It’s an extremely offensive figure of speech, you fucking idiot.
You stated earlier that the word gay was in use long before it meant ‘homosexual’. This is true - it used to mean ‘happy, joyful.’ Now little kids, and grown-ups with the IQ of little kids, use ‘gay’ to mean ‘lame.’ Imagine if you were a kid in High School trying to come to terms with your sexuality - would hearing your sexual preference being bandied about as a term of abuse help you? I don’t think so! Words have power, and the way you are using this word has the power to encourage prejudice and discrimination against gay people.
And comparing the discussions on this thread to being ‘ass-raped’ and ‘gang-raped’? That’s just fucked up, get some help.
So every time someone used an offensive word, you’d ask them about it? Even if you don’t know them very well? And if they said they didn’t mean it offensively, that would wipe out the offense you might have felt? That is not how language works. God, I need some cites but don’t have time to search for them. Words aren’t simply tools to convey ideas, they influence the ideas themselves. Like a sculptor’s knife is a tool for shaping stone, words shape ideas. Using a word like gay (or black, or retarded, or American) to mean something negative gives the original meaning of that word a negative connotation too. I’m not imagining this, it is standard linguistic knowledge. Like I said, I need cites. Maybe later.
(I know, I’m very late to this thread, but I still feel the need to stick my own boot in - if I kept quiet I’d feel like I was implicitly condoning something I find offensive. Besides, there aren’t enough dykes round here, I have to broaden the clique a bit. ;))
:):D:(
