Look, dude, the math is pretty simple. Implying that someone is gay as an insult is inherently homophobic. This is not something confusing or difficult to understand. Whatever you may have felt about Brokeback Mountain (awful movie, incidentally), you’re perpetuating something really ugly. My general rule is if it walks like a bigot and talks like a bigot, it’s probably a bigot. If you don’t want to be taken as a bigot, I would suggest that the best way to avoid it is not to act like one. You don’t know how many people are listening without saying anything. After all, I wouldn’t have said anything until someone else brought it up.
If you don’t care, then say what you want. I can’t stop you from spouting bigotry. I can’t read your mind to decide whether you actually are what you present yourself as. But like I said, using the imputation of homosexuality as an insult necessarily entails that being gay is something shameful. If you don’t mind perpetuating that idea, I can’t change your mind.
I would hope someone who claims not to hate gay people would change their mind on their own, though.
I think the usage in question is one that’s mostly common with teenagers. I’m less than half your age but I didn’t even notice the usage until relatively recently - probably after I graduated high school. But what I’m talking about is the general usage of “gay” to describe things that are bad - it’s not limited to things that are flamboyant or might be stereotypically associated with actual gay people.
Alternatively, I can chalk you up as one looking to find offense and homophobia, and dismiss your concerns as hypersensitive. In addition, you might change from one presuming homophobic slight lurks around the corner of every non-vaginal intercourse yet sex related insult. If the number of people who I know not to be homophobic who do use such insults continues to exceed the number who perceive homophobia from their use, I probably won’t concern myself with the matter.
You can decide what you want. Like I said, the math is simple. You can join up with the righties and declare that anyone who finds any evidence of racism, sexism, or homophobia anywhere is part of the mystical crowd of “offenderati”. Or you can join me in the reality-based community. It’s not hard to see that using “cocksucker” as an insult entails something homophobic.
It’s deeply depressing to me that so many people are so afraid of a little self-examination. It’s amazing, in a way, to watch folks like you (and you ain’t the only one) who repeat a bigoted behavior over and over rather than honestly examining it - it’s better to continue acting like a bigot than to stop, because in order to stop you’d have to acknowledge that there’s something wrong with your behavior. I can’t even imagine being so terrified of looking at myself, especially when it means continuing the behavior whose implications I’m so ashamed of.
Even if you’re not homophobic now, do you think you won’t successfully program it into yourself by repeating homophobic remarks over and over?
Wow…who would have guessed the directions this Pit thread would go in? Didn’t read it until now, because the OP didn’t really interest me too much. Seems to me, this was an obvious case of someone doing something they shouldn’t have done, but also pretty obviously something he didn’t think about before he did it…an unfortunate, impulsive gesture. Maybe her reaction will make him think about it the next time.
I remember once the Queen of England went to visit someone in the US. I want to say it was Jimmy Carter, either in the White House, or in Georgia. Don’t remember the details. But, someone in Carter’s family (Miss Lillian, maybe? Wish I could remember this story exactly, and can’t find it by googling) hugged the queen! She said “in the South, we hug people when we meet them.” The queen put up with it, but I would not be surprised if privately, she was Not Amused. Now, I am not comparing the 2 situations…merely trying to use it as an illustration of how Americans are a little more informal & touch-feely. Wouldn’t surprise me if the Pres temporarily forgot where he was, and what he was supposed to be doing.
Far more interesting to me is this hijack about bigoted insults. Seems to me, and I am not referring to any particular group here, that if the group in question considers a particular word or phrase an insult, then you should think twice about using it if you don’t want people to think you are a bigot. Saying “I didn’t mean it to be an insult to (fill in the blank group)” just doesn’t tend to fly, if the word or phrase seems to be referring to that particular group, and is being used as an insult. This is why words that are used as perjoratives, and were derived from the names of ethnic groups (“Gypped,” “Welsh” on a bet, “Jew” them down) are considered not nice terms to use, because thank goodness we have become a little more accepting of diversity in this culture than we used to be.
And, incidentally, it does not matter if the group in question is prone to using the same word or phrase in reference to each other. It may be a double standard, but it clearly exists in our society.
OMG, you mean there’s actual, you know, truth behind the notion that John Kerry could’ve voted along with the rest of Congress to give the President the authorization to go to war if necessary, and that it was not, in fact, a vote “for” actually going to war? You mean it’s possible to believe that the mere threat of war might actually be a deterrant to war, even if you’re not a Democrat? It’s possible to believe that the President should have the authority to go to war, yet still believe that working with the U.N. first would be the more prudent and appropriate action, even if you’re not a Democrat? It’s possible to believe, even as a Republican, that this is a true statement? (emphasis mine) . . .
You mean the vote on the Resolution was not about going to war, but about trying to keep the peace?!
Once and for all, Get This Straight; There was NO CONTRADICTION and no “change [of] stance” at all, on John Kerry’s part with regard to his position on the war in Iraq.
I should know better than to go ahead and post this, seeing as how you’re nothing but a partisan liar who’ll never admit or acknowledge the lies of your party, but the repetition of this particular lie pisses me off so much that I’m going to post it anyway.
