Is using the word "gay" to mean "lame" sort of homophobic?

OK, how do the handicapped DIFFERENTLY ABLED feel about this term to mean uncool or foolish?

Use of "gay" as perjorative normalizes all things straight and masculine, which is ultimately pretty offensive to ME since implied in the whole damn mess is the fact that all things masculine are superior to all things not. Addition of a flapping wrist to use of "gay" will result in a sucker punch from Yours Truly.

predictable stock response #1027

Don't be boring, please.

qed.

Oh yeah, I'm sure all the seventh-graders who routinely use "gay" as in "lame" are doing so with an ironic wink that shows that they're actually quite comfortable with homosexuality but are trying to subvert rampant political correctness.

Hahaha "routinely"!

DONNIE'S WEDNESDAY MORNING SCHEDULE

6:30 AM: Wake up.
7:00 AM: Catch school bus.
7:15 AM: Greet Billy.
7:20 AM: Tell Billy that something I saw yesterday is "totally gay".
7:22 AM: Laugh at Billy.
7:28 AM: Pick nose and flick it at girls.
7:30 AM: Try to pants Billy in front of booger girls.
7:35 AM: Telly Billy he's "gayer than the gayest gaymo who ever gayed".
7:40 AM: Exit bus.
7:41 AM: Trip on untied shoelace and fall into garbage can.
7:42 AM: Complain loudly that falling in the trash was "super gay".
7:44 AM: Get stuffed in locker by football team.
7:45 AM: Cry, then furtively masturbate before the janitor arrives to open the locker.
7:50 AM: Finish masturbating for the fourth time.
8:00 AM: Rush to 1st period classroom door. Mutter under breath that Mrs. Gagne is "an ugly dykemo" when she sends me to the principal's office for being late.

(etc etc)

but the original comment wasn't? i was just illustrating the fact that any anti-white racist comment can be easily answered with an anti-black one. "Whites supported slavery". "Really, who was it who ended international slavery. Certainly not the Africans or the Arabs" etc.

If race is an arbitrary characteristic, which to all intents and purposes I believe it is, then isn't using race as a pejorative when describing oppression counterproductive?

Correct. However, using "gay" (you know, the word that for the last 50 years has been the universal term for people wot fancy their own gender) to mean pathetic/lame/stupid makes an explicit connection between homosexual and bad/negative/wrong.

Newamp, you should be grateful people are giving you the benefit of the doubt, by and large, because your arguments, and your refusal to understand what other people are trying to explain (and doing so thoughtfully and carefully in words that even the most naive of 17-year-olds *should* be able to understand), make you look ignorant*.

I'm sure you're not going to become a regular poster, so it's no skin off our nose. It's just a shame you're incapable of learning and are defensive and stubborn to the point of idiocy*. Time to do some growing up.

*possibly the word "ignorant" means "totally rad" and "idiocy" means "hott chix wanting some big boy newamp loving" in the world of newamp, in which case I will feel very foolish.

Sorry... Firefly slang. Heh.

you entire last post, and conversation style, is an example of what i'm talking about - choosing bits to shoot down, just saying "wrong," reasserting your orig. points without adding anything new.

What are these points you speak of? Tell me, what am I ignoring?

well, for instance, i mentioned that everyone here knows that the word "gay" is used in different ways. trust me. everyone. and still you say:

I can't help it if some people don't know the meaning of a word.

so, you just skipped right over that, because it conflicts with your argument, which is that people who take offense don't realize that the word means something else, i.e. that they're idiots. WE KNOW "GAY" IS USED IN DIFFERENT WAYS. what you're not getting is that there these different meanings are CONNECTED. they interact with each other. using "gay" to mean stupid has a different meaning than using "stupid" to mean stupid, because of the word's CONTINUING use as a playground insult that implies homosexuality.

i know this won't change yr point of view. i know you'll say "yes, but when I use it, it doesn't mean that." good for you. but meanings of words don't depend on you. they depend on a culture, and what people understand words to mean.

(*in the head. )

I know some hulking-leather bears who could beat the shit out of you, if you really need proof.

But isn't the 'effeminate' thing on the whole an accurate generalisation. Or are you saying that all criticisms of 'macho bullshit' should equally apply to gay men?

So no.

