It’s like the movie *“From The Hip”, *where Judd Nelson gets a sidebar and a ruling on whether or not he can use the term “asshole” to describe a plaintiff.
No other word conveys the meaning that “asshole” does.
Unfortunately, “That’s so gay” does the same thing.
“That’s so homosexual” misses the mark. So does “That’s so lame”.
Good argument but…
Ask the Black Eyed Peas about their song “Let’s get it started”. The real version is “Let’s Get Retarded”.
They want people to “get stupid”. How stupid? Retarded Stupid.
Now if that isn’t an affront to the developmentally challenged people in the world, I don’t know what is.
The Black Eyed Peas are an affront to all people with musical taste. There’s no sense in dividing ourselves up into groups.
They already did.
The thing is, the people using “Nigger” are doing it to be rude and bigoted, and the word itself has a long history of intolerant and pejorative use.
“Gay”, on the other hand, originally meant “Happy” (with sub-texts of "Colourful, and more recently “Camp”). The Gay Community themselves appropriated the word, and now they’re getting upset that a large number of people have found another meaning for the word.
I’m sure if you tried hard enough, it might be possible to trace the new “Gay” meaning back to “Camp” (as in “something so colourful and in hideous taste that it is terrible and therefore awful”) as opposed to a negative comment on homosexuality itself.
I’d be willing to be most of the kids using “That’s So Gay” don’t even know any Gay people, so even if the term might be slightly negative to a handful of LGBT people, it’s not like they’re known to the kids using the term, and even if they were, they’d either not care, or do it more to spite them.
Can white people use the word “nigger” to refer to their friends in the same way that some black people use it?
But how are gay kids supposed to feel knowing that the word used to describe them is also used to describe lame and stupid activities?
How are kids who grow up using the word “gay” to describe lameness and stupidity supposed to look at gay people? You don’t think it sends a bad signal to kids when people use the word that way?
Can I start saying “that is so Mexican” to refer to people acting lazy? Do you think if kids heard me saying that, that maybe they would draw the conclusion that Mexicans are lazy?
I’m not aware of any who do, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any.
They should “Harden the fuck up”, as we say here. (Loose translation: Grow up and deal with it). That and they should learn some context. No-one is calling them lame or stupid. Admittedly there are vast cultural differences between our two countries (homophobia here doesn’t usually have a religious backing, for example) but I don’t think patting gay teenagers on the head and saying “there, there, we won’t use that word you’ve commandeered in a way you disapprove of anymore” is a healthy solution to the issue.
No, I don’t. It’s just a word. There’s no malice attached to it, nor do I believe is there a comment on the status of homosexuality. It’s a word that’s been settled on as being suitable to conveniently express a number of situations worthy of derision. It also happens to be the same word once used to mean “Happy and Colourful” and is also used by a small but very vocal minority to describe themselves.
Everything is offensive to someone, and the more the militant LGBT crowd get upset about “their” word being used like this, the more people are going to do it to spite them. Really, the best thing they can do (IMHO) is stop caring, and let the term die out on its own- which will happen, as most slang evolves fairly quickly. Don’t have a cow, man. 
If Mexicans were lazy then a case could be argued for that. But they aren’t (certainly not the ones I’ve met), and “Mexican” has always been the name for people from Mexico. It’s not like “Mexican” once meant “Made from wood” and the term has evolved in ways a minority don’t like.
Incidentally, “Mexican” is a slang term here in Australia used by people from QLD to refer to people from NSW and VIC, and people in NSW use the term to refer to people from VIC. There’s no connotation attached to the word, it’s just a playful acknowledgement they live “south of the border”.
Okay, so if I use the term, “Jew someone down,” should I just tell my Jewish friends to get over it if they get upset? I mean, it’s essentially the same thing. I’m using Jew to mean cheap, you’re using gay to imply stupid. I’m not seeing a difference.
I hear quite a few people using the expression “Don’t be such a Jew” or “Don’t be so Jewish” to refer to someone who’s being stingy. Personally, it’s not a term I’d use, but that’s because “Stingy” is a perfectly good word to describe a financial tightass.
Also, the total number of Jewish people I know is zero, so no-one in my social circle is going to be offended by the word being used like that by anyone else because none of them are Jewish. The situation would no doubt be different in, say New York or Los Angeles.
In my experience dealing with teenagers they absolutely use the word gay to describe something as lame and they do so from the context of it being a word to describe homosexuals. Amongst teenage boys it is not uncommon for them to use ‘homo’ or ‘homosexual’ in place of the word ‘gay’
I think it is a poor argument that gay once meant something else. In the context of ‘that’s so gay’ Its pretty clearly to me that it is intended to say homosexuals are something to be looked down at.
People still use terms like ‘nigger’ or ‘jew’ to describe a person or action today and people around them understand their meaning. Just like 50 years from now, kids may still use ‘gay’ in a similar manner. The role of this campaign and society in general should be to enforce it should not be a negative descriptive term that should be used in polite company.
And you don’t think those people are bigots? I’m not Jewish, but if someone said that in my presence, there would be hell to pay for sure.
No, but we can sing My Niggas by DMX. Look it up, it’s in the bylaws.
No, I don’t think they’re bigots. No-one I know hates Jewish people- the term is just being used as a comment on the popular perspective of Jewish people as being frugal. I personally have better things to do with my time than get offended on behalf of other people, but if someone in my social circle was Jewish and objected to stingy people being referred to as “Jewish” then I don’t think anyone would continue to use the word in front of them.
I am immediately going to start a televised campaign against the word “zany” (if I can get the funding), because everyone knows that It is synonomous with “Kook”, and everybody knows that is just another synonymous, derogatory and pejorative instance of the word crazy, used with utter contempt for and insensitivity to the crazy people of the world. “That’s so crazy” and “You so Crazy”… I’m comin’ after you.
I’d honestly rather be Gay in America than crazy, because we die more.
It’s not a “comment on” anything. It’s using the stereotype that Jews are cheap. You don’t have to hate Jews to say that, either, you just have to buy into the stereotype.
Good luck with that. By the way, does “that’s so gay” mean “that’s stupid?”
Not always but I’ve heard it used that way a number of times. Most of the time I just ignore it but it is highly offensive.
Do you really believe that? I mean, either this is a put on or it’s just so incredibly naive. I’m not really that surprised you’ve never met a Jewish person, but wow…
Yes, I genuinely believe that. Like I said, there’s not a lot of Jewish people in Queensland, and most Australians have a pretty good sense of humour and can laugh at themselves, which would, I think, include most younger Jewish Australian people being able to laugh at a popular but debunked stereotype about themselves as well.
I mean, I’m from NZ originally my friends sometimes give me a hard time about it- jokes relating to sheep are a popular- but it’s all very good natured and it goes both ways too. It’s a hard concept to explain over a messageboard, but there’s a cultural tradition in this country (and NZ, and to a lesser extent, the UK) of taking the piss out of your friends with no malice intended, as it’s all in good fun.
No, not singularly. It absolutely does not mean stupid, one for one, in contextual parlance. The more you keep reinforcing that definition the more harm you do.
When I have used “Jew Down”, which is a colloquialism left over from my cultural East Side Toledoan Dialect, my mind and cognitive processes only turn to me or another getting a good deal. It is not a negative thing.
I’m not ashamed to admit I’ve used the term, because it was a tribute.