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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Hes Bent as a nine bob note

58 replies

Pleasehelpmefindagoodusername · 05/05/2024 09:05

I have a relative who says this every time a gay or camp person comes on the TV. It's annoying. Aibu to be fed up of it?

OP posts:
tobee · 05/05/2024 15:09

Shocked that some posters don't seem to be aware that being sexually active as a gay person was an offence until very recently. Until 1967 in this country.

tobee · 05/05/2024 15:09

tobee · 05/05/2024 15:09

Shocked that some posters don't seem to be aware that being sexually active as a gay person was an offence until very recently. Until 1967 in this country.

Rather a gay man

Hartley99 · 05/05/2024 15:33

At the risk of being flamed, I wouldn’t get too wound up by that sort of thing. We’re far too concerned with the language people use. Whether or not someone is PC doesn’t really bother me. What really counts is the heart. I’d much prefer some old guy who said “chap in my regiment was a poof…never turned my back on him in the showers, haha…still, we all loved Johnny, and any one of us would have stood by him if he’d been attacked in a pub.” OK, it’s unpleasant, old school language, but I much prefer people who are not PC but are kind-hearted to people who are PC but just pretend to care because they think it makes them look good. I don’t judge people on what they say, or even on what they do, but on what they are. It takes time, but after a while you get a sense of someone’s ‘soul’ or character. And that’s what counts.

My brother votes Reform and dislikes mass immigration. He will often say things like “it’s boatloads of young men. I don’t believe they’re refugees at all” etc. But I know him. I know that if he was confronted, face to face, with a young girl who’d fled Afghanistan and ended up sleeping in his local park, he would do anything to help her. His heart is good. He’s kind and honourable. I can think of someone else, however, who reads the Guardian and walks round with a sulky, holier than thou attitude, but is vile. She hasn’t an ounce of genuine sympathy for anyone. If some old guy in her street was widowed and alone, it wouldn’t occur to her to pop round and cook him a meal. She wouldn’t give a shit. Her ‘goodness’ is all a pose.

Bertrand Russell, the philosopher, said that his grandmother (a puritanical Victorian) refused to believe that someone who swore could still be a good man. We seem to be returning to the same kind of Puritanism. But ours is a kind of metropolitan liberal Puritanism - use the correct PC language and express the correct PC views or you can’t be a good person. To some extent you have to tolerate intolerance. It’s the price we pay for freedom. And you have to tolerate the fact that not everyone likes every other group of human beings. We all have prejudices and dislikes. It would be very strange if we didn’t.

Misthios · 05/05/2024 15:49

coldcallerbaiter · 05/05/2024 15:07

Think he mixing up ‘a bender’ with the phrase for dishonest person, eg. A 9 bob note is not legal tender and is a counterfeit that’s been printed wrong.

I think we've established so far at least that it can mean both things. Certainly in the slang where I grew up (Edinburgh), someone described as "a bender" or "bent" meant a gay man. We don't refer to the police as "coppers" here in general, that's a very English term to my ears.

PiggieWig · 05/05/2024 15:52

It’s a phrase I’d use watching Line of Duty. Bent cops, totally fine usage of it.
In the context of gay people it’s homophobic and I wouldn’t want to hear it either.

crumbledog · 05/05/2024 16:00

How many programmes with gay people are you watching with him to make it worthy of a thread. If you're watching that many I'd be wondering about his sexuality tbh.

FictionalCharacter · 05/05/2024 16:33

Goldfinchtriad · 05/05/2024 09:09

Yes you are definitely not being unreasonable to be fed up of people being homophobic around you. However, I always thought that saying meant someone was dodgy/criminal which means I’ve understood it wrong my whole life!

You're not wrong. It's an old fashioned saying now, but it meant bent as in corrupt.

takemeawayagain · 05/05/2024 16:43

When I was growing up bent meant gay - I always thought it was just the opposite of straight but haven't heard it for a long time. I wonder why straight is a completely normal, accepted term that people use all the time (but what is basically the opposite of straight) ie bent is unacceptable. Is it because bent implies broken? Is it because of the 'nine bob' thing that was also used as a term for criminals? Is it because it harks back to a time when being gay was illegal?

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