+19
If society wants something to seem unacceptable, society refuses to name said something. If your parents don't want you to keep an animal as a pet, they tell you not to name the animal. Who is the magical world's most evil wizard? He Who Must Not Be Named. If people did not by nature name every new concept they encountered, no matter how abominable the concept might be, people would not accept these concepts by any means. amirite?
Or they give it a really demeaning and misleading name, like faggot for gay men or shemale for trans women.
If "fag" and "shemale" were the first and only words used to identify gays and trans people, then the words wouldn't be slurs.
But even by giving gays and transgender people ANY sort of name, they've acknowledged their existence. By that simple act, civilization has opened the world to both those concepts: homosexuality and transexuality.
Oh I agree completely, I was just stretching it a bit and meant that they were coined to make people think these people were just freaks meant for public amusement, instead of worthwhile members of society.
With science, we name newly discovered principals and theories to share them with the world. We name newborn children also.