What's with homosexual insults?

This seems to largely support my argument, not contradict it.

Think of sex in prison for men. The man who penetrates is heterosexual and the man who is penetrated is the woman. Or “bitch”. Sexually submissive insults between straight men have this same dynamic; the insulter is in effect calling the insultee his bitch.

Depends on what your argument is. I interpreted your argument to mean that the insult was to suggest that a man was a woman. Is it an insult to suggest that a woman is a woman?

ETA: My point is that being a man or a woman is irrelevant, and that what matters is suggesting that the person is sexually subservient to you, degrading them.

To a misogynist? Yes.

I’m a grown woman and I’ve definitely told people of both genders to lick my asshole during arguments.

I don’t claim to be particularly mature, however. :smiley:

Ah yes, in the words of Claudius, loosely translated, courtesy of Wikipedia, believe it or not:

Even more loose and summarized, “you think I’m gay because I write poetry? Why don’t you suck my dick then?”

wikipedia source: Catullus 16 - Wikipedia

(sorry, too late to edit, and I apologize for so many posts in a row, but I meant to say he wrote particularly ROMANTIC poetry, as they were all poets)

Nothing beats the classics!

That is Gaius Valerius, by the way, not Claudius. Writer of immortal verses such as “Once our brief light sets we / Sleep one infinite age, a night for ever / Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred / then a thousand others, then a second hundred / then again another thousand, then a hundred” and “Give back my notes, rotten whore / You dirty whore, give them back”

I’m not sure I have encountered this and my company are not composed entirely of gentlemen. However it does sound rather boganish.

And very often, we directly use the same insults as guys even though they don’t apply. It’s kind of like how people saying “oh my God” doesn’t mean they believe in one or more gods; words don’t always mean what the sum of their roots means, and expressions don’t always mean what the sum of their words does.

Note that guys also apply those same insults to women or to female characters. I still want someone to explain to me: if all WoW paladins are gay, and my paladin is a chick, does that mean my paladin is a lesbian? And if all WoW paladins blow dick, and my paladin hasn’t changed bits since the previous question, is she actually bisexual?

I think they’ve very much lost any direct meaning.

As Nava said, me saying “christ on a bike!” has nothing to do with religion. Me saying “fuck you” to either a man or a woman has nothing to do with sex. I suspect that is very much the case for the majority of people who use these phrases.

Sure, there may be some people use them in a more considered way but really, there’s rarely any more thought behind it than there would be in saying “ow you fucking bastard” when you hit your thumb with a hammer. No meaning, just exclamation.

Very interesting, Freudian stuff. Thanks for your thoughts. Now, if I could only figure out how guys touching each other’s asses means, “Nice catch out there.”

There is a scene in Lake Placid (1999) where Betty White tells a man, “If I had a dick, this is where I’d tell you to suck it.”

Betty White is a bit of a firecracker, though.

Good point.

It still leaves the question of how and why such expressions originated, but I think you’re right that they’ve taken on a life of their own, and plenty of people use them without any thought to their literal meaning, just in imitation of other people they’ve heard using them.

That also doesn’t necessarily make them okay to use, any more than it’s okay for someone to thoughtlessly use the n-word or the r-word or an ethnic slur as a generic term of insult.

I don’t know what “the r-word” is but certainly even the other one has found a context in which it can used without being an ethnic slur. It is just the natural evolution of the English language.