# Why was this useage of "queer" offensive? **URL:** \ **Category:** About This Message Board\ **Created:** [April 5, 2022, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-this-useage-of-queer-offensive/962320 "2022-04-05T15:04:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![Atamasama](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atamasama/32/12961_2.png) [@Atamasama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atamasama)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2022, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-this-useage-of-queer-offensive/962320/139 "2022-04-06T18:44:22Z")
I did used to play a game called [smear the queer](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/smear_the_queer) when I was a kid. The term “queer” was intended to mean “strange”, and had no reference to homosexuality (to us at least). I don’t think I heard the word as a reference to being gay (usually in the pejorative sense) until later in the 90s. ---
**Author:** ![Max\_S](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/46a35a/32.png) [@Max\_S](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_S)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2022, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-this-useage-of-queer-offensive/962320/140 "2022-04-06T18:45:00Z")
Oh, okay. All’s well that ends well, I guess. I wonder if _queer people_ or _queer couples_ is also offensive, because I’ve heard that in conversation and on (modern) television. _Queers_ strikes me as especially unusual. I would also be off-put reading _gays_ as opposed to _gay couples_. ~Max ---
**Author:** ![RitterSport](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rittersport/32/6326_2.png) [@RitterSport](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RitterSport)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2022, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-this-useage-of-queer-offensive/962320/141 "2022-04-06T18:45:12Z")
It was definitely meant to be homophobic back then, even if you didn’t realize it as a kid. ---
**Author:** ![Atamasama](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atamasama/32/12961_2.png) [@Atamasama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atamasama)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2022, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-this-useage-of-queer-offensive/962320/142 "2022-04-06T18:47:57Z")
Among my cohort it wasn’t. It might have been a combination of age/time/place. I’m sure it was being used in that sense by other people elsewhere at the time. ---
**Author:** ![Max\_S](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/46a35a/32.png) [@Max\_S](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_S)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2022, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-this-useage-of-queer-offensive/962320/143 "2022-04-06T18:54:14Z")
But it was _objectively_ 🙄 homophobic, even when neither you nor your friends understood it that way. ~Max ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2022, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-this-useage-of-queer-offensive/962320/144 "2022-04-06T18:56:36Z")
> [@Max\_S](#): > > But it was _objectively_ 🙄 homophobic, even when neither you nor your friends understood it that way. We knew what it meant back in the day, we just didn’t care. Fortunately, most of us matured beyond that. ---
**Author:** ![Jimmy\_Chitwood](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f475e1/32.png) [@Jimmy\_Chitwood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jimmy_Chitwood)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2022, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-this-useage-of-queer-offensive/962320/145 "2022-04-06T19:02:11Z")
Yeah. Not sure what’s with the emoji, as that post is otherwise accurate as written. It was a slur for gay people before anyone in this thread was born. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2022, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-this-useage-of-queer-offensive/962320/146 "2022-04-06T19:13:59Z")
> [@Jimmy\_Chitwood](#): > > Not sure what’s with the emoji @Max_S’s view of language is that it is aardvark. ---
**Author:** ![Crane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crane/32/3495_2.png) [@Crane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crane)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2022, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-this-useage-of-queer-offensive/962320/147 "2022-04-06T19:14:46Z")
It is my recollection that in the 1950s male/male sex was just regarded as something horney guys did when they couldn’t get dates. It wasn’t condoned but It did not imply that they were exclusive or different. I believe the term queer became attached to those who began to seek an identity with rallies and parades and such in San Francisco. The term gay appeared later. I think I first heard it in news broadcasts about the New York riots. I thought it odd at the time. ---
**Author:** ![Max\_S](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/46a35a/32.png) [@Max\_S](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_S)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2022, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-this-useage-of-queer-offensive/962320/148 "2022-04-06T19:15:29Z")
> [@Jimmy\_Chitwood](#): > > Not sure what’s with the emoji, as that post is otherwise accurate as written. I would say that it’s not a slur within the context of a group of people who use _queer_ without any connotation of - - and **Riemann** beat me to it. But to the point, this forum is not **Atamasama** ’s childhood group of friends who apparently used _queer_ without issue, and it is not **Turble** ’s group of friends who apparently do the same. ~Max ---
**Author:** ![Dung\_Beetle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dung_beetle/32/7945_2.png) [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2022, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-this-useage-of-queer-offensive/962320/149 "2022-04-06T19:59:31Z")
Anecdote, apropo of nothing: When I was a child, my mom overheard me calling our cat “a little queer”. She was shocked. “Don’t you ever call someone that!” “But mom…he’s so weird. That’s what ‘queer’ means in this book I’m reading, Alice in Wonderland.” I was using it as a noun, but that’s how I’d heard it used by other people. ---
**Author:** ![eschrodinger](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschrodinger/32/122_2.png) [@eschrodinger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschrodinger)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2022, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-this-useage-of-queer-offensive/962320/150 "2022-04-06T20:18:36Z")
For anyone who identifies as someone covered by the slur “queer,” “smear the queer” was not some harmless kids’ game divorced from homophobia. I mean, dodge ball is already the officially sanctioned form of recreational bullying. Calling it “smear the queer” is in some ways just a more transparent label. ---
**Author:** ![RitterSport](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rittersport/32/6326_2.png) [@RitterSport](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RitterSport)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2022, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-this-useage-of-queer-offensive/962320/151 "2022-04-06T20:27:39Z")
Yeah, seriously. For example, just because some group of kids didn’t know that the nasty version of eenie, meenie, meinee, moe was super racist, that doesn’t make that version not super racist. Queer was a derogatory form until some groups started taking it back, probably as late as the 90s. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2022, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-this-useage-of-queer-offensive/962320/152 "2022-04-06T20:34:21Z")
