What makes an offensive word offensive? Is it the context surrounding it? Is it the tone used to project it? Is it the word itself? In most cases, it’s a blend of all three.

More importantly, why do we choose to be offended? After all, it is a choice to be offended when the exchange is merely verbal, with no chance of physical altercations, correct? Ever heard of how the sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me?

Many will guard the box which conceal these taboo words until their death, cringing at each curse they hear or more counterproductively picking a fight with whomever flings the offenses around like they are just words. It’s funny because that is precisely what they are — just words.

The power of words cannot be argued: they change the world, for better or for worse. Since the purpose of bad words is to make the world a bad place or hurt people, can’t we just make them no longer bad words, but instead okay words? Words to be used casually when one is frustrated, and when a bystander hears these yester-obscene words, they aren’t dismayed at this person’s profanity, but rather sympathetic toward their bad day.

Obviously, this solution is too simple to work, because we are a complicated society who needs to make things complicated in order to preoccupy our boring lives. It is a valid argument that the omission of current vulgarities would only signal the entrance to a new wave of vulgar words, just as insulting as the last set. I also strongly believe the history of these words should be preserved — their impact on the past deserves to be studied and remembered, because the role of language is crucial, even if it is changing.

I’m going to focus on a specific slur to make my argument sensible, or maybe just aggravating. This word is traditionally used to describe a gay man, so consider that your disclaimer. As a member of the LGBT community, I feel I possess free rein over the word faggot. It’s what I am, it’s who I am, and it’s mine, but you can use it too, if you want.

Partially due to the hypersensitivity of Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation and similar agencies, the policing forces hunting down and criminalizing all who show a stint of homophobia, the usage of fag has only one connotation — it’s evil. It’s a fair assessment, since its most common use is from insecure, straight men to either straight or gay men, used to belittle their masculinity.

But that is unacceptable. Why do the insecure straight men of the world get to use my word as a weapon? It’s an option for the LGBT community to re-appropriate the word, empower it and embrace it. LGBT culture has reached a point of prominence where this is possible; it’d be symbolic of our progress from oppression to significance.

Many forward-thinking gays are comfortable with throwing fag around and being called one as well if it’s all in good taste. A majority also understandably wish for the word to be off-limits to anyone who is not LGBT.

It’d be despicable of me not to address the bully factor — the countless bully victims whose beating was preceded by being called a faggot. The word stirs bad memories for them and is still able to make them jump even when it’s employed casually and nonviolently.

If people can use it hatefully, when we could just as easily use it as a term of endearment and unity, I am going to proudly exercise the peaceful option. Maybe one day, if enough share our mind-set, faggot will be widely accepted as a descriptor of a gay man, whether effeminate or not.

We are either inches or miles away from this ideology. Most of the pessimists will point to the gangs of straight boys who still, even though in college or beyond, still use it as a way to jab under the skin of their male friends. A straight freshman in agricultural engineering defines faggot as “a homosexual person, often used as an insult,” and on how often he uses it, “My friends and I use the term at a max twice a week; however, other terms like gay are slightly more common.”

We shouldn’t take offense to this; after all, they are not the description of the word. It does not belong to them.