I wouldn’t say I would be offended, but it’s distasteful and I would think the person who said it was behaving like a idiot teenager.
What is funny is there is another thread going on right now where someone is trying to argue that the word “faggot” is *not *a slur against gays. :rolleyes:
Is it just me, or have there been more tears on the SDMB than usual these days? Where’s the option for “It’s offensive and distasteful; That’s why you should use it.”?
I’m bisexual, so do I half count?
In my eyes, it’s context sensitive, but generally frowned upon. From the teenager demographic, it generally strikes me as ignorant and lazy. From folks older than that, it’s sometimes ignorant, sometimes offensive.
That said, I say it semi-frequently and have several friends who do as well. In our use, it’s generally used when you’re trying to sound a little bit ignorant, and the fact that we can all trust each other not to have a homophobic bone in our bodies helps.
Not gay. Absolutely not offensive. Usually.
Not gay, didn’t vote. I don’t use the phrase “that’s gay” as a substitute for “that’s lame”, but if I were prone to do so I would probably not use it much for fear it could be misinterpreted as hostility on my part, even though none was intended.
Absolutely disgusts me as a Gay person.
As long as gay kids are still getting bullied and driven to suicide, it’s offensive. If we lived in a world without homophobia, it wouldn’t matter.
No, it’s not just you. This board is no longer the place many people claim it is.
I’m not gay, and my opinion matches up with the one featured on South Park. It may have originated as a slur, but, like “going Dutch,” “being gypped”, “welshing”, or “Indian giving,” no one who uses it really associates it with that anymore. It just does not seem to be correlated with homophobia.
Although “gay” as in overly feminine or prissy is still associated with homosexuality, so I understand that being offensive. Why should effeminate mean bad?
If we’re going to complain about the use of the word gay, then we should also complain about calling people* dicks and cunts. Or calling someone a boob.* Why sexual organs are considered a pejorative term I’ll never understand.
I’ve never heard anyone call someone else a gallbladder. “Listen up, you fn gallbladder!”
Thinking that the phrase does not express a rejection of gays is a mistake. It would betray self-loathing for me to socialize with people who’ve used that expression as though they had not just pre-emptively objected to the person I am. Essentially it would be like this:
Person: Hi! I hate your guts. How are you?
Me: Hey! Fine thank you. How are you yourself?
Everyone should be perfectly free not to like me but if someone feels hurt or is indignant for me interpreting his or her rejection of part of my being as a rejection of part of my being then the most reasonable solution is that they clean up their language. Why should anyone be offended that I’m offended that they’ve offended me? Stop doing it then.
Straight female, I find it offensive.
I once delivered a ‘‘you should know better’’ lecture to my 14-year-old SIL after she publicly declared something to be gay. Her response, ‘‘mumble mumble it’s not meant to be offensive to homosexuals, it’s just, like a word.’’
We learned less than a year later that she is a lesbian. I’m not sure if she’s re-evaluated her thinking on this or not.
As a straight female, who was married previously to a man with cerebral palsy (who is also bi, if not actually gay) I found lame to be horrific. My ex would use it sometimes, (using “gay” in that context pinged his offense-ometer,) but the he would write pages of “poetry” (stream of consciousness rants) about being crippled but not lame, or is he lame but not crippled.
I try to express that concept in other ways. I just asked the Beau what I say he says he hasn’t heard me use that construction in the four years we’ve been together. I think I might use “unfortunate” occasionally.
I dislike it very much. Simply put, using ‘gay’ to mean ‘crap’ makes it sound like being gay is crap. There’s no such thing as ‘just a word’ and the meanings of homophones (heh) have an effect on each other - although it’s not like gay for sexuality and gay for cap are unrelated - that word wasn’t randomly chosen to be used as a slur.
Eh? But it’s offensive to a whole group of people. You’re not really recommending slurring whole groups of people, are you?
did gay mean lame before gay meant homosexual?
Not according to Wikipedia. Sounds like they both came into usage around the same time.
I have to disagree about this. “Gay=homosexual” began in the 20s or 30s, and entered the mainstream in the late 60s to early 70s. “Gay=lame” probably goes back no further than the 90s.
Well, anecdote here, back in the olden days when dinosaurs roamed the earth, Ronald Regan was president, and boys wore their pants at the waist (with Jordache embroidered on the butt) I used it reflexively. When, during the Lord of the Flies type Hell that was the grade eight camping trip, stupid kissing games broke out(Stupid, because A) I wasn’t involved, and B) the only guy who tried to kiss me was definitely not desirable to me at all.) When undesirable boy smacked a wet icky kiss with Dorito crumbs in it I said “EVER GAY!”
For the rest of the trip the joke was that I was really male and therefore I thought a boy kissing me was “gay”. This may also contribute to my not using that expression anymore.
Do people with walking disabilities find the term “lame” offensive as a synonym for unhip or square?
This is pretty much my attitude. I don’t get worked into a fury by it but I find it obnoxious and objectionable.
Oh, gay male here.
Of all words these young people could have latched on to, why did it have to be “gay”?
I can see some homosexuals aren’t offended by word being described as something being “lame”, or “week”. I know not everyone who says it is a Homophobe.
It’s just…
What did **anything **having to do with the word “gay” make it a candidate for describing something “bad”, (other than useing as a way to bash gays too), I don’t get it? It annoys me because it’s, in fact, lame IMHO.