New Delhi: In a classroom discussion on the text of Umrao Jaan, the political correctness of the word prostitute came up. Prof Rita Kothari then reminded the class that word ‘R***’ is used in the original Urdu version of the text. The question then was: should we stay with the text or expunge the word?
This classroom discussion mirrors the discussion on the internet surrounding the ‘R’ slur.
Content creator and psychologist Divija Bhasin, who started the discussion, has made the entire internet uncomfortable. Bhasin has started a ‘proud r**’ movement**, which seeks to dis-empower the word by owning it. The word ‘Proud R’ is in Bhasin’s Instagram bio, and her reels discuss the word. A lot of her followers, some of them minors, have started adding the word in their bio. It’s a slur used against any woman who exercises sexual autonomy.
At the heart of Divija’s campaign is a bid to re-appropriate the derogatory, mean slur. Bhasin is asking ‘what’s in a word’ and the world is paying attention. She seems to put the R word in the same category as other slurs like ‘slut’, ‘bitch’, ‘negro’, which have been reclaimed over the years. Bhasin (@awkwardgoat3) is a popular creator with more than five lakh followers on Instagram. She is often subjected to abuse in comments since her content revolves around women’s empowerment.
This is not the first viral moment for r___ on the internet. Earlier in a viral tweet Kavita Krishnan had said she’d own up to be called being r***, it is association with the word ‘sanghi’ which would be embarassing for her.
“I felt empowered to make a whole YouTube video about it because I talked about it in my stories and my female audience shared stories of being called randi by their parents. I realised the problem doesn’t just concern creators like me. It’s also happening to women belonging to regular households, “ said Bhasin in an email response to ThePrint. “I felt that they needed a voice and that’s why I made the video. I was also helpless and frustrated because reporting comments like this doesn’t do anything. It doesn’t go against the community standards according to Meta and YouTube.”
But can a movement of this sort own and claim the word? Professor Rita Kothari of Ashoka University said she doesn’t think so. She understands the politics of it.
“You can’t evacuate a popular memory of a word. Those are encrustations upon a word over a period of time, these could be good, derogatory, you cannot now manage or engineer a word which comes from Polysemic history,” Kothari said.
She said she understands separating shame from the word itself, but “from that place to go to a concerted campaign seems like a big leap.”
Challenge of language
From her small room in GB road, Sunita, a sex worker, is keeping a close eye on the development of the campaign online. It is not going to change her life in any way or form, though she said she respects it. According to her, women who are subjected to the slur can never understand the violence that comes with the reality of being a sex worker.
“It will never be easy for women like me to yell proud r** on the top of our voices. Unless you understand the lived experience of being a R* and the violence associated with it, you can never normalise it for us,” she said.
Everyone on the internet has an opinion on the discourse started by Bhasin, but the actual community that endures the violence of the reality of being in the profession does not have a say in how the movement is going.
According to professor Santosh Kumar who teaches Sociolinguistics at a University in Bengaluru and holds a PhD in Linguistics from DU, observes that throughout history words associated with marginalised groups such as gender, caste, colour, disability etc. were subject to semantic derogation. However, these words have been re-appropriated by the community as a part of identity politics and the R word is among the many movements of ‘reclaiming’ words.
“This is not the first time in the history of linguistic regeneration, it happens with words that gain derogation in their usage. It can be seen as an attempt to reclaim the word and make it a kind of a pride or badge on the sleeve in order to subvert the semantic connotation. These linguistic politics are common and it is nothing new,” Kumar said.
Just like the ‘n’ word was reappropriated through a complex process by black people, especially through 20th-century hip hop tracks. And the words ‘slut’ and ‘bitch’ have been claimed over time. ‘Chamar’ has also been reclaimed. And so has the word ‘disabled’.
There are fewer examples of Hindi words being owned and reframed. And therein lies the challenge.
Kumar highlighted how there’s an element of misogyny in the way words also follow the trajectory of changing connotations and denotations. “Words only used for female gender go through semantic shifts,” he said.
According to a paper titled Confining words: an analysis of misogynistic slurs and their subordinating force by Matilde Graziano, published in Phenomenology and Mind in 2024, a line separates ‘slurs’ and ‘generic insults’
“Terms like asshole or bastard convey a negative attitude towards an individual regardless of the social group they belong to. Slurs by contrast target individuals as members of a specific social group, and therefore demean the individual and social group in question,” she writes, arguing that a word without a ‘neutral’ term cannot be reclaimed.
The ‘R’ word doesn’t have a neutral term to fall back on.
The last time a feminist movement aimed to reclaim a word was SlutWalk in 2011, which originated in Canada to become a transnational feminist movement. The idea resonated globally with concerns about victim-blaming and the normalisation of sexual violence. Within six months of the Toronto protest, activists had organised satellite marches in over 200 cities and at least 40 countries across six continents.
While the core message of “My Dress Is Not a Yes” remained consistent, the marches were independently organised and often adapted locally. For instance, in Latin America, they were sometimes renamed “Marcha das Vadias” (March of the Sluts) or “La Marcha de las Putas” (The March of the Whore).
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Identity politics of Bhasin owning the word
Bhasin’s videos are going viral, and her campaign is talked about in office conference rooms, by creators online, and in Men’s Rights Activists circles. Her first reel, kicking off the ‘Proud R*’ movement, has 7 million views.
Bhasin is also constantly posting screenshots of women writing who DM her. Bhasin argues that she is not the one to ‘normalise’ the word, it is already being used constantly online and offline against her and other women, young girls. Many parents use it against their daughters, and so do men on the streets. The comment section is full of men still using the slur against her, which further proves her point that the word is already being normalised by men in everyday vocabulary.
The biggest accusation against Bhasin is influencing minor women, who are also adding proud r*** to their Instagram profiles.
“Teenage boys call me randi in my comments. This word was already normalised for minor boys. There was no outrage on that. Everyone can see the comments they make in female creators’ comment sections. But no one says anything.”
“It seems like the problem is that teenage girls, who are already called randi by their parents, are saying they have no shame associated with this term now. The problem is with the fact that they have decided not to be victims anymore,” Bhasin, the founder of the Friendly Couch, said.
Activists working with the sex worker community are against the targeting of Bhasin but they see her campaign as a ‘clickbait’ exercise.
“The challenge lies in the approach and the claim that this will become a “movement”. It won’t. We all understand how social-media content ecosystems work, and the person who stands to benefit the most from this clickbait exercise is none other than Awkward Goat — an upper-caste woman with influence and reach,” Juhi Sharma, Founder, Light Up (Emotions Matter Foundation), said.
Sharma argued that it is not Bhasin’s right to claim the word in the first place. “Nothing in this viral sensation changes conditions at the grassroots for women who are sold, coerced, or forced into sex work. It overlooks the gravity of their circumstances — the trauma, addiction, sexual violence, and structural neglect faced by sex workers. It does not do their realities justice,” Sharma added.
Prof Santosh Kumar said the word being used as a misogynistic insult itself can traumatise a person and put them in a position to be able to reclaim it.
In her paper, Graziano argued that misogynistic slurs are usually not owned and claimed even for camaraderie purposes.
“Firstly, some women believe they clearly place themselves outside the category of, for example, ‘sluts’: they believe the term does not apply to them. Furthermore, women also frequently use these terms to describe other women with certain behaviours, or even to self-identify when judging themselves negatively,” she said.
Bhasin, in the meantime, is doubling down, standing tall in the face of the online abuse and criticism.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)