To think this post was completely out of order?

[ohmano]

A woman on my Instagram put up a story and wrote, 'only poofs get hangovers' with a picture of her smiling (she is married to a man).

I messaged the woman the following....

'You do know that the word ‘poof’ is a homophobic slur commonly used against gay men? It is highly inappropriate that you have used such a word whether in jest or not and then broadcast it amongst all your followers (plenty I’m sure are as disgusted and appalled as myself). It’s not funny, it’s not acceptable, and I suggest you educate yourself on appropriate and non-derogatory language'

She responded - 'Thanks for the education. I’ll be sure to educate myself so that everyone who already knows I’m the furthest thing from homophobic, continue to know I’m the furthest thing from homophobic. You won’t know that because you’ve taken time out of your day to message a STRANGER, someone you do not know and will never know, so cheers for the disgust and judgement from one post. Anyway, I’ll let you get back to being embarrassed on behalf of random people on Instagram and selling Tropic Skincare. Hope your business is thriving'

And is now continuing to hound me. Maybe I should have kept my mouth shut but I couldn't believe how brazen she was to post such a thing. AIBU?

You could argue that virtue signallers exploit the oppression of others as an opportunity to enhance their social image, and that their willingness to instrumentalise the abuse and suffering of oppressed people towards a selfish end demonstrates a lack of significant superiority to the homophobes they call out.

Virtue signallers are likely to be much higher in psychopathy reason.com/2020/07/07/narcissists-psychopaths-and-manipulators-are-more-likely-to-engage-in-virtuous-victim-signaling-says-study/?amp

I think gay men can stand up for themselves and do need virtue signalling women to fight their corner

The mistake was approaching the woman directly, and the message itself was not worded well.

But whatever Lauren's personal gay friends think, that kind of thing shouldn't stand on a public platform. Lauren's friends might know she doesn't mean it nastily but a complete stranger won't. And she's normalising the use of the word in a pejorative way. Now the people who would like to use the word as a genuine slur have more reason to, and those gay men who aren't comfortable having it flung around like that have less weight behind them to counter it.

If you see this sort of thing, report it to the platform itself and let them handle it. To be fair, if it's Twitter or Facebook, they won't give a shit, but it's really all you can do.