Basic Trope: Members of a group believe they, and only they, can use insulting epithets about their group.
- Straight: Alice (a black woman) can use racist terms about blacks and sexist terms about women, while Claire (a white woman) can be sexist, but not racist against black people, Bob (a black man) can say racist terms about blacks, but not sexist terms about women, and Dave (a white man) cannot be sexist against women or racist against black people.
- Exaggerated: Alice is a member of every minority imaginable, and she is a Sir Swears-a-Lot who uses language that consists almost entirely of slurs and insults directed towards those minorities, yet no one takes offense at this. Meanwhile Bob accidentally says a slur by accident and he gets executed for this
- Downplayed:
- Alice can use mildly sexist language without being called out on it, but if she goes too far, she will suffer the consequences just like anyone else.
- Bob gets away with using slurs many times without objection to him but only when playing the sort of despicable character he is type cast as on the grounds of necessity in the portrayal of issues. His works may still be declared inappropriate in some contexts but neither he nor they are called wrong per se.
- Justified:
- Alice, Claire, and Bob use the terms playfully, or to snark, whereas Dave uses it with hatred and contempt.
- Alice's friends see her as superior.
- Alice and her friends are selective.
- Inverted: Bob and Dave can use sexist terms about women, while Alice and Claire cannot. Likewise, Claire and Dave can use racist terms about black people, while Alice and Bob cannot.
- Subverted:
- Alice uses a sexist term for women, and her girlfriends look at her with shock.
- Alice is a Boomerang Bigot who uses slurs in genuine hatred, and only pretends to be joking.
- Double Subverted:
- But she refers to a mutual enemy as a bitch, and no one questions her moral fiber.
- But she gets over it and still jokes around with slurs.
- Parodied:
- Alice gets away with referring to herself as a Necromancer but becomes offended when Bob the paladin refers to her as such.
- Alice tries to claim N-word privileges about any remotely derogatory word used to describe her. Down to being called 'sluggish' for having a ten minute mile in gym class.
- Bob and Dave are allowed to call each other "sluts", "whores", and other like words since All Men Are Perverts and therefore wouldn't be offended by other men calling them such.
- Eldritch abominations insist that only they can say certain words - it isn't because they are offensive terms for them (they are) but because they require three mouths one of which speaks beyond human hearing range and would cause brain hemorrhages in humans who hear it anyway.
- Zig Zagged: Alice's friends freak out when she calls Claire a "chick", but no one cares when she calls Diane a "bitch" ... because they thought she had said "witch".
- Averted:
- Everyone believes that such terms are insulting no matter who uses them.
- The characters can freely use derogatory words without offending anyone.
- No derogatory words are used.
- Enforced: It is a biographical work and the real Alice using racist and sexist terms was a defining part of her work.
- Lampshaded: "Why is it okay for Alice to say it, but not okay when Bob says it?" "Because Alice is a woman."
- Invoked: Alice and the other female characters agree that it's okay for women (but not men) to make sexist remarks about women, seeing as how "it's not a crime if the victim consents". The same goes for racial slurs.
- Exploited: Alice uses her ethnicity and gender to throw around offensive terms with carefree abandon, in the hope that it will cause actual psychological damage to Claire, with whom she has a rivalry.
- Defied:
- Alice knows that sexist remarks against women are wrong, even if her female friends don't mind. Likewise, she knows that anti-black racial slurs are wrong, even if Bob doesn't mind.
- "I'm black, and you're black. It doesn't matter. You use the N-word around me, and you're going to eat my fist. You call me the N-word, and you're going to eat bullets."
- Discussed:
- "I don't believe in N-Word Privileges! Like all normal people, I believe it's wrong to use derogatory words, period."
- "I don't believe in N-Word Privileges! If I insult you, the point is to insult you no matter your race, sex, or creed!"
- Conversed: "Why are the women on this show so sexist? I mean, it just doesn't make sense."
- Implied: Everyone freaks out when Bob calls Alice a "chick". Bob says, "No one cared when Claire used that word."
- Deconstructed:
- Alice, believing in this trope, uses these terms, but finds out that Bob and Claire disagree.
- Claire points out that claiming that certain behavior is only acceptable if performed by a certain race is itself a form of racism.
- Dave, the blackest Token White guy and/or One of the Girls, feels alienated because he is the only one in the group who can't use the derogatory words for fun like his friends do.
- Reconstructed:
- Alice makes an effort to change the meaning of the word through her use of it so that it is no longer a slur.
- Alice then points out how the same behavior was more well known for being used by other races, so when she does it, it's at least more clear that it's being done ironically. If Claire were to do it, she could be Mistaken for Racist when Alice knows she isn't, and doesn't want her to end up in bigger trouble than her as a result.
- Dave's friends point out how there seems to be a lot of stuff towards white people that they either don't mind or even use themselves.
- Played For Laughs:
- Alice doesn't even know she's doing anything wrong, no matter how many times Bob or anyone else may point it out.
- The derogatory terms are used for Self-Deprecation jokes among members of each minority group.
- Played For Drama: Alice loses a lot of friends because they are offended by her sexist and racist language. The fact that she only insults groups she belongs to does nothing to mitigate their feelings.
- Played For Horror: When Alice uses racial or sexist slurs among a group she belongs to, it's not because she's exactly like them and thus it's "okay", but because Alice is a Boomerang Bigot and the assumed privileges lead to people not detecting the horrible things she is planning to unleash on them out of hatred until it's too late.
Back to N-Word Privileges