Are you telling me that “That’s so gay” now means bad the way “bad” started meaning good over twenty years ago (by which time I was already very much out of touch, even in my tender twenties)? Oh, god, why don’t I get the memos?!?!? But if some guy walked into my house, beautifully dressed and coiffed and buffed up to the max, promptly admired every flower arrangement and antique, commented on the outstanding color coordination, and then insisted on seeing if my wardrobe was similarly coordinated, humming showtunes between his frequent shrieks of “Fabulous!” (we ARE talking hypothetically here, given that I don’t have a flower arrangement anywhere in the house for starters!), that after he left, my looking at my friend, her looking at me, and one of us saying “That’s so gay!” would not be an insult?
If someone is a walking gay stereotype, remarking on it in a joking manner doesn’t seem like bad taste to me. But yeah, those damn kids today are using “gay” as an all-purpose pejorative - “That class is so gay” or whatever. It’s not reserved for things that one would stereotypically associate with gay people, and it’s definitely reserved for things that the person wants to express a specifically negative opinion about.
Btw, I should mention that despite two out of my two brothers being gay and many male gay friends throughout my life, I’ve never met one who had a particular fondness for showtunes, or used the word “Fabulous” in anything but a humorous context. While my oldest brother does work out and dress well, that probably has as much to do with the fact that he always has been pretty darned good-looking as anything else (the only one in the family who can claim that, I’m afraid…). The two other gay men I’m closest to dress neatly and like a total slob respectively. My oldest brother also has an incredible eye for color and decorating, but again, this was his professional field (VP of Marketing for a Home Depot type chain) for many years. The other two are unlikely to be able to tell you how many rooms were in the house they just walked out of, let alone anything about the decor. On the other hand, I’ve known some straight men who made Eva Gabor in her prime look masculine.
How is it that over the past ten-fifteen years, I now keep finding myself thinking “What are these kids *coming * to these days?” It all started with the pants with the crotches at the knees and nine inches of underwear showing above - a style guaranteed to make most people over thirty just *itch * to slap the wearer silly.
And the particularly weird thing is that the kids who are using this term are probably the least homophobic generation ever; gayness has been openly discussed and ‘officially’ societally blessed (meaning it’s not good taste in social circumstances to express a negative opinion even if you are ignorant enough to have one) all of their lives. I’m not talking the ultra-righties here; they’re probably not going to use that terminology anyway - it might corrupt their infinite purity or something. Just the regular kids. How very strange. I can’t imagine my generation or the generation after mine (I grew up in the early sixties, having been born in 1956) to have ever said “That’s so black.” How very odd!
Very nicely said, Shayna. I get so tired of bozos claiming that voting for the resolution was a vote for war. ISTM that the only possible counterargument is, “You should have known, even then, that Bush was completely untrustworthy on such a grave matter.” And very few people of any note were making that claim in 2002.
How about people of no consequence, like me, who said as much before the vote, and saw Bush for the lying sack of shit he was from a mile away. Sorry, I’ve finished making excuses for the Dems who voted in favor (I don’t bother with the Pubs, who I really expected nothing but the worst of anyway, which they have delivered faithfully).
How is it that over the past ten-fifteen years, I now keep finding myself thinking "What are these kids *coming * to these days?"QUOTE]
It’s not new. I heard this usage of “that’s so gay” when I was in school in the mid-1970s. And it was so common that none of us actually thought we were calling people homosexuals when we said it. It was understood as an exact synonym of “stupid,” and although it might have originated in an anti-homosexual sentiment, I don’t think any of us knew that.
But it’s not exactly an all-purpose pejorative; its use seems to strongly overlap with that of ‘lame.’ And heaven knows there are plenty of pejoratives that have nothing in common with ‘lame.’
You can go to the dictionary and find words that are spelled and pronounced the same, but have two completely unrelated meanings - they are regarded as different words, and will have separate listings in the dictionary, rather than being treated as variant meanings of the same word. Do we know which is really happening here? When I first heard the teens use ‘gay’ in the ‘lame’ sense, it didn’t seem to have anything at all to do with homosexuality, and I still don’t hear that intonation there. But maybe that’s just me.
Isn’t the intent at the time of its use the primary issue? Do you want for some reason to hang onto the motivations of some of the users of the word some time in the past, calling “Homophobe! Homophobe!” whenever you hear it? If so, why?
Why then do you hang onto a hatred of the mentally retarded, running around calling people morons? What other bigoted insults might turn up through a search of your posts, however you might have intended them at the time?
I’m not a fan of the term “offenderati”, but that doesn’t mean that sometimes people are looking to pick a fight/to be offended about an issue. Sometimes it helps with the formation of identity to be hyperfocused on terms and qualities related to that identity. It helps to establish your status, both to others and to yourself, that you can be such a staunch defender.
Isn’t that all really beside the point, anyway? As I said, if the gay folks are insulted by it, why would any reasonably decent person insist that it is ok to say it?
