Yes, this! Exactly! Even if it were about anal rape… what does that have to do with being a gay slur?
And if you have butthurt someone, doesn’t that make YOU the gay one, going around raping guys?
However, I’m going to go way out on a limb here and posit that when straight men are having anal sex, it’s not their butt that’s likely to get hurt.
Not always true.
In the chan4 culture of Internet crassness, they’re often linked. It’s that mindset that has taken what once may have meant ‘spanking’ into ‘anal rape.’
Threatening one’s enemies with being anally raped goes back to antiquity, and unfortunately there is a lot of overlap between the idea of rape as a way to establish masculine dominance and the stigma attached to people who are penetrated for pleasure. They are deliberately unmasculine! How dare they subvert the dominant paradigm! I don’t pretend to understand the mind of a rapist, but it’s a very longstanding idea that the “catcher” is much more gay than the “pitcher.”
“Butthurt” may have started innocently enough, and it may be used innocently. A lot of people use “gay” equally innocently to mean “uncool.” The fact is, being gay is still stigmatized, and a lot of that stigma is (still!) based around the idea that gays are effeminate men and / or that they are dirty because of anal sex.
I certainly took it as anti-gay when I first saw it. The spanking reference seems odd, because spanking isn’t nearly as common as it used to be, and the phrase isn’t that old. I really don’t see “butthurt” as “having a stick up one’s ass” [which seems a bit like “anally penetrated,” anyway] or “extra anally retentive.” YMMV, but you lived without the word ten years ago, try living without it now and see how it goes.
I thought getting butt hurt was the result of having your panties in a wad.
It never occurred to me that someone would think its a gay slur.
Related, I always thought of it as the above or “Someone who just got their ass kicked/beat”.
Me too. I never associated with anal sex or rape of any kind. Or even spankings. Maybe I never gave it enough thought.
I don’t use the term, but count me among those who never saw it as a gay slur. I never saw it as a reference to anal-rape either. I always saw the comparison as being made to a whiny kid, presumably spanked. Sure, maybe spanking isn’t all that common now, but for many who would use the term, they grew up with it, so it’s all the same.
You mean to say it doesn’t have a cowboy origin?
It sounds a lot like “saddle sore” but a little more cheeky.
I don’t think this is a fair comparison: the specific word “gay” originated as a widely used pejorative description of sexual orientation, and the extension to “anything uncool” is a clear connection to that pejorative meaning. Anyone who uses “gay” to mean “uncool” is clearly aware of the fact that the usage is related to the idea that “gay” means “homosexual”. I haven’t seen any evidence that “butthurt” started out as a gay rape slur, or was widely used in that sense. There’s no reason to assume that a person using “butthurt” is being cavalier about a long history of rape-as-domination. I would assume that someone using “gay” is aware of the full range of connotations.
Now, you can certainly argue that whatever the origin, some people take it that way, and it’s polite to avoid using it, as it can be hurtful and alternatives exist: the same argument exists for not using “niggling” or “niggardly” or “jury-rigged”, and I am actually pretty sympathetic to it. But it’s not the same as using “gay” to mean “Uncool” and then being all like “What? I didn’t mean it that way”.
I always saw it as referring to anal rape. I’m open to being corrected if someone can piece together the definitive etymology of butthurt.
If it helps, here are some of the synonyms for butthurt that have congealed together on imageboards:
buttmad; buttdevastated; assravaged
And there’s a meme where you write a wall of text of belligerent nonsense over an anime portrait that usually ends in a creative butthurt synonym. Here’s some examples from that:
hineyhustled; analcrusaded; bootywrecked; assdamaged; buttmutilated; buttplundered; anally anguished.
None of this helps determine the original meaning of the phrase but it may be helpful to see the associations made by people for whom accusations of butthurt are an art form.
I always thought it was in the sense of a kid having a sore butt from being spanked. Never once did I think of sodomy.
Never had hemorrhoids, then?
Yes, I associate the phrase with either spankings or ass-kickings. The gay reference seems odd and unlikely.
I said “likely”, so how about we actually don’t pretend I said “never”?
Like some others here, it never even occurred to me that it’s an anal rape reference. This is seriously the first time I heard of it. I always assumed it was a reference to getting spanked.
That’s my reading, that “butt-hurt” means “upset about the entirely predictable consequences of ones own bad behavior.”
Whether this normalizes child abuse is a different thread – but a discussion I have had.