I have a tendency to argue myself into a stalemate when it comes to a number of difficult issues. I’d like to think that I’m being a good person by giving thoughtful consideration to the needs and opinions of others as I try to figure things out, but there’s a lot of evidence that sometimes I get so wrapped up in trying to work out an ideal solution that I never get anything done, and I’m not sure that’s much better than simply doing nothing about a problem. (This seems to happen most frequently in situations where there really is no ideal solution, but I’m too stubborn to give in to that realization when it strikes.) Taking a stand on anything, no matter how insignificant, will result in some negative attention; the question is how much of that attention you’re willing to put up with in order to speak up for something you believe in. Given how many of my beliefs contradict the norms here in America, I get that a lot, and I think I’ve finally developed the thick skin needed to put up with the flak that my beliefs engender in this country. Still, I do try to play the role of peacemaker whenever I can, simply because there’s already enough conflict in this world without having to needlessly make more. Again, though, sometimes conflict is necessary in order to get something done.

Last year I did a .musecast on the controversy surrounding the use of the character name “Derpy” in My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. (Yes, I’ll be doing more .musecasts again soon.) In short, some parents were offended when the show adopted the fan-given name Derpy Hooves for one of the background ponies on the show (one with a bigger following than some of the “mane” ponies) because some people believe that calling someone “derpy” is equivalent to calling them the r-word, both in terms of its meaning and the r-word’s heft as a slur. Hasbro eventually redubbed the episode to remove mentioning Derpy’s name, and also gave her a more feminine voice and undid her signature wall-eyed look in most animation frames. (The original and changed versions of Derpy’s scene, from the episode “The Last Roundup.”) Most fans of the show were livid, but soon moved on to other things.

I didn’t actually start watching My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic until months after this episode aired, but I had enough friends who were bronies/pegasisters at the time than I was aware of the controversy when it first broke, long before I watched the show in full. At the time I thought it was an interesting controversy, and I gave it a lot of thought even before I became a pegasister myself. Even back when I cut that .musecast episode a few short months ago, I was still fighting with how to come to an amicable solution for both sides. As much as I love the show, and Derpy in particular, I was also very conscious of the cutting power of the r-word, especially because I’d used it in my past when I was too young and/or stupid to know better. One of my friends is a teacher for children with special needs, and hearing her stories of dealing with her kids, and the stories they tell about how society treats them, has made me even more sensitive about everything surrounding the r-word.

“Derpy” isn’t the r-word, though, and as I’ve thought about this issue more, and even used it as a discussion prompt in my English classes, I’ve come to realize that, contrary to my original thought (and perhaps even to my own instinct), we have to defend “derpy” in order to save the language itself.

As I explained in my .musecast, the issue at the core of the controversy surrounding the word derpy, as well as other words, is the idea of linguistic relativity, or the concept that the language around us shapes us as people. One of the biggest debates when it comes to linguistic relativism is whether or not words can be inherently “bad” or what have you, or whether it’s just what we as a culture pin to that word that makes it a slur. Lenny Bruce was before my time, and Dad was always more of a George Carlin fan so I saw/heard more of him growing up, but Bruce had a brilliant stand-up bit about this whole process when it comes to the most weighty of words in the English language, the n-word. Here’s a scene from the Lenny Bruce biopic that came out after his death, with a young Dustin Hoffman playing Bruce, doing the bit. (Warning: Heavy use of the n-word and other slurs.)

Had I seen this routine when Bruce was still alive, or even when I was young myself, I might have had a different impression of it. The thing is, I was first made aware of this bit long after Chappelle’s Show went off the air, and in the wake of that show’s popularity — and young people watching the show and not understanding how Chappelle was using the n-word to show the ignorance and stupidity of racism — we did have a generation of young people who threw the n-word around like it had no meaning, taking every opportunity to use it because they thought they were being shocking or funny. Looking back, that clearly did nothing to divest the n-word of its centuries of baggage as a tool of oppression and hurt. I don’t know how we could possibly see the n-word thrown around more than during the height of Chappelle’s Show (it’ll happen sooner or later, I know), but if its explosion in usage in the early 2000s wasn’t enough to rob the n-word of its power, I don’t think it will ever go away. (Given how horribly this country treated African-Americans for centuries, and the racism that still persists to this day, I don’t think this is a bad thing.)

