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.

LG....the meanings of words change, i would never use the word "gay" to describe something as a bit naff...and i wouldn't allow my dc to either...but, the word gay is now being used in that context..

But helbels "gay" is being used to mean "crap" and "pathetic". Of course it's not bad to be called gay if you are gay. What's bad is being gay and having to hear the word "gay" associated with something undesirable. And children everywhere associating gayness with rubbishness.

It's like if the term for crap and uncool was "ginger" or "Asian". It's not that there's anything wrong with being those things and being called those things if you are - it's the association between those qualities and a word that means crap.

LG...i'm just trying to explain to the op that her packed lunch wasn't "gay" in a graham norton way...just in a dull way...probably not alot in it??...it's not my fault the meaning of the word has changed.

According to Wikipedia:

a campaign against homophobia was launched in Britain under the slogan "homophobia is gay" playing on the double meaning of the word "gay" in youth culture.[26]

Yes language and meanings do change - but there are many forces at play when that happens and one of them is moral and modernising pressure not to be abusive. So while we can't hold back the flow of language change, it is right to say "this usage is derogatory and we should avoid it". That's why Paki is not used as it once was, that's why phrases like "big girl's blouse" that were once commonplace are now more likely to be seen as outdated bigotry.

I think in this case telling DC that using gay in this way is really rude and hurtful to gay people is reasonable. Also, as a certain proprtion of our DC turn out to be gay, and have gay friends, they will naturally start to think twice about it.

you know leningrad...you're the only lesbian i've ever really spoken to (that i'm aware of anyway)...i'd never describe you as dull...far from it.

Surely assigning a sexual orientation to a collection of snack foods is so clearly absurd that even the most simple and developmentally arrested child would not do it.

Obviously the young people in question meant that it appeared to be a particularly happy, jolly sort of lunch.

dhat

Blimey, Muffle, is Big Girl's Blouse bigotry?

I had thought that it was a just an amusing Blackadder quote meaning weak and ineffectual...?

I think you actually can use big girl's blouse in a blackadder-esque ironic way...

But you cannot use it when you are a burly male PE teacher like they used to do in the 70s. IYSWIM.

Policywonk sums it up:
"I don't believe that it's a coincidence that the popular slang word for homosexual is now also a catch-all insult. People (including children) should be called on it when they use it."

When I used to teach secondary school the word 'Gay' was the insult of choice, followed closely by calling another boy a 'woman'. It was not tolerated in my classroom and should not be tolerated in any situation.

"you big jessie"...why is that demeaning?

Oh I come down strong on the use of the word gay meaning lame, dorky etc here.

I am surprised at the amount of parents who don't I think it's because they don't want to explain what gay actually means, and why it's wrong to use the word to mean naff or lame. It's not very evolved.

ds1 told me that someone had said to him, 'you talk to girls, you love girls so much, that's so gay'. He thought that was v. funny indeed. The boy couldn't understand why he was laughing so much.

I agree, Muffle, that context is all important with this kind of stuff; I wouldn't be happy if my boss said it to me non-ironically as a put-down in a meeting, but am perfectly happy to use it with people who understand the cultural (ahem) allusion and therefore wouldn't find it demeaning.

LG....but these comments are all part of life, you can't spend your whole life watching what you say...i've been told i look like i'm on class A drugs because i've got pink in my hair and my eyebrow pierced??..(i just laughd it off)....you have to accept that not everyone is PC, and i think that's a good thing.

it's not innocuous and I will come down pretty hard on my dc if they use that term.

i sent 5yo dd3 to school with only fruit and veg and no sandwich in her lunchbox today. not sure what sexual or social orientation that suggests. Heroin chic, perhaps?