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.

Well if you are saying that what a word meant first is what counts regardless of intent then you are saying it means 'happy' and not something to do with sexual preference.

It's had three meanings that I know of, but some want to pick the one that causes them offense so they can play the martyr.

To paraphrase your wonderland line some people say "when I hear a word it means exactly what I want it to mean, no more and no less"

I'm confident that linguists take the line that the meaning of word is the meaning that most people understand it to have.
So, for example no good me deciding that 'gay' means 'startling' (which is what Humpty Dumpty would do.
It's reasonable to say, then that are 3 meanings of the word gay

1. Happy, pleasant etc
2. Homosexual
3. Naff, uncool etc.

Now, the problem arises because for reasons given earlier the third meaning has arisen because of the second meaning, ie homosexuality is regarded by some idiots as undesirable ....and possibly that it's a sort of 'broken' masculinity. I'm sure there must be a technical term for this migration of meaning but if I ever knew it I've forgotten now. But, while not denying that 'gay' now has this third meaning, that doesn't mean we shouldn't challenge it's use, since that is clearly insulting and offensive. And wouldn't you like to avoid giving offense?

I think there would have been no offense if some people hadn't been actively looking for it.

I also think that the 'fence' mentioned previously used to be like the Berlin Wall - ugly, hateful and impassable.

I think we did our best to get it down to a garden fence that you could at least look over and maybe chat to your neighbour on the other side.

I don't think it helps if people keep pointing to the fence and reminding everyone that there are two sides. Maybe you think that using the word does that, but no one was even thinking about gender preference at the time. They are now.

You don't have to be on the look out for the opportunity to play the martyr to find the new usage of 'gay' offensive. It is horribly homophobic surely, in the ears of any adult.

Onager do you actually disbelieve that the use of the word to mean 'rubbish' 'uncool' has its origin in the denigration of some males by calling their 'insufficient masculinity' gay -- that originally it meant 'you are feminine like a homosexual is therefore you are rubbish'?

Have you never come across this sort of use of gay as an insult? Do you have an alternative account of the origin of the 'uncool' usage?

Since the origin of the current usage is still transparent to most people, the word is offensive in exactly the same way as the insult-use of 'spastic'. Even if the origin became utterly occluded it would still be offensive because of the historical association.

Sure, words acquire new meanings. Sometimes they do this in a hate-filled way, so the resulting usage is hateful.

Actually the insult-use of several disability terms should on Onager's account be unoffensive. Spaz, mong, flid (apologies for even typing these) have a more-and-more hidden origin precisely because they forced the people to stop using certain terms to describe disabilities. In that sense the insults have been severed from their history altogether. Does that make any of them ok? Would you let your children use any of those terms onager?

I always think it is interesting how many people fundamentally believe that their right to be offensive is far more important that anyone else's right not to be offended.

Now in some cases that may be true, when someone is holding very odd views or behaving very strangely. But mostly I do think that the small restriction in changing the way your phrase things on occasion is not a huge concession to pay.

It's offensive to use gay as a way of slagging someone / something off. Surely that's all there is to it?

I have had this conversation so many times with teenagers, but never expected adults to question its offensiveness. I have been on training days for teachers where it has been made very clear that any use of the word in a pejorative way is to be treated as any other sign of prejudice and that adults who are in care of young people and turn a blind eye to its usage are corroborating in the prejudice.

I have had the discussion with kids about how they would feel if their usage of the word gay was interchanged with the word "black" or "Christian" or "Turkish", as in "Those trainers are so Turkish man," or "Oh my God, you're so stupid you must be black," they are appalled at this thought. For those people who think that gay now means rubbish or crap, would you have so readily accepted this had kids been using one of these alternatives? I really hope not. But if not, then why is "gay" accepted in this way?

According to this reasoning if you put on an old film or read an old book which has the word gay in it meaning 'happy' then it would be offensive because someone would be offended. You could then sue the writer and maybe protest outside his house for his obvious homophobia.

Some of you would think that. Others might argue that it was different because the writer didn't know that the word would acquire an extra meaning later. But that assumes that each time a word gets an extra meaning all english speakers are informed of the change.

Since the words for medical issues have been mentioned lets use that as an example. I've been sniffily informed on here that "we don't call it THAT anymore - it's offensive. We say xxxxx"

Only for someone to chime in and say "oh but don't call it xxxxx any more, we consider that offensive"

So there is not even agreement among those who spend all day thinking about the words.

I'm not saying ignorance is an excuse. I'm saying there is nothing to excuse. I'm saying that the language is not just one thing printed in a dictionary and most words have multiple meanings anyway. If you haven't realised that then you are not yet an english speaker and hardly entitled to an opinion.

I'm also saying since I have been accused of being unclear that Leningrad and some others leap on these things and make them out to be about them as an attention seeking device.

But onager, that's the point. Words don't mean one thing printed in a dictionary, they have a history and a context

Gay is being used in a derogatory way as a result of it being used by homosexual people to descibe themselves

So of course it's homophobic and offensive

And so how can it be ok?

And you are very unclear. I say this in a spirit of helpfulness, not attention-seeking.

Exactly right saintmaybe. Onager says himself that ords have a history and a context. The history and context of 'gay' as insult is derogatory and offensive. The history of the much earlier use of gay as happy has no offinsive or derogatory history so it is inoffensive, so Onager's point about the film-showing fails.

Onager's reference to the constant changing of terms to describe disability is very interesting. There has been a strategy among those who need to refer often to disabilities -- the strategy has been to abandon terms that have become abused by those who would use them offensively.

So when, onager, you are 'sniffily' informed of a language evolution (a new term for a disability), the evolution has been caused by the offensive new meanings -- that in the case of 'gay' you call legitimate new meanings. If you don't like that kind of flux in disability language, then you would surely want to help preserve the non-insult meanings from degenerating into insult.

LGBT people have I think purposely avoided the strategy of abandoning terms that get hijacked as insults. Eg. re-colonising words like 'queer'. So if you don't like being sniffliy informed about language evolution, it seems sensible to go along with the lgbt strategy of fighting for certain words to remain free of hate.

LeninGrad, can I just say that your continued patience and graciousness on this thread is pretty damn amazing?

Wow what a fab discussion!

My 11 year old daughter used this word the other day, now I have always always taught her that it's fine to be gay or straight or whatever and she is a big music fan particularly musicals so the likes of John Barrowman are people she looks up to. She's way more mature in that respect than a lot of her peers.

Anyway I asked her why she had said it and she said 'I dunno it's just what people say'. I said but it's implying that being gay is a bad thing by using it in that way. She doesn't see it as being associated with actual homosexuality, it's just a word people use.

I've told her not to say it again anyway but when they are surrounded by kids saying it then it's diffucult for them not to pick up on it.

On another note, DDs friend went through year 5 being labelled a 'lesbian' (definite gay insult) because she was close friends with another girl????

Oh and my DS is 13 and has been labelled gay a few times because he doesn't like football..

I have to say that a lot/most of the prejudices come from the parents. If every single parent sat down with their child at a young age and told them that everyone is different, and being gay isn't a bad thing, just a different thing, same for race the world would be a nicer friendlier place.

My Mum works at a secondary school and interestingly one year a few of the popular girls decided they were lesbians and several others followed, apparently it became quite cool to walk around holding hands with each other and even kissing in the school yard....

For parents (of teenagers) who are interested the following programmes are really good:

www.channel4.com/programmes/coming-out-to-class

www.channel4.com/programmes/batty-man

They both challenge the use of the word gay and homophobia in general. I know I mentioned them earlier, but I really can't recommend them enough as discussion springboads.