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.

Gay was used freely at my mixed sex school in the 80s, and it wasn't meant nicely.

I would be fine with my children using gay as a descriptive term, for themselves or others. But not, ever, as an insult.

i'm in my thirties BS so not young..ha ha.. but homosexuality has been around since time began...i don't ever remember anyone at my school being called "gay"...(obviously not in it's new sense)....just wondering why it's used alot more now?

I think some of it might have roots in Little Britain. Is it possible that some children become confused that it's alright for us to laugh at Sebastian being ridiculously infactuated (to the point of insane jealousy & full frontal nudity) with the PM and for the moustached Emily Howard to skip along in her dress, misapprehending the sense of what the sketches are actually poking fun at?

It is the prevalence round our way for oh-so-witty grafiiti to read 'x is gay'
I have the urge to write underneath 'I'm so glad x is so cheerful' and let the oiks try and figure it out

Iklboo, LOL, we should get Susie Dent on their case.

My DS has just turned 3 and one of teh local kids has written on his football which he was playing out with "Sam's gay, and he doesn't know we wrote this". Luckily he can't actually read. so i haven't bothered to tell him.
I think the use of the term 'gay' as a playground insult is absolutely awful. When i was at school people used to say 'spastic' (please no offence meant to anyone with cp) and it was awful. You wouldn't get away with that now and you shouldn't get away with gay either.

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lol KB...ain't little britain just great.... the fat bald one is gay.. so i guess they can get away with it.

Daftpunk, I hope this analogy might help...

We all know that gay is meant disparagingly. When I lived in England occassionally I would hear things that were ludicrous, or overly bureaucratic described as being 'Irish'.

I just used to seeeeeeethe when I heard that. HOw did that word seep into the language that it also became understood to mean 'wonky' or 'backwards' or 'done in an inefficient way'??

I'm not gay, but I think it would similarly annoy me to hear a crappy dairy lea lunch described as gay...

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So, Miss Sunny - you'd be happy with your children using words like "spazz" and "slag' - they don't really mean it, they just mean that whoever they are talking abotu is a bit naff?

oh maggiebeebeau....my parents are irish...i've heard every irish joke ever invented..in 15 different languages.

Miss Sunny - my 8-year-old DD has two mummies & we both help out on school trips etc. If your DD was in the same class & commented on this, what would you say?

Hey dp, I love Little Britain too and Tom Baker's voiceovers are inspired.

no victoriamac ignore miss sunny i think that's a great response. keep on with it. Some things are fine to laugh about in school but not this. Homosexual young people have a terrible time in our secondary schools.

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Oh man, you all sound so old.

I like some of Little Britain too but if my children watched it and if they started copying what was said on it I would explain to them in no uncertain terms that s comedy programmes take things to extremes in order to make us laugh - but the same things said in real life are completely unacceptable and very hurtful.

MissSunny, are you for real?!!

hey kitty!..little britain is compulsory viewing....so politically incorrect.