• Hi, I am the owner and main administrator of Styleforum. If you find the forum useful and fun, please help support it by buying through the posted links on the forum. Our main, very popular sales thread, where the latest and best sales are listed, are posted HERE

    Purchases made through some of our links earns a commission for the forum and allows us to do the work of maintaining and improving it. Finally, thanks for being a part of this community. We realize that there are many choices today on the internet, and we have all of you to thank for making Styleforum the foremost destination for discussions of menswear.
  • This site contains affiliate links for which Styleforum may be compensated.
  • We would like to welcome House of Huntington as an official Affiliate Vendor. Shop past season Drake's, Nigel Cabourn, Private White V.C. and other menswear luxury brands at exceptional prices below retail. Please visit the Houise of Huntington thread and welcome them to the forum.

  • STYLE. COMMUNITY. GREAT CLOTHING.

    Bored of counting likes on social networks? At Styleforum, you’ll find rousing discussions that go beyond strings of emojis.

    Click Here to join Styleforum's thousands of style enthusiasts today!

    Styleforum is supported in part by commission earning affiliate links sitewide. Please support us by using them. You may learn more here.

Is the term 'gay' as 'stupid' really that offensive?

WorkingClassDude

Senior Member
Joined
Feb 17, 2010
Messages
386
Reaction score
8
This is my first attempt to start a thread here, and to be quite honest I don't see it going great given the subject. I'm just curious. Regardless of how 'immature' people think it is to actually say, is using the term 'gay' to lightheartedly decry something really so uber-offensive? I've known and read of gays who don't care at all about it. They don't take offense to it. But it seems like the gay community in general really hates it. Enough to air commercials about it. I.e. 'That shirt/movie/anything is gay'. There may be absolutely nothing homosexual about the shirt/thing in question, the speaker just doesn't like it for some reason. The speaker is NOT saying 'that shirt/thing is expressly homosexual and grrr that's bad'. So I don't get where the offensive part comes from. The especially ironic thing is, isn't the term 'gay' in relation to homosexuality already taken from the original word gay meaning happy? What I mean is, when gay people starting saying gay to mean homosexual, were straight people offended at that? As far as I'm aware, words can have multiple meanings, and so I don't get the uproar. Whenever I used to use the term, it was never to say something was negatively homosexual, unless it was to a buddy or somesuch and we were talking ****. And there was no real offense taken there either. I'm not saying that people don't use the term in an offensive way. There are people who do. But what about the people who aren't? They're still awful people for merely using the word in a non-homosexually-negative light?
nest.gif
 

robertorex

Distinguished Member
Joined
Oct 1, 2008
Messages
2,744
Reaction score
6
Why not just say stupid? I get the feeling that the people who say "gay" as a placeholder for another negative term are at least ignorant, if not outright awful.

A lot of people think that just because they want to use a word to mean something, it comes out meaning that to other people. Doesn't work that way.
 

CouttsClient

Distinguished Member
Joined
Sep 16, 2010
Messages
1,814
Reaction score
46
Originally Posted by robertorex
Why not just say stupid? I get the feeling that the people who say "gay" as a placeholder for another negative term are at least ignorant, if not outright awful. A lot of people think that just because they want to use a word to mean something, it comes out meaning that to other people. Doesn't work that way.
Agreed
 

tagutcow

Distinguished Member
Joined
Nov 29, 2006
Messages
9,220
Reaction score
625
"Gay" in the disputed sense doesn't really mean "stupid" as much as it means lame, cornball, or otherwise unattuned to the values of irony and noneffort.
 

dhaller

Senior Member
Joined
Nov 18, 2009
Messages
109
Reaction score
3
It's kind of indefensible to use the term as such if over the age of, say, 17 or so... and even then I think the proper term is "****", not "gay"!

DH
 

Pantisocrat

Distinguished Member
Joined
Jan 7, 2010
Messages
1,762
Reaction score
7
Who cares. free speech and all that. I use "asinine" in place of "stupid". Like, wow, what asininity!
 

83glt

Distinguished Member
Joined
Aug 4, 2008
Messages
1,683
Reaction score
11
Originally Posted by robertorex
Why not just say stupid? I get the feeling that the people who say "gay" as a placeholder for another negative term are at least ignorant, if not outright awful. A lot of people think that just because they want to use a word to mean something, it comes out meaning that to other people. Doesn't work that way.
Originally Posted by CouttsClient
Agreed
Originally Posted by dhaller
It's kind of indefensible to use the term as such if over the age of, say, 17 or so... and even then I think the proper term is "****", not "gay"! DH
You guys are so marsupialed. ^Fixed so as not to offend.
 

L'Incandescent

Stylish Dinosaur
Joined
Mar 10, 2010
Messages
16,270
Reaction score
7,539
"I don't know what you mean by "˜glory,' " Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. "Of course you don't"”till I tell you. I meant "˜there's a nice knock-down argument for you!' "
"But "˜glory' doesn't mean "˜a nice knock-down argument'," Alice objected.
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean"”neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master that's all."

No competent speaker of English can fail to understand that "gay" is being used as a pejorative, and that the pejorative force comes from the obvious connection to homosexuality. If the use of the term "gay" presupposes that gays are in some vague way bad, then obviously gays will be offended by that use of the term. This is not rocket science.
 

tagutcow

Distinguished Member
Joined
Nov 29, 2006
Messages
9,220
Reaction score
625
Originally Posted by 83glt
You guys are so gay.

They're a bunch of marsupials is what they are!
 

Miles Gloriosus

Senior Member
Joined
Nov 15, 2010
Messages
146
Reaction score
0
I don't care anymore, but before and when I was in the process of coming out constantly hearing it as a derogatory made the process a lot more difficult.
 

wmmk

Distinguished Member
Joined
Jun 13, 2008
Messages
2,664
Reaction score
9
Originally Posted by Pantisocrat
Who cares. free speech and all that. I use "asinine" in place of "stupid". Like, wow, what asininity!

The definition of "asinine" is "extremely stupid or foolish." "Gay," on the other hand, means nothing even vaguely related to "stupid." So I don't see what connection you're trying to draw.

And do you really mean to argue that the First Amendment means that nothing you say can be seen as offensive to either the people around you or to the English language itself?
 

Pantisocrat

Distinguished Member
Joined
Jan 7, 2010
Messages
1,762
Reaction score
7
Originally Posted by wmmk
The definition of "asinine" is "extremely stupid or foolish." "Gay," on the other hand, means nothing even vaguely related to "stupid." So I don't see what connection you're trying to draw. And do you really mean to argue that the First Amendment means that nothing you say can be seen as offensive to either the people around you or to the English language itself?
I don't see how the English language is offended???
 

Featured Sponsor

How important is full vs half canvas to you for heavier sport jackets?

  • Definitely full canvas only

    Votes: 55 36.7%
  • Half canvas is fine

    Votes: 59 39.3%
  • Really don't care

    Votes: 15 10.0%
  • Depends on fabric

    Votes: 26 17.3%
  • Depends on price

    Votes: 26 17.3%

Forum statistics

Threads
505,126
Messages
10,578,699
Members
223,883
Latest member
FitsPresto
Top