> [@Atamasama](#): > > I did used to play a game called [smear the queer](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/smear_the_queer) when I was a kid. The term “queer” was intended to mean “strange”, and had no reference to homosexuality (to us at least). I don’t think I heard the word as a reference to being gay (usually in the pejorative sense) until later in the 90s. We played that in the 80s, and, if it had an innocent meaning, that was lost on us. We all knew it to mean what it means now. It’s possible the origins of the name do not carry that meaning, but into our group/neighborhood/peers, it meant “homosexual.” “Kill the man with the ball” was the more sanitized name of the game. ---
**Author:** ![Jimmy\_Chitwood](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f475e1/32.png) [@Jimmy\_Chitwood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jimmy_Chitwood)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2022, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-this-useage-of-queer-offensive/962320/153 "2022-04-06T20:54:54Z")
The game was called “smear the queer.” “The queer” was not a randomly chosen descriptor for the person whose ass everyone else needed to beat. Even in the 90s, we knew enough to know that we should start calling it “Rumble Fumble” instead. I knew white kids who called each other the n-bomb as an insult all the time. I’m sure many of them would now look back and say, huh, you know, I never really thought that was about _black people_ at all! This fact does not, unfortunately, mean that they had created some kind of enclave within which the word lost its meaning. If that makes me a prescriptivist, then all right. ---
**Author:** ![Max\_S](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/46a35a/32.png) [@Max\_S](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_S)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2022, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-this-useage-of-queer-offensive/962320/154 "2022-04-06T21:17:01Z")
> [@Jimmy\_Chitwood](#): > > This fact does not, unfortunately, mean that they had created some kind of enclave within which the word lost its meaning. We simply disagree on this. I see it like the tree falling in the forest. It wasn’t racist / offensive until someone with a different understanding of the word enters the picture. Giving **Turble** the benefit of the doubt, I would describe the usage of _queers_ instead of _same-sex couples_, etc, as a _faux paus_. In my opinion a modnote, not a warning seems appropriate. With repeated usage the member could lose that benefit of the doubt, however. ~Max ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2022, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-this-useage-of-queer-offensive/962320/155 "2022-04-06T21:18:19Z")
When i was a kid (in the 60s or maybe 70s) we called that game “cream the carrier”. Where “cream” was a common word for “beat up”. I had no idea my conservative town was so progressive. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2022, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-this-useage-of-queer-offensive/962320/156 "2022-04-06T22:12:16Z")
> [@Max\_S](#): > > > [@Jimmy\_Chitwood](#): > > > > This fact does not, unfortunately, mean that they had created some kind of enclave within which the word lost its meaning.⁢ > > We simply disagree on this. I see it like the tree falling in the forest. It wasn’t racist / offensive until someone with a different understanding of the word enters the picture. Giving **Turble** the benefit of the doubt, I would describe the usage of _queers_ instead of _same-sex couples_, etc, as a _faux paus_. In my opinion a modnote, not a warning seems appropriate. > > With repeated usage the member could lose that benefit of the doubt, however. > > ~Max⁢ You seem to be connecting things that don’t need to be connected. The term can have a racist meaning, while at the same time the person who used it deserves the benefit of the doubt because they didn’t realize that meaning. The thing is, kids who don’t know the meaning of a word have to have picked up that word from somewhere. Those who used “smear the queer” without knowing what “queer” meant still had to have ultimately gotten that term from someone who did know what it meant. And even if one kid didn’t realize the origin, it doesn’t mean all of them didn’t, or that someone who stumbled upon them wouldn’t, even if they don’t tell someone else that meaning. That usage still ultimately perpetuated the ideology that made the term bigoted. It still pushed the idea that “queer” was a bad thing. Unintentional bigotry still ultimately allows that bigotry to remain in society. It still performs its role in perpetuating that bigotry, even if a particular speaker didn’t know that meaning. In fact, that is exactly the reason why we discourage it. Even if the people you are talking to wouldn’t be offended, it’s still not good to use a term. They may still later learn the meaning, and assume you and others agree with that meaning. That’s why we don’t teach kids “it’s okay to say that word among your friends.” We tell them that the word _is_ bigoted. ---
**Author:** ![Atamasama](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atamasama/32/12961_2.png) [@Atamasama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atamasama)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2022, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-this-useage-of-queer-offensive/962320/157 "2022-04-06T23:17:19Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > That’s why we don’t teach kids “it’s okay to say that word among your friends.” We tell them that the word _is_ bigoted. Honestly, it probably would have been better if someone took us aside and told us why that term was wrong. When I found out later what it meant, that game took on a whole other meaning. We just didn’t know. It’s funny, because my neighborhood was very racially diverse (my closest circle of friends looked like they were put together by a progressive casting director) but I never knew anyone who openly identified as anything other than straight until I was an adult. Maybe that came from growing up in a military town; simultaneously diverse and conservative. ---
**Author:** ![Jimmy\_Chitwood](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f475e1/32.png) [@Jimmy\_Chitwood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jimmy_Chitwood)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2022, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-this-useage-of-queer-offensive/962320/158 "2022-04-06T23:28:39Z")
You’re talking about something else. You’re treating it like the thing that matters is an individual prosecution of what an individual person’s state of mind was who used a slur. I’m not. I was responding to your apparent derision at the idea that the game “smear the queer” could be described as objectively a homophobic activity, even if some individual person or group of people can’t be demonstrated to be consciously aware of it. What we disagree about, I think, is that individual culpability is just not that interesting to me, and I think it’s very interesting to you. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-this-useage-of-queer-offensive/962320.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-this-useage-of-queer-offensive/962320.md?page=8)