The one I’ve taken back has to be Queer. I am lucky in that as a cis-woman i don’t really get the really bad slurs hurled at me, I never have.
I’ve had, what, the odd ‘lesbo’ over the years. Dyke too. But I guess whereas Queer I’ve taken back almost by default I’ve deliberately described myself as a dyke, hell the Lincolnshire half a dyke before now which I still find funny, or at any rate funnier than I probably should. I fully buy into the ideas behind reclaiming slurs, hell it’s like gay men doing a read as an art form – it’s a basic part of our culture as queers, we take back the insult and zhuz it up until it’s pretty as our way of saying fuck you.
So I’ll stick with queer and dyke because fuck you I’m not straight. It appeals to my inner desire to say fuck you to basically mainstream society as a whole. That’s a reaction to being disliked, othered, that whole shebang because I’m not ‘normal’ and people can tell that without two thoughts so sometimes I do want to raise two fingers to the whole set up.