Guidelines
- Do not share the link to this education portal with others, as this is a beta program that’s available to participants only.
- If you were assigned a quiz, read the following article before taking it below. You will have 1 attempt to score a 80% or higher in order to pass.
What are slurs?
A slur is an offensive or degrading term that’s often used to discriminate, denigrate, harass, or encourage violence against someone based on “protected characteristics” such as age, race, ethnicity, color, caste, national origin, immigration status, religion, sex, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, serious medical conditions, and veteran status.
When thinking about slurs and their impact on others, it’s important to remember that languages and cultures differ and evolve. What may not have been a slur before may be regarded as one now, so it’s best to stay informed. Even if a slur may not be considered as offensive in your location, your stream or chat message can impact anyone, anywhere, and Twitch affords every user globally equal protections under our Hateful Conduct policy. Similarly, you may not consider something a slur in a certain context when talking about your identity group, but others might, including members of that group.
When it comes to slurs (and hateful conduct in general), people often prioritize intent over impact. This means that when harm is caused, we tend to emphasize what we meant by our words or actions, rather than how our words made another person feel or the consequences of our behavior. We might also excuse the offensive words or actions if we perceive them as unintentional or redirect the focus to a person’s intentions (i.e., “I didn’t mean it like that”), rather than focusing on the feelings of the person who has been harmed. Regardless of intent or whether actions and words were purposeful, the targeted or affected person is still harmed. That’s why it is critical to prioritize impact and acknowledge the harm that was caused.
Read our Community Guidelines for more details, but here are some examples of slur usage that is prohibited on Twitch:
Note: At Twitch, we allow certain words or terms, which might otherwise violate our policy, to be used in an empowering way or as terms of endearment when such intent is clear. We also make exceptions for slurs in music—and singing along to music—as long as the song itself is not hateful and the slurs are not combined with other discriminating or denigrating content.
Why are slurs harmful?
Similar to hateful conduct, slurs are harmful not just because they hurt someone in the moment. They can also lead to deeper and more significant damage over time. Psychological research has shown that being called slurs can have serious consequences on the targets’ mental health and wellbeing, including suicidal ideation, post-traumatic stress disorder, and depression. Targets also report feeling exhausted and frustrated by the process of “cleaning up hate,” which involves deep engagement with abusive images and messages, including slurs.
In addition to the impact on other individuals, using slurs helps reinforce societal inequalities or exclusion by normalizing negative and offensive perceptions about groups of people and the idea that a group of people are different or inferior. Slurs are tools for exclusion: They can communicate to someone else that they “don’t belong,” or worse, that they don’t have value, even if the slur isn’t directed at them. As philosopher of language Kent Bach observes, using or even mentioning a slur is “an in-your-face reminder” of the history behind it, that is, how it developed as a way for describing and directing hate at a specific group of people. In short, using a slur to describe a situation or even a video game character can be just as harmful as calling a specific person a slur.
Like hateful conduct, slurs are also often the first step toward dangerous and extreme forms of harassment. Following a series of posts about her on a neo-Nazi website in 2016, Tanya Gersh, a Jewish realtor in the US was terrorized by the site’s followers, beginning with antisemitic slurs before escalating to death threats left on her voicemail. As a result of the harassment, she experienced panic attacks, feared answering the phone or leaving her home, and her physical health deteriorated. The use of slurs to harass makes people understandably fearful.
It’s important to also remember that slurs are rarely experienced only once, and never in a vacuum. More often than not, the targets of slurs hear them again and again and again throughout their lives, compounding their impact. As journalist Catherine Mayer explains,
People always say of individual incidents, ‘that’s not very serious is it? Don’t let it bother you.’ But it’s the accretion of all of these incidents of low level abuse that matter.
In a similar vein, writer and activist Michelle Taylor has said:
There have been days when whole groups of people have descended onto my timeline to call me every slur and insulting name under the sun, just because I am a Black feminist woman.
The impact of hateful slurs is especially profound when people use them and hear no response from bystanders. Silence sends the signal that those hateful words are okay, encouraging others to use them or engage in other hateful behavior. Silence also harms the groups directly targeted by the slur. Not pushing back against slurs sends a message to others that they could be targeted next, potentially escalating harassment to doxxing, swatting, threats, violence, etc. They suppress the ability of people—especially vulnerable and marginalized groups—to fully participate in a community by making them fear what might happen if they do.
What can I do to learn more about hateful conduct and slurs?
You can educate yourself more about how hateful conduct and slurs affect online environments by reading some of these resources. Here are some to get started:
What if I unintentionally engage in hateful behavior and someone calls me out?
If someone confronts you, don’t react by getting defensive and invalidating their feelings. Try to listen by asking them to explain how and why they were harmed by the hateful behavior or slur, and withhold judgment. Treat it as an opportunity to learn about someone else’s experience.
What can I do to become a better citizen on Twitch and other online environments when it comes to hateful conduct and slurs?
Think about your behavior on Twitch as well as in other online environments, and ask yourself why you act in specific ways or use language that others might find hateful:
Is it out of habit? Is it because you didn’t know that it was hateful? Is it because you wanted to cause harm to someone else? Again, if you get called out, try to avoid being defensive. Instead, focus on the incident’s impact on someone else or the community.
None of us is perfect. We all make mistakes sometimes. Even if you think you were “just joking,” another person may not see it that way. That doesn’t make you a bad person. However, we all have a responsibility to reflect on how our actions affect other people in our communities and adjust our behavior so we can be more positive and responsible community members.
We also have an essential role as community members to shape community culture, and to not act as bystanders when witnessing hateful conduct and slurs. This is especially true for streamers. Research shows how online content creators tend to drive behavioral habits because they’re role models and leaders of the communities they create. Most people agree that hateful conduct and slurs are harmful and have no place in online communities—but taking action against it can be daunting. In a recent survey of online gamers, 76% of participants agreed that hateful conduct and slurs should be confronted, but less than 20% reported that they had actually confronted someone who was acting in a hateful manner or using hateful slurs. The reluctance is understandable, but unfortunately, it adds to the problem by normalizing bias, exclusion, and harassment. Instead, you can act as an ally by:
Note: If you’re a creator, you are responsible for ensuring that content that appears in your channel abides by our Terms of Service and Community Guidelines. If hateful or harassing content does appear on your stream or chat, we expect that you take the necessary steps to mitigate this behavior and ensure that it does not occur again.
Additionally, you can also help by speaking out about hateful conduct and slurs and why they are harmful, applauding and amplifying positive content when people are acting respectfully, and reflecting on your behavior to assess how you can contribute more positively to the community.
Again, hateful conduct is too often normalized in online spaces, as we see in this example from a study by Dr. Stephanie Ortiz on how men of color have come to accept racism in online gaming. A gamer was asked how he copes with racism in online gaming and responded:
I don’t care [pauses].
Well, let me rephrase that. I mean, I cared about it for too long. . . .
Ignorance is exhausting to deal with. . . . I’ve heard it for so long, and I harbored a lot of resentment against these strangers I would never meet in my life. I had to make it stop hurting.
Stopping the hurt felt by so many vulnerable and marginalized communities in online spaces can start with you.