So the dog's a chick and humped a guy's leg and you called her a faggot? ummmm...

 

I would never in my life use the word retard towards a special needs person (I'm a supporter of the Ban the R Word movement), fagot towards a homosexual.. and I sure as shit wouldn't use any racist term at all in the first place. Continuing to claim them as slurs is furthering prejudice and furthering making those words define something they shouldn't define. Why do they need labels in the first place?

Racial terms can't ever be anything but what they are. Words like fagot though... completely different. The only time I ever use fagot or even faggy is when speaking to a lowly, weak, girly male. It's based on things weak men say and do, how they are. It describes any action or characteristic that is beneath a man. It has nothing to do with homosexuality.

As for dyke, the only time I've ever used that word is when saying bulldyke.

That one didn't make too much sense to me either.

 

A few months ago I did some research work for the local AIDS group. The guy I was working for has a female roommate and also is gay. I asked him if he was bisexual and he responded he would like to be referred to as MSM which is replacing all the other labels. It simply means a man who sleeps with men. My daughter who has worked with HIV/AIDS clients for years says thats the acceptable term these days. I assume WSW is also acceptable.

Hope this helps.

 

I disagree completely. These days racial slurs are frowned upon by MOST of the general public. But 60, 50, 40 years ago, those words were thrown around just as you throw around "faggot" or "that's gay". It's still taking a word that defines a group of people and implying that it has negative connotations. You saying a straight man is "faggy" is your way of saying he's not a man at all. That implies that gay men aren't men either. Or, at the very least, that they aren't the same caliber of men as the general population.

I challenge you to look at the civil rights movement and see a few things. 1) before things changed, saying something was a negro store, a negro way, a negro thing to do was considered a way to put something down. To call it stupid, idiotic, sub-par, etc. But now that they've changed, it would be passe to say "he talks like a nigger". 2) it was only through WHITE people stepping up and speaking out against the injustices that the civil rights movement made any progress. Hearing their "own kind" speak out against what they were doing is what made most of the segregationists question their behavior. 3) if 60 years ago, it was acceptable to throw around nigger, jiggaboo, etc. but it's so frowned upon today; maybe you need to think about what our population will think of us 60 years from now and how it was acceptable to say something was "gay" or "faggy".

When in doubt, pick something that describes you well and replace "fag", "nigger", "retard", etc with that word. Ball-player, for instance. How would you feel if one day you were walking down the road and some guy was being verbally bashed by his girl. Right there in public she's screaming about how pathetic he is, what a bad lay he is, he's got a small dick. And finally, she spits with venom "You're such a baller! I can't believe I ever dated you!" You'd be a little insulted that she equated ball playing with pathetic, pencil dicked, losers, wouldn't you?

 

I call them by their name

 

Well it's hard to. We don't have lights (missed the bill deadline) so at the moment you have to go by sound, and all my gay friends sound the same.

 

How about "hey guy, git over here"?

 

OK, well, at least now we know what the OP is doing.

Sheeesh. Some people.

 

They're two completely different situations. Racial slurs can't ever mean anything else. They are specifically tied to race. Words like fagot, retard, etc.. they're slurs but they describe things that can be attributed to the general population. And no.. when I use it, it's a general term for people who are beneath a man. When somebody is a weasel, when somebody does some pathetic shit, when somebody is anything but a man... I call him a fagot to say he's beneath me, beneath what a man is. I didn't even know it meant a homosexual until I was at least 13 or 14, and I and everybody else I knew had been using it to mean something else since we were younger than 10 even. If it weren't for people in the South and elsewhere who say shit like "God hates fags" and other anti-homosexual slurs, it probably wouldn't be seen the same way by anybody today.


Again, two completely different situations. We live in a much more open-minded society for the most part. Homosexuals are widely accepted and only given shit by a minority of people. There are no financial or other factors holding homosexuals down, nor have there ever been. All there has ever been is prejudice because homosexuality is nothing more than a sexual orientation. The reason saying words like nigger and every other racial slur towards races who still get the short end of the stick isn't okay is because those words and the attitude behind them are responsible for the predicament many of them are still in, one homosexuals will never find themselves in.

But faggot is a slur. It's not the same as gay or homosexual. It'd be more accurate if there was a negative term for a ballplayer and that was used.

