Wh

[Evelynn]

Gay

[Kött]

Because young women are the first group that pops up to my mind when I think about people using the term gay as an insult...

[Kött]

Wah! What happened?

[trent bortknob]

i mean i don't think it's the worst possible thing in the world, but it's like calling someone a faggot. it's just a shitty thing to say, in more ways than one, and it's pretty juvenile.

[DrRumack]

i think "faggot" is a few notches more malicious than "gay" though

[redmongoose]

Since when was "Porch Monkey" a racial slur?

[rtil]

the problem with using gay and faggot as insults is like with most slurs it was used as a negative connotation associated with a group of people. i know gays who are offended by it and i know gays who use them all the time and couldn't care less. but i don't care about being politically correct and i don't care if i offend people. however, i would want my outward actions and the things i say to reflect my beliefs, and i am pro-gay rights, so i've tried to stop using it as much as i used to.

[sev]

i think you could call most swear/offensive words juvenile, because if everyone was being adult and professional about everything all the time, no one would say anything profane.

when i say "faggot" and "gay" it has nothing to do with homosexuality. faggot, for me, can be used to describe someone being whiny or difficult about something, or being extremely oversensitive. gay can be used to describe things that i'd otherwise jocularly describe as unfair or ridiculous. usually each of these terms encompasses multiple other terms that would be unnecessary to say all at once.

i am all for gay rights, and i wouldn't use it publicly or around people i know find it offensive, but the words in particular don't have any impact on me. but that may be just because i am pretty desensitized to words, and the intended meaning is what actually generates an emotional response from me. i'm pretty confident when i say that no word can actually offend me by itself, and personally, i feel like everyone would be much happier if they felt the same way about words. but i know it will never happen, so i will be careful when it's necessary.

[DrRumack]

could it be possible that it doesn't affect you because you arent gay and nobody has a slur that they can use to dehumanize and degrade you? could it be possible that the reason the word "faggot" is associated with being "oversensitive" and "ridiculous" is because those are both pale stereotypes that have been and continue to be attached to gay people? could it possibly be said that you can use a thousand different words that aren't actual slurs against homosexuals instead?

i don't get it. most people understand not to use the n-word casually because it's insanely offensive and calls back to slavery and segregation, but barely anyone bats an eye at a term that originated with throwing gay people directly into fire because they weren't worth tying up on the stake with the witches. we live in a society where its Completely Necessary to start a campaign telling gay teenagers not to kill themselves because It Gets Better and people will eventually stop treating you like shit. we live in a society where a guy can donate to organizations that actively hurt and degrade human beings because of their sexuality or their gender and be Praised for it and people will eat his fucking chicken just to prove they dont care about the well being of gays. all this and its Perfectly Fucking Okay to use a slur to describe people you're mildly annoyed with.

AND THATS ALL I HALF 2 SAY BOUT DAT. faggot out

[put]

This thread isn't wh at all

[trent bortknob]

i agree with scriblam and rtil. i don't actually care about being politically correct, i just think it's really stupid that people have this attachment to using those specific slurs. when you criticize someone for using gay or faggot in that way, a lot of them act like you're trying to fuckin take away their god given rights or something. there are so many other words that you can use to describe something that you don't like, but it seems like a lot of young people almost exclusively use "gay". to me it's less about being politically correct and more about being socially conscious. sure, gay and faggot and their usage don't personally affect me, but they do affect people, and it's just not something i believe in.

[BluPhoenix]

it NEVER LEFT

[Gladius]

gay

[sev]

could it be possible that it doesn't affect you because you arent gay and nobody has a slur that they can use to dehumanize and degrade you? could it be possible that the reason the word "faggot" is associated with being "oversensitive" and "ridiculous" is because those are both pale stereotypes that have been and continue to be attached to gay people? could it possibly be said that you can use a thousand different words that aren't actual slurs against homosexuals instead?

i don't get it. most people understand not to use the n-word casually because it's insanely offensive and calls back to slavery and segregation, but barely anyone bats an eye at a term that originated with throwing gay people directly into fire because they weren't worth tying up on the stake with the witches. we live in a society where its Completely Necessary to start a campaign telling gay teenagers not to kill themselves because It Gets Better and people will eventually stop treating you like shit. we live in a society where a guy can donate to organizations that actively hurt and degrade human beings because of their sexuality or their gender and be Praised for it and people will eat his fucking chicken just to prove they dont care about the well being of gays. all this and its Perfectly Fucking Okay to use a slur to describe people you're mildly annoyed with.

AND THATS ALL I HALF 2 SAY BOUT DAT. faggot out

actually, the n-word has no meaning to me either, but mainly, the actual word itself is just kind of dirty, like, i'd feel like trailer trash if i were to say it, it's just not classy or useful. other variations ("nigga") i actually find sort of upbeat and endearing, but i avoid using it specifically because i know a lot of people who take offense to it (both coming from a white dude and in general), and i want to be respectful to them. but no, no slur has any meaning to me, really. but that's not worth going into because anyone could easily chalk that up to white/hetero/male privilege which i have a million gripes against and it'd just derail too fast.

society does sort of treat gays like shit and that's terrible, and i'll always consider myself pro-gay rights. but i generally just haven't been convinced to cut out the occasional use of those words entirely. maybe i will someday, maybe it is something i'm just not conscious enough about, possibly just because i don't have a lot of gay friends. i think the only member of the LGBT community that i have ever been tight with and stayed tight with was hans van harken, who was always the kind of guy that talked about not letting your sexual preference define your lifestyle, and felt the same way i do about the uselessness of getting offended by those words.

i'm sure if i had more LGBT friends, it'd alter my vocabulary. but until that point, i'm likely going to keep occasionally using those words in the contexts that i explained and just not use them around people that i know become offended by them. whether i ever stop using them altogether will be decided by time.

but just for the record, i don't really use "gay" or "faggot" that much. regardless of how i feel about a word or oversensitivity to words, any word can lose its effect with overuse. which is actually a lot of why i believe words alone shouldn't really offend people, but again, i won't go on a tangent about that.

[sev]

on a separate note, i don't understand why the word initially having to do with the salem witch trials (which happened 300 years ago) makes the word any more offensive to you. i don't think most people know about the dark origin of the word, and i really don't think it has much to do with today's connotation.