to regret giving my dd a gay packed lunch?

[pointydog]

Dd1 (12) was off on a fun school trip today with a mix of kids from high school.

I suggested a few things for her packed lunch this morning and she went off happily with a peanut butter sandwich, a fruitus bar, a kitkat, some dried apricots, a tub of home-made muesli and a bag of chipsticks.

The tuff kids laughed at her lunch - snorting particularly loudly at the apricots - and called it gay.

I feel like the mum in About A Boy.

hatwoman...I may have this wrong...but seeing that gay used to mean happy and great and whatever and it is now used as the opposite...I think that is what it really is...I don't think it is actually used in relation of gay people, when Kids say it...still correct them, of course...just don't think it is ever meant in that way...i.e. oh gay people is what we don't like and thereofre anything we don't like is called gay?
It's a bit like sick now meaning great...iykwim

but like I said, I might got this wrong...and I may nto even make sense, lol

back to the op - I can't see what's wrong with that lunchbox at all (apart from the fact it has monkeypoo sandwiches ) and think it is so very stupidly sad to take the piss out of someone's lunch. FGS, it's only food - it's not like there was a homegrown micro-seedling tray in there with ethically sourced napkins and an environmentally sound wooden fork, is it? Sangers, kitkat, bit of fruit, bit of a dip - ok, it's not cheesestrings and a frootshoot but who is going to be the winner here? The dimwits with the too-processed-to-be-called-real-food stuff, or your DC?

cheers morloth..

oh and seeker...leningrad decides whether or not she talks to me...she doesn't need your permission.

Theres a big difference between banter and bullying. A bully will use anything if they're so hell bent on picking on someone, if its not because they're gay its because they don't fit in, they don't look right, they're too fat, too lazy, wear glasses, have ginger hair etc etc......a bully will always find something to pick on.

Banter is meant in good faith where both parties see it as nothing more than a harmless insult.

The discussions you talk about LeninGrad have led innocent shopkeepers being ordered by councils to remove gollywogs from their window display, have led many schools and town centres to abandon Christmas celebrations for fear of offending the minority, we now live in a society where we pamper to every whim of the so called minority and everyone else has to like it or lump it......basically what it spells out is if you're NOT in the minority then you're wrong! Hardly a good way to treat everyone as being equal, hey just my opinion

That's right Lenin. And in the case of 'gay' as an insult I'm sure it had its origin in an attack on males for being 'feminine' insufficiently aggressive, or too expressive, or liking things that'only girls like'. On the stupid assumption that all and only gay males are feminine, and that feminine is bad. So in addition to its main offensiveness as being a homophobic insult it does in its origin -- include a largish dose of misogyny too.

"oh and seeker...leningrad decides whether or not she talks to me...she doesn't need your permission. "

Absolutely, daft punk. I wasn't directing my suggestion at her - she is more than capable of deciding ANYTHING for herself! I was letting other people know that this is a subject on which you have views which you have expressed before and which are apparently not amenable to reason.

"A comparable phrase is 'you're such a girl'. What exactly is that saying? You're weak, pathetic, a cry-baby? Delightful for all girls to hear I'm sure."

Not particularly a phrase that would offend me as a female.....unless I actually WAS a cry baby of a girl, but then again I don't take things to heart and expect people to walk on egg shells around me so people can say what they want.

fairladyrant - sorry I didn;t understand what you're saying.

my point wasn;t addressed to the issue of using the word gay as an insult - it was addressed to a different point that has come up on the thread - whether or not to "tell" children about the existence of gay people/relationships.

And if the word 'gay' to mean something bad becomes part of your intellectual furniture it can't help but seep through into your attitudes and behaviour.

well said Hatwoman... I was interested in this point of only telling children on a need to know basis as well.
So in Miss Sunny's case she hasn't talked to her dd about it as she doesn't know any gay people.
So what happens as the child gets older, perhaps you still don't know any gay people... when do you tell them? when they're teenagers? after years of listening to gay as an insult in the playground? when they discover they themselves are gay?
Surely they way to overcome homophobia is to instill in your dc from a really early age that there are all kinds of relationships and all are fine... hence I told my dc when they were tiny looking through books on relationships and preparing for new babies that there will be children with just mummies or just daddies. They are now 8 + 10 and obviously they don't know the ins and outs of it, just like they don't know the gory details of a heterosexual relationship but I am proud of the fact that when I say, when you get married etc they always pipe up, that they could marry a man if they wanted!

seeker, leningrad is well aware of my views on homosexuality as i've had a few conversations with her....i find her one of the most interesting,intelligent, and kind posters on mumsnet..some of you should learn from her.

So we should also ban the words fat, ginger, anorexic, geek, skinny, lanky, spotty etc etc etc etc the list goes on and on and on coz I'm sure if we thought about it hard enough we could probably make an insult out of most words in the English language.

I think I'm the one in the minority on this thread (and I've been bullied as both a child and an adult), You have a choice to either allow words to get to you or to laugh it off, I personally find laughing off an intended insult has the reverse effect of what a bully wants to achieve. I'm not homophobic by any means I have gay friends and my cousin is a lesbian, when I see her I'll quite often shout "Alright Lezza" and she jokingly says something back, its harmless banter! If I said it and it upset her then I simply wouldn't say it because I'm not a bully!

All teenagers have vulnerable emotions not just gay teenagers, it seems acceptable for people to label them as chavs, irresponsible etc without taking into consideration childrens backgrounds etc, unfortunately thats children being bullied by adults and websites like this seem to be the worst for people looking down noses at others! I personally think, even with the best intentions in the world, by over highlighting matters you're actually being counter productive and encouraging the bullies who get a reaction. Laugh it off and the bullies soon get bored.

"I don't think there's any such thing as a harmless insult. You can take the piss amongst friends of course, but if you cross the line and insult someone you should apologise."

couldn't agree more with the second half of the sentence, of course you should be able to have a joke amongst friends and some people do take jokes a step too far , but then these people are obviously not true friends in the first place. But there is such a thing as a harmless insult.....it all depends on whether the insult is said and taken in a light hearted fashion.

I have been reading this post with interest and just wanted to say that I am very impressed with the eloquence and cool-headedness with which LeninGrad is expressing her position in the face of some quite nonsensical statements. Well done.

I don't have anything to add other than what has already been said by Leningrad, seeker, and stillstanding have said.

I really don't understand how calling something that is bad "gay" is not insulting towards gay people despite the assertion that it has a different meaning. It is clearly considered bad because it is associated with gay people.

Many people (although hopefully the number is decreasing) call someone a "Jew" if they are tight with money and you can't say that because in that context it has a different meaning from saying that someone is of semitic descent and/or practises the Jewish religion that the comment is somehow not offensive. That is just naive and disingenuous.

"A harmless insult"? What on earth does that mean? Now we really are getting into semantics.

Here is the online definition of insult:

• be offensive to somebody: to say or do something rude or insensitive that offends somebody
• show contempt for somebody or something: to say or do something that suggests a low opinion of somebody or something

So how can that be harmless?!

"a gay lunch" whatever next id take no notice at all !!