TL;DR - Day’s end you can call yourself whatever you want. It would be a problem calling them that when they don’t like being called that. But also don’t tell somebody else to call you that in hopes they’ll get in shit.

You were hoping they’d get in shit for using the word, so your motives in that instance weren’t exactly pure. Maybe reflect on that part. It’s still weaponising the word.

Generally speaking though, to me it’s no different than a woman going up to her group of girl friends and saying '‘Sup bitches!!!’, or Black people using the n-word amongst each other, or Roma people using g–sy amongst themselves. If a gay person wants to call themself a f-----, have at it!

I had a thing with some girl friends where we’d volley ‘slut’, ‘whore’, ‘harlot’, etc. at each other. We’d also try to get as ridiculous as possible with it the names. A random person shouting those names at us would be a bad thing, but the context and rapport we had with each other changed that in those cases. It’s also something I wouldn’t do with people I didn’t really know regardless of gender since we don’t have that background with each other.

I’m part Portuguese and if somebody wants to call me a pork chop I’m like, ‘Damn straight!’ and I’ll sometimes call myself that too. But I won’t call my cousin’s cousin that because he doesn’t like being called that and that’s fine.

EDITED TO FIX FORMATTING… (still getting used to things on this platform, lol)