And I live in GAY CAPITAL USA, I know from gay stereotypes and how accurate they are.

What did I say that's so unreasonable? I wasn't making any value judgements about whether effeminacy is a bad thing! I don't think it is!

Accurate generalisation = one that holds true for the most part but not in all cases.

For example, it's GENERALLY true that people with British citizenship speak English (but far from being always the case). How would you prefer such a statement to be re-phrased?

I assumed by this you were applying your own value judgement of gays being "unmanly" and "feeble". If you just meant general perception, thats different - but its still a bit silly (even though yes, Ive met plenty of very mincing camp queens, but its as much a stereotype as the macho bullshit straight guy is).

xpost

Yeah um, if you want to hear something new from me, you need to make a new argument. I repeat myself, because your arguments are the same damn thing over and over again.

Well, for instance, I mentioned that everyone here knows that the word "gay" is used in different ways. Trust me. Everyone. And still you say:

"I can't help it if some people don't know the meaning of a word."

"So, you just skipped right over that, because it conflicts with your argument, which is that people who take offense don't realize that the word means something else, i.e. that they're idiots. I KNOW "GAY" IS USED IN DIFFERENT WAYS. What you're not getting is that there these different meanings are CONNECTED. They interact with each other. Using "gay" to mean stupid has a different meaning than using "stupid" to mean stupid, because of the word's CONTINUING use as a playground insult that implies homosexuality."

Um, that does not conflict at all with anything I say:

1 - Not a single definition of "gay" comes up as "Stupid with negativity towards homosexuals." That definition does not exist. Therefore, regardless of multiple definitions, since that definition does not exist, Gay, is not bad.

2 - Different meanings are not connected. I already freeking spoke of this. Several times. Goddamn, over and over again, I have spoken of why this is so. I don't see anything backing up your damn statement that they are.

"Wait, actually, that's EXACTLY what makes it so. I mean, how else do definitions of words come to be? By a bunch of people deciding to interpret a word in a particular way"

Definitions comes to be by how the words are used. If what you said was even remotely true, history, humanity, mankind, the fact that the masculine pronoun is also a neutral pronoun ect. would all be completely differenet words, and would be offencive.

Your arguments are wea. You don't say anything, other than "it is so." Oh good thing it's not. Definitions come mostly from their use, not from their interpretation.

"I know this won't change your point of view. I know you'll say "yes, but when I use it, it doesn't mean that." Good for you. But meanings of words don't depend on you. They depend on a culture, and what people understand words to mean."

Except not. When I use it, it does not mean that because it does not mean that by itself. The word has no offensive definition. It is not like the n word, and various slurs for hispanics and jews etc or anything like that. It's gay, and gay has no negative defignition. Once again, if it did, we would not be having this conversation.

newamp you yourself admit gay = stupid (but not "gay" as in homosexual).

Fine, thats a given. WHY DOES IT MEAN STUPID THOUGH?

Would it be because calling something (or someone) "Gay" was and is a threat, an insult to their manhood, so it morphed into a generic term as a result?

But wait, thats just too obvious, surely?

newamp if you can explain to us all why your usage of gay means stupid, and stupid alone, with NO linkage to its other meanings, and make it make sense, we might buy it.

