in the 50s the derogatory term for homosexual was “Fairy”.
That was one (and still is) but it was never the only term and I question whether it was the most common.
ETA: I see the point is addressed above. (Man, I wish we could still trash our posts when we mess up like this and catch it quickly.)
Or pansy.
Personally, I don’t mind the word “queer”, or when other people refer to themselves as queer.
But reading the post that started this whole thread I find the use of “the queers” by a person of unknown background a problem. The same way I would hearing someone ranting about “the Jews”, “the gays”, “the blacks” and similar.
I read that phrase as very derogatory and dehumanizing. Perhaps not in every context, but in a context free and presumably “neutral” way it set of my alarms mentally.
There you go!
On a related note, I couldn’t help but notice the ONLY time Fred ever owned a cat was during the end credits. A queer detail perhaps, but there it is.
As long as we are talking old timey slang, has anybody ever heard anyone say “light in the loafers” in real life? I’m pretty sure I heard it in old black and white movie comedies as a euphemism for gay that a man would say to his wife so as not to use the dreaded word homosexual. I can sort of picture it in a Thin Man type comedy/romance with a lot of quick verbal back and forth.
That was a line in the movie “Good Morning Viet Nam”. Only time I’d heard it.
If we’re talking “light in the loafers,” I’ve heard it a number of times, but usually in a self-aware “this is outdated slang” sort of a manner. Typically, there would be no reason to euphemize.
Never saw it, so not from there.
That would be similar to usage I remember from movies. Can you remember how recently you’ve heard it?
When I was a kid in the '70s, my father used the term occasionally, usually in reference to an actor, like Paul Lynde or Charles Nelson Reilly, who had a campy on-screen persona, and who was widely assumed to be gay (in the case of both Lynde and Reilly, this turned out to be true).
IME that is exactly what kids are told about reclaimed words. Don’t use it in public because you could be misunderstood.
See also Roderick_Femm’s post #21.
~Max
There are exactly two circumstances in which an utterance has a homophobic (or racist) meaning.
- The person said it with homophobic intent
- A person who heard it (directly or indirectly) interprets it as homophobic
There are no other circumstances. If we give the speaker the benefit of the doubt, and if nobody else who hears the utterance interprets it as homophobic, then for the time being, it is “objectively” not homophobic.
In the case at hand, since Turble posted to a public message board he cannot reasonably assume his usage of queers is safe from #2. In the case of Turble or Atamasama talking among close friends, that is not necessarily the case. Furthermore the latter & friends, as children, apparently did not even know the word could be interpreted as homophobic.
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 when used in that person’s presence, it would be homophobic from the perspective of that person. Once the kids went off to play it would cease to be homophobic until someone who knew about the alternate meaning entered the picture.
Like the tree that falls in the forest.
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.
This I admit.
~Max
That’s because I think individual culpability is the basis for deciding what is just and what is wrong. My opinion is that a person with no culpability is, by definition, not deserving of punishment. So when we talk about rules and sanctions, naturally I talk about culpability.
~Max
Fairly contemporaneously. Like within the last five years.
Was it perhaps used in the episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm with the gay/effeminate kid? I’ve been watching those episodes recently, so that may be the most recent exposure. I also thought Family Guy may have used it, but they used some other euphemisms in the cut away I was thinking of.
We were talking about whether “Smear the Queer” could be said to have been a homophobic game irrespective of one person’s awareness, which is not about rules or sanctions.
In this example, it was irrespective of the group’s awareness.
The connection between the ‘smear the queer’ game and this topic is the question of whether it is wrong or homophobic to use the word ‘queer’ or ‘queers’. The difference is that the post was made to a public space, where queers is usually offensive, as opposed to a private space where it happens that ‘queer’ is known to be free of homophobic connotations.
~Max
This is demonstrably false. I will give two real world examples.
-
“Gypped.” This is a word that lots of people, including myself, used while oblivious to its origin. Despite my lack of knowledge or intention, and even if no one who heard it took it as bigoted, it is an objectively bigoted word that associates “gypsies” with stealing and dishonest practices. To think otherwise is to deny how language plays a fundamental part in constructing culture.
-
“Jewed me down.” Where I grew up, this was something I heard on an infrequent but regular basis. The people I knew who used it likely did not intend to be antisemitic. They used a familiar phrase without thinking about its literal meaning. In fact, I’m sure some of them would have been horrified to be called on it. Their lack of thought about it was likely influenced by the fact that there were virtually no Jewish people where I grew up. It’s possible that many people they said it to were similarly not clued in to the (obvious) bigotry of the phrase.
But it’s also obvious that the phrase is objectively anti-Semitic. It absolutely associates a particular kind of negatively connotated bargaining with “Jews.” Using it, even naiive to its bigotry, is objectively damaging, and contributes to a culture of anti-Semitism.
If you survey everybody who heard of a particular utterance, and every single person says it is not bigoted whatsoever, then you have actually and “objectively” demonstrated that the utterance is not bigoted. If none of the people connect an utterance of “gypsies” to the Roma, or “Jewed” to the Jews, or “queers” to people who do not identify as heterosexual, then there is no connection.
~Max
Except those people will continue to live and speak on our culture. And when the kid who played “smear the queer” without knowing what it meant learns the meaning of the word “queer”, he has this history of thinking that “the queer” is worthy of “smearing”.
So yes, it is homophobic, and helps perpetuate homophobia and violence directed at gays.