The 4-minute post

[dotinthesky]

I'm unprepared for today's cold spell, my lips are chapped, and I'm wondering why perfectly intelligent breeders straight people insist on using the word gay in a derogatory form:

Did you see her outfit last night? She looked sooooo gay!

Oh my God! Backstreet Boys are soooo gay!

I was, like, on the phone to my friend Chad and he said the gayest thing!


We are not amused. By "we", I mean gay people who have grown up knowing that something was slightly different about them, who had effeminate voices (like myself) and had to put up with other kids calling them names. Why do you want to squash us like that? In any case, "gay" means happy - so why try to bastardize the word and make it negative?

Are you one of those people that reads Vice magazine because you are soooo cool, and you feel soooooo post-modern and above caring? The people who I've seen using the word "gay" in a pejorative form are people who have gay friends. Maybe everyone is so sophisticated and beyond caring. Maybe I'm guilty too because I've made mix tapes for my friends with Patti Smith's song "Rock and Roll Nigger".

Should you and I not care about words anymore?

Comments

[waves-in-space.livejournal.com]

this is in response to something i read below:
i'm sorry, but saying that words have no meaning until you give them meaning might have been correct when they were first used or given definition, but now after so many years of use all these words you're talking about have significant meaning- historically, culturally, you name it. saying that someone is making them offensive in their own heads is silly, and i don't know if this is an 'american' or whatever you want to call it 'thing'- i don't think it is at all because there are far too many people who run around saying crass racist terms thinking it's cool to be un-pc, or whatever you want to call it. saying that i CHOOSE to get insulted when someone calls another person or myself a racist name is ridiculous. of course i can write that person off, but why should i sit there and turn the other cheek? why should i sit there and say 'oh its not offensive unless I CHOOSE to see it as that'. that makes no sense! of course its offensive, thats why people say it! i highly doubt never hearing the n word again is going to significantly ruin anyones life- in fact i think if it were never heard again it be a positive thing, atleast in the context that it is used. as for the rest of it, i don't care if i hear 'fuck you' or motherfucker or whatever curse words, i don't think thats really in the same boat as a racist remark or even in calling someone a faggot, these words all started as something negative, and the meanings haven't changed all that much regardless of how much everyone wants to claim that they have.
as for your freedom of speech? say whatever you want, no ones saying that you don't have that freedom, but its a matter of choosing to be someone that abuses this 'freedom' and runs around saying abusive and derogatory things just to prove a stupid point or choosing to be someone that recognizes the fact that people have feelings, these words have meanings, and they are GOING to hurt and why is it necessary to use them in the first place?

[waves-in-space.livejournal.com]

sorry, something i read ABOVE, i forgot this posts at the bottom.

[commonpeople.livejournal.com]

See, I agree with you. I think to myself: "why would someone intelligent choose to use that word when they can say it with so many better ones?" Using the word gay, for example, just strikes me as facile and juvenile - something kids do in 5th grade because they don't understand what the "gay" experience is.

Sure, people can say whatever they want, but that doesn't mean that they should say anything! If they are intelligent, they should think it through first and put it as a challenge to themselves to try to be witty and smart without stooping to such easy insulting words.

[lala-jones.livejournal.com]

it's a linguistic fact: a speaker's intention may or may not be transparent; the only way we communicate is through the shared understanding of conventions. (i could say "blitter" and mean "obnoxious and ignorant", but no one else would know it. so i would say, "obnoxious and ignorant", because those words have denotative meanings.)

the connotations (and denotations) words have are absolutely historical, as malaniat said, and relate to discourses and events that exist in the public consciousness, in fairly ordered ways. "Gay" used perjoratively doesn't mean just "lame"; it got to "lame" by way of such concepts as "lacking in forcefulness/power/effectiveness" > "effete" > "failed masculinity".

(parenthetically, the perjorative/so-called-"lame" "gay" is unlikely to be used with regard to female nouns; people use it to talk about male or generic (slanted toward the male, by default) nouns exclusively. would you say britney spears or kylie minogue is "gay/lame"? how about nickelback?)

like o says, it's not a question of mere political correctness, but linguistic precision and sophistication. using vague language is not just boring and offensive and ignorant, it's less insightful (and therefore, less incisive, critical, funny, etc.).

[commonpeople.livejournal.com]

YES! That's it. Why use such a juvenile and facile word when you can show your intelligence by using a stronger word?