Not knowing that is SO gay!
Damn you!
:smack:
So if I saw an odd stick of wood in a bundle of sticks of wood that were on fire at one end, that somehow seemed more cheerful than the others, and I said, “Look at that queer gay faggot!” people would get all over my case?
I’m shocked, shocked I say!
Spare a thought for these poor people when you casually toss out double entendres.
Imagine how the Gay family feels.
I’m not kidding. Gay is a family name.
Turning an innocent word into some sex thing is a real dick move.
Is that true? (the derogatory thing, not the offensive thing. I know Oriental, like Chinaman, is no longer the preferred nomenclature). I had understood it to be the case that Oriental was frowed upon because it defined a people by their location in reference to the West (i.e. “east of what”) and therefore perpetuated the “othering” of East Asians.
There’s also the online tribulations of this XBox gamer from Fort Gay.
I’m shocked, shocked to find that ribaldry is going on in here.
Kids today with their double entendres and code words and phrases that cause juvenile giggling. Back in my day, words had only one meaning, and we liked it that way.
Grumpy old man!
I remember this story from some time ago, after a competition held by Mr Brain’s:
OK, I’m a humourless old prat; but I get so sick of the endless, automatic, knee-jerk nudge-nudge-wink-wink stuff – has me wondering at times: is the entire population of the planet, twelve years old?
I’m sure that a hundred years ago, various sub-groups had their own off-colour meanings for words in general currency; and enjoyed among themselves, great hilarity about same – but the relatively primitive communication media of those days, were less conducive to such crap “going viral” world-wide.
There is professional golfer named Brian Gay. Not very famous, but he’s won a few tournaments. As some of you may know, the caddies all wear some sort of vest or whatever at each tournament with their employer’s name on the back. Tiger’s says “Woods”, and Brian’s says “Gay”. Gotta be very comfortable with your masculinity to walk around in front of 10s of thousands of sports fans every week with “Gay” written on your back!
I went to middle school and high school with a Gay. He played football and we all gave him shit on game days when he wore his jersey. He was cool though. The Gays were really nice people. He became a cop.
Alright, youse gays can have queer if we straights can have rainbows back.
mmm
The mentality that a group has a right to actually take a word and make it taboo for you to use is bad.
First of all, it’s an act of separatism in the fact that it gives some people the right to use a word, but not others. This causes more rifts between people on the outside of the ‘community’ who are prejudiced, those on the inside who are prejudiced due to bitterness, and makes it harder for those who are first seeing themselves as ‘other than straight’ to bridge the gap, which is now filled with bloodthirsty sharks.
Furthermore, it’s what you say and your meaning that counts. Not the words you use to say it. If you use queer in the original sense, that is cool. If someone doesn’t get it, explain your meaning. If they stubbornly continue to protest, then that person has a major problem. Making a problem and an offense out of nothing is another backwards thing to do.
There’s also a new use of the word queer to denote sexual orientation, more specifically.
“Queer” is now a word that kind of serves as the “other” or the “none of the above” function of sexual orientation labels. Someone who doesn’t wish to specify, or feels they can’t specify, their sexuality as being straight, gay, bisexual, asexual etc.
Who might this apply to?
Someone who loves women romantically but lusts after men physically. Someone whose preferences have changed, even gone back and forth throughout life. Some people are rock solid one-way their entire life, others are ridiculously fluid. Queer is a good term for this and an accurate application to its original meaning.
There needs to stop being such walls between “gay” and “straight” people. As someone who once experienced a change in my original identity as straight, it makes most people uncomfortable to be thought of as something other, something in a new category. People are just people, and your being straight doesn’t mean that any gay person has any authority telling you what words you can and can’t use. You know your meaning and you have every right to express it.
The next step with society’s understanding of sexual orientation is to make less of a deal out of it… it should be about as important as, say, whether you are right- or left-handed, pr what types of food or music you like.