Here's another little burr in my side. I'm not even sure if it's politically correct, I haven't discussed this with my homosexual friends yet, but I don't appreciate the new commercials about "It's wrong to say things are gay."
I love words, I think I've made that perfectly clear in more than one of my posts here. Love them. One word I happen to like the sound of and like the feel of it when I say it is queer. I think it's so quaint, and reading it in books, like, "She gave him a queer look, he wasn't sure if she was angry with him or had just ate a bad clam.", makes me want to go out and use the word. Sadly, queer is associated with being a homosexual and saying to someone, "I love that little picture, it's queer, but I think it'd be cute in the hallway.", could be misinterpreted by people to think that I think it looks to be homosexual. Homosexual is the proper term. Not gay, queer, or other less desirable terms that I won't mention. These are all words that had actual meanings before they were re-interpreted as meaning homosexual. It ticks me off that people are spending money telling people to not use the word gay, when it's not being used in it's original meaning for their purposes either. You're darn right I see things that I would term gay. Things that are so bright and cheery that often times it borders on insipid. Like gaggingly happy. You know, blindingly bright flowered pants, my kids on a bike ride on their way to get ice cream, the Dick and Jane stories, Hello Kitty. Now, do I think any of these things are homosexual? Um, no, but I would love to be able to use the word gay about them, without being attacked as being some politically incorrect snob.
I certainly don't like any put downs for any group of people and I don't want my friends put down ever, so I agree gay shouldn't be used in a way that is inappropriate. I also have no problem with my homosexual friends being called gay, or calling them gay if this is what is preferable. I just don't like that gay has been so fully ingrained in our society as being a word with a single definition, that I can't even use the word in it's original form so that I can fully emphasize and detail my feelings about something in the most descriptive way possible. For godsakes, all I want to do is tell the world that my husband's left calf is queer. I certainly don't mean it's a homosexual calf....it's just so much skinnier than the other one, it's an oddity, truly the definition of queer if I ever saw one.
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Dood. It's not that queer or gay has to have a single meaning, it's that it means homosexual, and to use "gay" or "queer" as a derogatory word is mean.
ReplyDelete2 cents. i expect change.
This is exactly my point, to be used in a derogatory way is mean, but it's always considered mean because people have ignored that these words had meanings way before being defined as homosexual. To use it as the original definition, it's assumed that you mean it in a mean way because the original definitions of gay (lively and colorful) and queer (odd) are seen only as the new definition which is homosexual. Where did the old definition go? On vacation? You've proven the problem by saying they mean homosexual...they mean so much more though. Can't we just recognize and respect these words for the fact they, like so many English words, now have 2 meanings? The old definition of gay and queer does not mean homosexual, never did, that's something recent. True story.
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