Word to your mother
Gay. Fag. Faggot. Fairy. Queer. Pillow biter. Rump ranger. Ass pirate. Fruit loop. That way. A bit funny. Friend of Dorthy. Dyke, Bean flicker, Carpet muncher, Diesel, Bone smuggler, Brownie king, Cock jockey, Fudge packer, Queen and of course Homo.
Offended? Shame on you.
There are people out there who say words are just words. I hate these people. Just words? Words define and shape the very world we live in every day. They give us a commonality so that we can communicate and relate to one another on a purely intellectual level. And the fact I know that is it took me 32 words to define what words do...and poorly at that. Words are so much more than 'just words' and a lot of people forget that.
At the turn of the century one of the worst thing you could be called was a humbug. A humbug meant the equivalent of bullshit or douchebag. It was used to define people who lied to other people on such a level there was no excusing them. In fact when the term was used in the Wizard of Oz a lot of people took note with it, as it was a children's book and that kind of language was inexcusable. Humbug. My god those people had a mouth on them.
Nowadays a lot of language is thrown around in a short period of time. We are bombarded by literally thousands of different sources from TV to youtube to your phone to...well me. And in it we are at the mercy of the language around us. You can't unhear something. You can choose not to listen to it because you know it is patently nuts and has no value (I am looking at YOU Glenn Beck) but if you do listen...you're stuck with whatever travels into your ear.
Which comes to the problem.
A straight friend of mine the other day that the shirt this guy at work was wearing was gay. I nodded, I saw the shirt and thought it was pretty gay as well. But my other friend, who was gay, took offense. He asked if the shirt liked other shirts or was it a shirt that a gay man would wear. To which my straight friend kind of stammered and said no...and my gay friend took him to task. I was watching this back and forth and finally I looked at my gay friend and said “Humbug”
No not really, but I did call bullshit on him.
See my straight friend wasn't calling the shirt gay in any sense of the term that applied to homosexuality. To be fair he wasn't saying the shirt was overly happy and joyous either but honestly, who says THAT any more. My friend was saying the shirt was lame, ugly and or not something someone should wear outside. My gay friend knew he meant that, and still took offense. He willingly jumped in front of that verbal bullet and took a hit that wasn't even aimed at him.
It was aimed at an ugly shirt.
The word gay in my friend's story was a place holder, a place holder for lame and or ugly. I knew it, he knew it, my gay friend knew it, hell the guy wearing the shirt knew it. My straight friend in no way homophobic since he has at the very least two gay friends and would never in a million years think less of anyone because of who they had sex with. Yet there was my other friend, puffing up like one of those little yippie dogs Paris Hilton carries around with her.
In a world were there are REAL problems for gay people. Health care, marriage rights, equal opportunity, getting killed by some redneck jackass cause he is conflicted...all of THESE things and my friend wanted to take a stand on a word that he knew wasn't being used in an insulting way. Wasn't being used in a derogatory way. Hell, wasn't even being used in an intelligent way. He was using a word as a slang term to describe something not even close to what the word could be defined as.
Kind of the way gay has been used to mean homosexual.
These are just words and I know I was the one who said up there that I hate people like that but the truth is I hate people who get upset when a word is used correctly and still get upset. Words only have affect if you allow them to. If some homophobe calls me a faggot, what he is saying is I do not like you because of you sexual preference. That's ok I don't like the homophobe for his lack of IQ so we're even. But the word...the word is innocent in all this. I have been called faggot by my friends before when we were out at a club...and there was no malice in it, no evil intent. It was just a word that was meant in a friendly way by friendly people.
Like my straight friend describing the ugly shirt.
People hurtling words is like people who participate in live action role play. See they dress up like dungeons and dragons characters and then act out their adventures. The warriors have nerf weapons and the wizards in place of their spells have wadded up pieces of paper. They hurl these at the other players calling out what the spell is. So they will throw a wad of paper at you and scream “Lightning bolt!” If you are playing the game, you are damaged and hurt by this attack.
If you aren't playing you just got a piece of paper thrown at you by a nerd and probably had no idea why.
With all the real problems in our world, why do we focus on the ones that mean nothing? Or at the least very little. We are what we are and we should be proud of it but at the same time aware some people might not like us. Doesn't mean we should change at all, but these people will from time to time pick up pieces of paper and hurl them at us calling out words...
And the only way it can damage us is if we are playing the game as well.
I am not saying people who hurl these words around are not guilty of spreading hate and trying to hurt people. I am saying they are using the language BECAUSE of that, so if someone calls you a fag and you get upset, they did indeed use the right language. I say take it away from them. Shrug and say “Yeah and?” All they are saying is basically “I have a narrow minded view of the world and believe that anyone who partakes in sexual activities in a manner different than my own threatens my worldview so like a caveman screaming at thunder, I automatically hurl these words at them to try to do some kind of emotional damage.”
And know what you should say back to them?
Humbug and move on, you probably have better things to do with your time.