen in the correct order is a challenge.
And so it's really vital we all realize that the sentences "That Hillary Clinton has done some terrible things" and "That bitch Hillary Clinton has done some terrible things" are two TOTALLY different entities.
And though I DO NOT THINK IT A CAPITAL CRIME to choose the latter, let us at least be mature enough to admit that TO SOME "bitch" is a hate word against women and that "b*tch" and "b**ch" and "b***h" are all "bitch" and that one doesn't choose to qualify the junior Senator from New York with a phrase originally associated with a female dog in the same casual way one qualifies the difference between a "flower" and a "yellow flower".
So, if you're going to call someone a "bitch" you'd better well be ready to own it.
Conversely, in my clearly not-very-humble-option, we should absolutely NOT endeavor to drum all the hate words out of our language or our writing, because doing so only pushes their intent deeper underground and deeper into our hearts.
Instead I'd prefer we simply acknowledge these words... and their meaning... so that before we hit PUBLISH we are hopelessly, stupidly and completely AWARE we've taken on their full weight and baggage.
But then again... that's just one fucking Kike's opinion.