use of the word gay

[hellocake]

ok on my youtube channel www.youtube.com/hellocaketv i uploaded a video response to one of crazy chris crocker's videos and id like you to comment on that and maybe hav a little dicussion further here.

does it offend you when people say 'thats so gay'? because to me, its just a word thats meaning has changed recently. it used mean happy. now it means bad, in chavvy terms really. lol, i dnt really let words offend me but how bout u?

[Serfdom]

Words only have the power we give them and, as you say, the word 'gay' has changed meaning before and it will again. I for one am not offended by people using the word 'gay' to describe something lame, happy or homosexual.

This Chris guy needs to get out more and stop living in his bubble lol.

The blog retort was very enjoyable and was a reasoned reply to a somewhat emotive video by Chris. Chris' rant about straight people being the source of all the worlds evils is so simplistic; the source of problems for me stems from ignorance and Chris seems to be full of it.

[spotysocks]

Imo you are wasting your time replying to his stupid video. I dont know this vbloging is the new internet thing isnt it... Anyhow this guy is either
mentally ill or plays a character to get some publicity and something out of it and he did , his vid about Spears was aired in a comedy tv show.

As for the phrase yeah same as you , i dont care what people say.

[Shadow]

A very interesting question indeed ...

From my perspective, when I was a child, all my friends were straight - all throughout my childhood. Consequently, because everybody naturally assumed I was, the word "gay" as a negative used to be banded about all the time by my mates.

"Getting stuck in traffic is so GAY" ... "getting a poor payrise is so GAY" ... anything they didn't like was so GAY ... and to be honest, whilst it makes considerably less of a difference to me now, that type of rubbish is one of the major reasons I took so long to come out ...

Whilst it's true that we should ignore what people say, quite often people underestimate the power of a word, or a gesture ... particularly when it's levelled against a person or persons that are either impressionable or of low self-esteem.

I'm not suggesting everybody should go around watching their p's and q's all the time, as we need to be broad-shouldered enough to see things for what they are, and in I'd say 75% of cases, the person saying it doesn't really think anything of it ... however, yes I do still find it irritating, because it just smacks of real ignorance on the part of the people saying it.

What does amuse me now is that all my straight mates are 100% cool with me being gay ... and WOE betide anybody ELSE that says "xyz is so GAY" in front of me, as my mates are now the first ones to say anything ... it's so sweet ... PLUS now, whilst they do still say it occasionally, they all go red when they realise they've said it in front of me ... which is, again, really rather sweet I find.

Straight people are cool mile:.

!?!?! Shadow !?!?!

[Michael]

This one makes me crazy....

I'm abosultely amazed at those of you who cannot see the implications of this. The word HAS NOT changed, they only use it now as a descriptive for anything CRAP. This means that being gay is such shit that it's the worst thing people can think, so use it to describe other shit things.

So being a shitty homo is now the same as....stepping in dog shit....getting busted....or anything else that is foul or crap. If the word has shifted, unlike other words that become inclusive, it has become even more negative. And like some of those other words....nigger or fag, that were taken back by their respective communities....

GAY has been subsumed by the heterosexuals to not only describe us as less than worthwhile, but to attatch it to anything that is bad. Like those other words, there is nothing redeemable about the use of the word, wuite to the contrary.

As Shadow mentioned, there are thousands of young people who have yet the courage to come out and now not only do they have to hear that being gay is crap, they have to be reminded how crap their sexuality IS a thousand times a day by every stupid little bad thing that happens to people.

This is a phenomenon that I have never seen.....instead of a word becomming less agressive as it becomes more mainstream, GAY has become more agressive.

Try inserting your name instead of gay. "Dude, you totaly stepped in a pile of hellocake! That's so serfdom man".

This kind of shift has huge social conotations....and sadly for us, to the negative. Words have huge ammounts of power to harm. By far most bullies taunt and tease than actually use violence. Hearing the word faggot still today whips me back to my school days and sends an unwanted chill up my spine.

GAY is still GAY. Using to call everything else crap doesn't change that. It just states how SHIT we really are in they eyes of most people. If they use it without thought, that's even worse.

"The pen is mightier than the sword."

[feelmychampagne]

yes it offends me or bothers me to an extent! but well then i just ignore it and move on.

[clubkidz07]

You know what personally i dont think its used now as a bad word but the word that really gets my goat is faggot.I hear the straight chavvy kids calling it each other and it makes my blood boil.I wann go over and give them a swift kick in the balls arrrrggghhhhh!:mad:

[wouldlikemuscle]

Don't hate me Michael but I actually use the word gay too when something bad happens sometimes.

I just don't take it to be the same word as gay meaning homosexual. One word having multiple meanings and all that... such as pen could mean a writing implement or an animal enclosure... same word, different things.

However, faggot and queer are two words I hate hearing.

[Personal]

In michaels defense, the word faggot, for example, is suppose to be used to describe a bundle of sticks, only now its commonly used as an offensive term.
wouldlikemuscle, you say you hate the word "faggot" (I'm assuming for when it's used offensively), the same thing goes for the word "gay" being used negatively, when originally its meaning is what, happy/joy, if I'm not mistake.
Personally, I agree, I don't like hearing that word...

[hellocake]

but these chavs n all that dont think of gay people, like dear chris crocker assumes, wen they use the term gay. that is so gay. they dont think that is so homosexual. the word HAS changed, its not jus being manipulated. what annoys me is wen ppl say thats so gay, something along those lines, and becuase im ther, they immediately say NO OFFENCE. i hate hearing ppl say NO OFFENCE. it goes without saying. its only offensive if u take it that way.

anybody watch balls of steel? what was that black guy that went crazy wenever anybody says the word black. on my local news a little while ago a black man had got all offended because an old shop sold golly wogs , if thats wot u call em. they spoke to another blak man, who said its just stupid to be offended by them. they are dolls. yes, they used to be the baddies in noddy and they wer also coincidently black, during a time wen black people were still having a bit of trouble with acceptance - but society has moved on.

political correctness is part of the problem. ppl are afraid to offend ppl and therfor a big fuss is kicked up and ppl read too deep into what things mean. wen rly gay, black, queer, even FAT are jus words and they make no difference whatsoever to us as a community.