But seriously: Homo erectus as an insult, really? I’ve never seen or heard this anywhere.
Wrong Genus. 
Do people tend to think of Homo erectus as more bestial rather than human? 'Cause I read a novel about an East African H. erectus community—Daughter of Kura by Debra Austin—and it portrayed them as fully human in terms of emotions and social organization. Their technology was limited to fire and simple Paleolithic stone tools, but they already had cuisine and social rituals, and even a form of nonverbal language.
The main dramatic dynamic in the story is when someone comes to the village trying to spread religion, which they’d never heard of before, and they were all “What the fuck is this nonsense?” and they were concerned that if religion caught on, it would mess everything up. The religionists started a jihad and took over the village until the Kura people fought back and kept them at bay. I found that unexpectedly interesting.
What about “Homo homo erectus”
OK, I’ll just call someone a Robust Australopithecine if I mean to say he’s evolutionarily backward.
But really it sounds like a gag from the GEICO Cavemen show.
Yeah, really. “Enigma” would just get you the “huh?” look and some of the audience would wonder if you meant to say “enema”.
And we have recorded examples of the genus-name as a veiled insult going back at the very least to the attacks against Claude Pepper and his family of matriculated homo sapien thespians.
I think most people have no idea what H. erectus was. As far as the scientific community goes, it’s generally thought there was no language or a very primitive one. More beast than human? Probably closer to us than to chimps in behavior, considering the timeframes. Matriarchal (as in the novel you reference)? Highly unlikely. They probably had fire, but it’s unclear if they cooked food.
*H. erectus *is also used a catch-all term for populations that span ~1.5M years, and one might find the early populations to be quite different from the later ones.
I heard this one on the school playground a few times:
PERSON A: “Are you a homosexual?”
PERSON B: “No!”
PERSON A: “Are you a Homo Sapiens?”
PERSON B: “…”
(It seemed like an awfully long way to go for such a weak payoff. What was Person A supposed to say, exactly? “Haha, you’re not human!”?)
When I was a teenager and my dad called me “homo erectus” it meant he wanted me to fix my posture. He hated when I slouched.
If you call someone a homo erectus and mean it as an insult (because it sounds like gay guy with boner), then either you’re 11 years old, or you have no idea how to insult someone.
This is like me saying to a (hypothetical) guy Richard who pisses me off, “oh yeah, well your name means penis!”
I’m trying to think of a context when it could be used homophobically. The closest I can come up with is a gay man using it as a fairly clever description of himself at a hot and heavy moment. If you’re trying to insult a gay man, the pun is just too silly to make the insult work.
Plus, anyone who is openly gay has probably heard similar jokes a bazillion times, so it’s more pathetic than anything else. Assuming it’s just a verbal taunt, and not something that could become physical.
In grad school, we used to call our gay office mate, who was notably horny, Homo erectus. He thought it was hilarious.
Of course, the other nicknames among us office mates included Larry Lust, Brad Bondage, and Bobo Bestiality, so his wasn’t so bad.
It sounds like the old, “your epidermis is showing!” joke.
Well, the question isn’t whether it’s a witty homophobic insult. I wouldn’t expect much in the way of sophisticated humor from the sort of person who’d be making homophobic insults in the first place.
OP, more context, please. Were you and your significant other insulting this unpleasant person to his face or behind his back?
If I remember my grade school biology class this is a scientific name for an organism.
My vote went to “Not homophobic” although I have to wonder if your SO was joking or drinking when they made this remark. :dubious:
Long time readers of my threads will be unsurprised that it was yours truly being insulted in this manner. Can’t remember why, but it did spark a much heated debated over whether if you said it to a gay man it could be taken the wrong way, and nobody wants to be taken the wrong way by a homo erectus.
Pretty sure that Homo Erectus is not an insult of any kind.
Homo Flacidus on the other hand…
Another vote to just play it safe with “Australopithecus”.
I think anyone using it to hide a homophobic slur would stick with the more common Homo sapiens. I really can only imagine Homo erectus being used that way as a specific part of a joke.