In epistemology, contextualist accounts of knowledge became increasingly popular toward the end of the 20th century as responses to the problem of skepticism. Since the skeptic tries to undermine the very possibility of knowledge by showing that there are many states of affairs that are consistent with our evidence for a belief but these beliefs are false, the contextualist has moved to block certain states of affairs from being relevant in talk of knowledge. The claim, attributed to Stewart Cohen, Fred Dretske, Gail Stine, David Lewis, and more recently, Keith DeRose and others, is that the word 'knowledge' is a sort of indexical. The standards for knowledge, the contexualist claims, vary from one user's context to the next. Thus, if I say "John knows that his car is in front of him", the utterance is true just in case (1) John believes that his car is in front of him, (2) the car is in fact in front of him, and (3) John meets the epistemic standards that my (the speaker's) context selects. This is a loose contextualist account of knowledge, and there are many significantly different theories of knowledge that can fit this contextualist template and thereby come in a contextualist form. For instance, an evidentialist account of knowledge can be an instance of contextualism if it's held that how strongly supported by one's evidence one's belief must be if it is to count as knowledge is a contextually varying matter. And one who accepts a relevant alternatives account of knowledge -- on which to know that p one must be able to rule out all the relevant alternatives to p -- can be a contextualist by holding that what range of alternatives are relevant is sensitive to conversational context. DeRose adopts a type of modal or "safety" (as it has since come to known) account on which knowledge is a matter of one's belief as to whether or not p is the case matching the fact of the matter, not only in the actual world, but also in the sufficiently close possible worlds: Knowledge amounts to there being no "nearby" worlds in which one goes wrong with respect to p. But how close is sufficiently close? It's here that DeRose takes the modal account of knowledge in a contextualist direction, for the range of "epistemically relevant worlds" is what varies with context: In high standards contexts one's belief must match the fact of the matter through a much wider range of worlds than is relevant to low standards contexts. The main tenet of contextualism, now matter what account of knowledge it is wedded to, is that when we attribute knowledge to someone, what matters is in what context we use the term 'knowledge'. If we use it in everyday conversational contexts, the contextualist maintains, we can save most of the knowledge we think we have from skeptical hypotheses. If the term 'knowledge' is used when skeptical hypotheses are being considered, then the utterances regarding knowledge that a person has are false. It is important to note that this theory does not allow that someone can have knowledge at one moment and not the other, for this would hardly be a satisfying epistemological answer. What contexutalism entails is that in one context an utterance of a knowledge attribution can be true, and in a context with higher standards for knowledge, the same statement can be false. This happens in the same way that 'I' can correctly refer to many people at the same time.

In the philosophy of language, the context principle is a form of semantic holism holding that a philosopher should "never ... ask for the meaning of a word in isolation, but only in the context of a proposition" (Frege [1884/1980] x). It is one of Gottlob Frege's "three fundamental principles" for philosophical analysis, first discussed in his Introduction to the Foundations of Arithmetic (Grundlagen der Arithmetik, 1884). Frege argued that many philosophical errors, especially those related to psychologism in the philosophy of logic and philosophy of mathematics, could be avoided by adhering carefully to the context principle. The view of meaning expressed by the context principle is sometimes called contextualism, but should not be confused with the common contemporary use of the term "contextualism" in epistemology or ethics. The contrasting view, that the meanings of words or expressions can be (or must be) determined prior to, and independently of, the meanings of the propositions in which they occur, is often referred to as compositionalism.

The context principle also figures prominently in the work of other Analytic philosophers who saw themselves as continuing Frege's work, such as Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein.

No. The way I hear it used among most kids, it doesn't even mean "lame" in that literal sense. It's really closer to "wrong" or "fucked up," and usually doesn't apply to inviduals except to say that a person's opinions or actions are wrong or fucked up. Newamp defends it as meaning "stupid," but it doesn't really have to do with the intelligence of a person. Nobody who gets an F on a test would ever say, "I'm so gay." (Would they?)

I know you can't mean this literally. In order to use a word, you need to assign meaning to that word in your mind. This is a form of interpretation.

"You must understand something that is an absolute truth: Words don't mean anything until they are recieved. Either heard or read, they only achieve their true meanings when they are recieved."

Dictionaries don't exist. Got it.

Okay. You use gay to mean lame and nothing else. However, many people will hear you using that word and think, "hey, that guy is using a word that means queer as a term of abuse! Therefore, he is implying that queer = bad!"

So you see - it's not YOUR reading of the word that matters when you use it in a public space (such as here), it's how OTHERS choose to interpret it. Only your close friends and acquaintances will know you mean no offence by it; anyone else, including all us liberals in internetland, think you should appreciate the impact certain words and the different ways they can be read.

Thing is, the deal with verbalising your thoughts is that, by definition, they become communicative - the whole point in speaking is to tell other people your thoughts. If you are speaking solely for yourself, all you have to do is think the words.

If you respond to this post with "gay means lame and nothing else because I decree it so" I shall start talking to you in baby talk as clearly you're not bright enought to use grown up arguments.

Oh, you're falling back to dictionary definitions now? I just checked dictionary.com and Merriam Webster online, and there's not "lame/stupid" definition for "gay" there. What dictionary are you desperately clinging to that has that definition?

