"That's so gay"
Rebeka Rice got into a heap of trouble for saying that to her classmates (who were practicing anti-Mormon hate speech at the time) , and her parents are suing on First Amendment grounds.
It was worth a talk with the principal, I think, but it wasn't hate speech, and not worth a note in the file. I grew up saying, "I was gypped...he jewed me down", and I never associated those terms with the Romany or Jews. I didn't even know any Romany or Jews, so how could I have an opinion? And what about "that sucks?" I once had a boss tell me it was anti-homosexual. But everyone says that; are we all homophobes? I'm all for cleaning hidden messages out of our language, but must we begin and end with minorities, when standard government speech is nothing but euphemism and dysphemism?
I once knew a lad who came home from school saying, "That's gay." His mother explained to him why that was Not Acceptable. He knew perfectly well what it meant though. "Okay...but guys and guys...ewwww!" "Well, what about Peter and Patrick, and Lori and Lisa?" "Well, they're cool, but guys and guys...ewwww." Well, Mom had swung both ways in her day, and even said that by the law of averages her present husband should have been female. So she came out to her kid! That shut him up. But I have to wonder how that altered his thought processes.
Comments
Posted by:
Posted on: March 1, 2007 12:17 PM
Just because you do not know people in this groups, does not make it right to use those terms?.
Posted by: Jeffrey Quick
Posted on: March 1, 2007 12:42 PM
I didn't say it was "right"; I did suggest a discussion was in order, and I've been pruning such language from my own usage (except for "sucks"...and I'm old enough to have never picked up "that's so gay"). But if start seeing prejudice in everyone's mostly-unconscious word choice, we're in danger of being the boy who cried wolf. In a world where homosexuals get walls toppled onto them, "that's so gay" is a really really minor issue.
Posted by:
Posted on: March 1, 2007 03:28 PM
You suggested it was OK because you did not know anyone in the ethnic groups that could be insulted by the use of the slang.
Posted by: jeffrey smith
Posted on: March 1, 2007 06:04 PM
He said he never realized the linkage of the slang terms to the ethnicities. He did not say it was okay.
Just like I incredibly offended a black friend once because I innocently used the word shvarteh--which to me was simply the Yiddish equivalent of black, no degradation involved, but to him was very degrading.
But I do remember school recesses full of kids calling each faggots. No one protested. And kids being kids, don't you think they will find some other term of insult in the time honored way. Perhaps we should leave volumes of Thomas Nashe in randome schoolyards--raise their educational horizons, and their invective vocabulary, by volumes.
JQ, I assume the kid was freaked out in the normal way, just like every kid when they eventually realize that their parents have sex lives.
Posted by: Jeffrey Quick
Posted on: March 3, 2007 10:34 AM
Jeffrey, thanks for the back-up on our reading-comprehension-challenged friend. I don't often go out of my way to offend, but some people I think go out of their way to be offended. Yeah, I grew up with "faggot" and "homo" too. I wonder...if schools started a no-tolerance policy for such terms, what kind of attitude kids would develop about gays?
Posted by: jeffrey smith
Posted on: March 3, 2007 09:41 PM
Quick, you are the best blogger around. Everyone is blogging about La Coulter after the fact. You had your post up before she even spoke.
Posted by: Jeffrey Quick
Posted on: March 5, 2007 09:02 AM
ROTFLMAO!
The Guttersnipe did her job, indelibly tagged the Breck Girl, and now the dextrosphere is covering for itself by condemming her. Condemming Coulter for being Coulter is a bit pointless; it implies that somebody takes her seriously. Nor does anybody take Howard Dean seriously. Now, a big GAY chorus of condemnation (4 parts, with piano and dancing), that I'd take seriously; after all, they were the ones besmirched by a comparison to The Ambulance Chaser.