I'm LGBTQ. I know LOTS of folks in my communities who use and embrace the term f*gs. But that doesn't make it ok for others to use it.

Slurs are complicated, but the goal of my post was specifically not to discuss this slur specifically. It's fine if you want to start that conversation, I wanted to talk more generally.

I think you should follow the citations behind that sentence. 2/3 are swift dismissals from outsiders - one from a dictionary and another from the UK parliament (and this is especially vague). The latter is from a Roma advocacy group and it seems pretty emphatic: "Amongst most Romani communities this is an offensive racial slur. It derives from the word "Egyptian" due to the misconception that Roma arriving in Great Britain originated in Egypt."

Some black people use and embrace the "n-word". Weak sauce for using it generically.

It's not only present in the title. Midway through: "Louis’s mother, was a more joyful figure, and proved to be resilient after her husband’s death, sailing with Louis’s gypsy family to the South Seas."

I'm inclined to think the author is aware of modern preferences, and that Stevenson's family may have referenced themselves this way.

That's true although "Roma" is a more sensitive (and accurate) description. The linked article is still a bit weird, as RLS does not appear to be Roma or even a vagabond/itinerant figure. He just travelled a lot.

IMO it's up to the Romani to decide not the UK census site.

But in fact it seems to be the term used by some Romani groups

> The term Gypsy, which originates in the word "Egypt", mistakenly believed to be the original homeland of the Gypsies, has been controversial.[8] Some Romani activists reject the term, but it is embraced by others.[8] Although the term "Roma" was endorsed in place of "Gypsies" at the first World Roma Congress in London,[9] many Romani people in Britain prefer to call themselves Gypsies, or names that include the term such as Romani Gypsies or Romany Gypsies.[10][11][5][12][8][13] They also commonly refer to themselves as Romani or Romanies.[14]

(from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gypsy,_Roma_and_Traveller)

I believe (but can't find a clear source) that there are also Native American groups that prefer to be called Indian. This is a close analogy Egypt <-> Romani, India <-> Native Americans.

But it is true that many people only recently stopped using "gypped" as a slur. My kid was reading A Wrinkle in Time and looking for vocabulary words the other day, and I had to tell her that "gypped" was probably not appropriate for her homework and that we don't use that word anymore. So that's one reason to be aware that "Gypsy" is controversial. In my experience, many people are not aware of this fact at all because it so rarely comes up.

In the US, where this publication is based, it’s pretty universally frowned upon to use an ethnic group name as a metaphor for a character trait.

It’s also a bad editorial decision. Here we are debating the headline and not even talking about the article.

The answer to your question is "yes, but typically only very mildly".

Offense is not some Boolean, and intent matters in determining how offense something is.

For example, a kid reading Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn might unknowingly repeat a word they learned from that book that we consider extremely offensive today. We'd probably all pause that conversation and explain that they should not use that word.

Ideally, most folks upon learning that a word is offensive go, "oh, apologies, I had no idea" and the other party goes, "No problem, now you know" and everyone moves on. Doesn't have to escalate, doesn't need to be bigger than that.