The entire point was to strip the word of the power to hurt us. We embraced it by refusing to be offended by it. We were saying “you can’t hurt us with that word, we now feel empowered when we hear it.” 

During this time I saw an interview with a gay man who’d been arrested while wearing a “We’re Here, We’re Queer, Get Used To It” t-shirt. He was put into a holding cell with other detainees who tried to verbally abuse him. They started out by calling him queer but after seeing his t-shirt, and him not reacting to that word, they started stumbling over their words trying to find a name to call him. They finally settled on repeatedly calling him a “sissy” which, by the late 90s, had become a very out-dated slur toward queer men and was a laughable effort by these hyper-masculine and sexist bullies

When they tried to call him a queer it had no power because embracing the word, no matter who said it, had taken away that power

dude.

what a psychiatric advance directive does is put limits on what the psychiatrists assigned to you can do. you can appoint your own person to be your legal representative, someone you trust who knows you and cares about you. you can also specify what hospitals you don’t want to be sent to or what doctors you don’t want to see or medications you don’t want to take or whether or not you consent to electroconvulsive treatment. you can also say what you do want, like i put down that they decided to institutionalize me, i wanted it to be at a specific psych ward i’d already been to and had a not terrible time at. and now, if i ever get declared incompetent, psychiatrists are legally not allowed to put me back on the meds that gave me a seizure. 

“German frog.” Strand magazine. July-December 1896.