The thing about the word derpy is that it doesn’t have that history at all. In fact, its life, at least in modern usage, is shorter than even that of my youngest students. The word “derp” was basically invented in 1998 by Trey Parker and Matt Stone in their movie Baseketball as a nonsense syllable, which then took on its connotation of “silly” through its continued usage in following seasons of South Park. How the word became a syllable for the r-word is unclear, but it appears to have been something caused by a relatively small number of people, most of whom were the same people who were interjecting the n-word into all of their sentences after Chappelle’s Show hit it big.

These, then, are the two problems with treating derp/derpy like slurs: Not only do they not have the baggage of being used as slurs for centuries, but the concept that they are synonymous with the r-word is only shared by a relatively small number of people. If you stopped ten people on the street and asked them to define “derp,” I’m not even sure one of them would know what the word means, and yet this small subset of people who know the word’s definition — a small fraction of a small fraction — have been allowed to shift its meaning so that it’s considered a slur by some, enough so that we had this huge controversy over the Derpy character on My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.

This is, ultimately, why I can no longer look for a “middle ground” solution in this controversy, and why I think it’s important, even long after the issue has been considered settled by most, to continue to fight for the Derpy name. If any subset of people can suddenly decide that a word — even a nonsense word, a modern invention with no historical baggage at all, like derp/derpy — can be a slur, what power does that give them to influence not only our language, but through our language, our culture as well? If we come up with another word to replace “derpy” — let’s say iqejbji (I just slammed my fingers on the keyboard) — and make it explicitly clear the iqejbji only means silly and has no negative connotations at all, these people could still do what they did with derp/derpy to redefine iqejbji as a slur, so that eventually it meets the same fate that derp/derpy did. More importantly, they could do that for existing words as well. No word would be safe from this abuse.

These are the same people who throw all kinds of slurs around for no good reason. They do it to draw attention to themselves because shocking and offending people makes them feel important. I was once in that boat myself, and I still shock and offend people, but these days I only do so in the service of a greater purpose, much like Chappelle using the n-word to poke fun of racism. (Given that no one’s offered me a $50 million television contract yet, clearly I’m not as successful at it as Chappelle was.) The only way to handle these people is to ignore them, because if we allow them this power over our language then we effectively cede control over the language to them, and they will never deserve that power as long as they show such irresponsibility.

More to the point, as others pointed out (but I somehow missed before I did my .musecast), by changing that scene in “The Last Roundup,” Hasbro was basically saying that it isn’t okay to be different in the ways that Derpy is different, and that if you’re like Derpy then you need to be “fixed.” Given the lessons of inclusion that My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic has made central in the show’s world, and how the brony/pegasister fanbase has promoted these values in the real world (at a time when they are so desperately needed), this is one of the worst possible messages Hasbro could have sent, and by continuing to show the “changed” Derpy in re-airings of “The Last Roundup,” they continue to send that message. The fan animation “Save Derpy” kind of drives this point home perfectly by filtering it through Derpy’s own perspective; again, somehow I hadn’t seen it until I posted that .musecast.

Ultimately the whole Derpy controversy isn’t about a character on a television show, or even the show itself. It’s about not allowing the most malevolent and reckless among us to take control of our language and subvert it so they can get their jollies by turning everything into a chance to offend someone. This is why, for both bronies/pegasisters and people who aren’t fans of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic but still love our language, and even after all this time, it’s important to fight for Derpy Hooves and petition Hasbro to reinstate her iconic scene in “The Last Roundup.”