As for the word retard... well it was never the correct term to use in the first place, and the reason it is much worse to call a special needs person a retard than it is to call a homosexual a faggot is because special needs people actually do live pretty shit lives because of their handicaps.

 

Just because you didn't know it was derogatory toward gays doesn't mean it isn't. lol. Ignorance is not an excuse.

As for the part in bold.. a LOT of what the gay community faces today are the same things that minorities used to face. Slaves couldn't get married back in the day. Hence the "jumping the broom" ceremony. A lot of people say "what's the big deal? why do they want/need to get married?" Well, here's the big deal. If you're gay and end up in the ER, your partner doesn't have the legal right to visit you because they're not "family". Gay couples are often denied rights to employment benefits like health care, can't be named on life insurance policies, etc. These are basic human rights that most of the western world takes for granted but gay couples aren't permitted. They're not legally obligated to get these things.

And just as minorities were beaten, bludgeoned, spat on, and run out of towns, those things still happen today. So yes, it IS in fact a predicament they find themselves in today. They are still denied privileges and rights that the common westerner doesn't even think twice about. And negative connotations don't do anything to help bury the hate and fear that keeps them down.

 

i generally don't call anyone or anything faggot, cause to me it just feels disrepectful. the same way with the word nigger. but *shrugs* if i grew up around people that used it as an everyday word then i would continue to say it in front of gay peeps. but then again, if i didn't know the person, and didn't know how they would respond to those words, i might hold my tongue out fo respect. it depends on the air i get from the person.

lots of gay peeps are only offending if you use it in an offending context.

there are also gay peeps that positively hate that word, and get mad at their fellow gays that use it.



here's some advice that might help you: just try not to say the word faggot in front of gay peeps, if you don't know how they will respond. that's only respectful.


as for the word gay IT MEANS FREAKISHLY FLUFFISHLY HAPPY BITCHES. when soemthing is gay it is FREAKISHLY HAPPY. i wil continue to use that word, despite idiotic commercials that try to force me to talk in a certain way. PICK UP A FUCKIN' DICTIONARY- READ A FUCKIN BOOK *crazed eyes*
v-v this is kinda a sore point with me.

 

>.< for me, the only people i hear use the word faggot are mostly gay peeps. or in gay erotica. it always makes me wince when i hear a straight person say it.

 

I didn't say I'm currently ignorant. I said that nobody I have known in my life uses it as anything other than what I use it as and that because of that, I didn't know it was supposed to mean homosexual until I was a teenager. It's not the same as it was.

My Irish ancestors had similar treatment but you don't see me trying to act like being Irish was ever as bad as being a minority. Homosexuals are discriminated based on their sexual orientation, something that isn't painted on their skin or permanently tattooed on their forehead. True, there needs to be some major rights given to them but the fact is that it's not the same level of discrimination, and they weren't forced over here because of being homosexuals nor did they come here as immigrants with nothing because of being homosexual.

Words like faggot aren't the same as a word such as nigger because the word nigger specifically means a disparaging way to describe people who are "black". Hell, faggot originally meant a disparaging word for a woman or a child.

I fucking hate The Straight Dope (mostly because of the name) but this is a pretty good article about it: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2112/how-did-faggot-get-to-mean-male-homosexual

 

yes please thank you

 

Cant understand what the problem is and why there should be any need to adress someone by reference to their sexuality. Using derogatory terms to address someone just doesnt seem like a good idea. If you are black you would not want to be addresed with reference to the colour of your skin and particularly not if the teminolgy used was offensive. Just speak normally, the term gay is perfectably acceptable in the course of conversation eg "Oh ! I had no idea Mathew was gay" Terms such as Lesbo or Fag would be considered offensice and demeaning unless of course you now the people really well and it is used in jest or ironically

 

You nicknamed your dog little faggot? That's gay.

 

Look niggas all I'm looking for is an answer to how you would respond if you were in my shoes and this happened, not about the feelings of others, because those are gay.

 

Pretty sure they have a name.

Just because they are gay doesn't mean that you need to refer to them any different

 

Guess the point is most of us have enough tact, couth, respect, and common decency NOT to find ourselves in those situations to begin with.

Best of luck to ya.