Get one semiotics, kid.

then, using 'gay' to mean 'lame' or 'bad' like you do is incorrect, isn't it?

You can tell if it's meant to be offensive due to the context. Those who get offended regardless of the context should be taken in by the PC brigade.

i mean, the chance is that many non-'17 year old straight males who need to feel oppressed somehow' you come across in your life won't share your interpretation of the word, and might well assume something of you because of it. again, if you're okay with that, go ahead. if being justified in your own mind is enough, then that's cool. but you don't have divine authorial control over language or how it is interpreted, and you have even less control over peoples' perception of you as a result of behaving this way. if you have no problem behaving without concern to the sensitivities of those around, then sure, go ahead, but you have no-one but yourself to blame if they assume you are some ignorant immature shithead. first impressions last you know.

Not a single definition of "gay" comes up as "Stupid with negativity towards homosexuals."

You're right. If you say "that's so gay," meaning "that's so stupid," in outer space with nobody else around, and you don't mean it in a homophobic way, you're not expressing "negativity towards homosexuals."

However, if you're surrounded by people--each with his or her own possible usage/definition/interpretation of any given word--it's another story. Hear me out on this.

Let's say you're at a party, and the host tells everyone to go home, the cops are shutting it down. "That's so gay," you say. By saying this loudly (without irony), you're communicating more than one thing. You're actually saying to the people around you:

1. "That's so stupid."
2. "By 'gay,' I mean 'stupid.'"
3. "I assume you all understand this."
4. "I assume you're not offended by it"
or
5. "If you are offended, I don't care. It's the correct usage."

Since you know there are people on this planet who do take that usage of "gay" as an insult to gays in any context (correctly or not), and since you know there are gays who might themselves feel insulted or dehumanized by this (correctly or not), you're further saying:

6. "I don't care if you think I'm insulting gays."
7. "I don't care if you think I'm insulting you."

And since it's a party, where being antisocial isn't exactly the norm, you're also in effect saying:

8. I assume most people here feel as I do.
9. If you don't, you're the odd one out.

Since you can't read the minds of even your closest friends, you have no way of knowing whether any of them is the odd one out. To the person who might feel differently than you, you're essentially bonding with others against him or her. If he or she doesn't complain (nobody wants to be a killjoy, or seem overly sensitive), it's a psychic victory for your arrogance, not necessarily the consensus you imagine.

And if that person happens to be homosexual, I've just outlined the dynamics of the closet. Unless you turn to a gay friend after dropping the g-word, and say, jokingly, "No offense," you run the risk of making other GLBT partygoers feel unwelcome or worse.

I've watched the term "politically correct" go from being an ironic in-joke on the left (in the early '80s) to becoming what it largely is today: a cover for being thoughtless. Let me ask you:

Do you agree that we live in a violently and absurdly homophobic world? Do you agree that outside you and your friends, an overwhelming majority of English speakers equate "gay" with homosexual? Do you know that "gay" is a common first term of pride for GLBT youth? (Hard to imagine out gay kids dropping it to mean "stupid." Do you know any?) If so, then it should be no stretch of your imagination to guess that some kids out there will be confused, thinking that maybe all the people using "gay" to mean "bad" actually think gay is bad.

If even one person feels that way, why is it so important to preserve this bit of unoriginal slang? I notice you don't address the use of "Gyp" or "Jew" as verbs above. I'm guessing those aren't part of your vocabulary. Ever wonder why? Because somewhere along the line, one version or another of your imagined "P.C. brigade" (an outspoken Jew or Gypsy, probably) said enough was enough. It was gay activism that got the clinical-sounding noun "homosexual" replaced with "gay" in the first place, as I already said. Language changes. It's people that do the changing.

My point is: Your indifference is what expresses "negativity towards homosexuals."

(I mean saying it explicitly, it's not like he gets implicit undertones or anything)

Yes they do! Look!

The BBC thinks it's OK that Chris Moyles described a ringtone as 'gay' while on air. But is it really acceptable that the word has come to mean 'rubbish' - and should a Radio 1 DJ be joining in? Tim Lusher, for one, thinks not

that is not a bottle for actual babies, surely? but for big fat hairy homos who dress up in diapers, right?

-- kenan, Thursday, March 22, 2007 5:25 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Link