Been following our 'Gay: let's get over it' campaign? Want to do more?

[RowanMumsnet]

Hello,

Hopefully lots of you will be aware of our joint campaign with Stonewall: Gay - let's get over it. The idea is to challenge the casual use of homophobic language among children and young people, particularly in the context of its use at schools. We're here to ask you to take action.

Lots of you have said you're in agreement with the aims (see this thread and our webchat with the ever-marvellous Will Young.)

So - we'd like you to take some action please!

In order for real change to happen, schools need to know about the campaign, and they need to know that parents support it. We're asking MNers to contact their schools asking them to sign up to the campaign.

You can Tweet at your school on Twitter (if both you and the school have accounts ); if you're Twitter-phobic, you could contact your school in other ways - on Facebook, by email, a good old-fashioned letter, or by marching up and down with a placard at pick-up time.* Nobble your headteacher, bend a governor's ear, recruit a mouthy pupil: the choice is yours. We've got sample tweets and shareable links on this page, downloadable guides for schools and parents here and posters for printing our and distributing here.

So do please ask your kids' school to get involved - and let us know how you get on.

Thanks
MNHQ

PS There's a list of UK schools on Twitter here.

*For the heavily committed and/or unembarrassable

Fantastic campaign, will email to school tomorrow.

I have a child with sn and agree all language need to be tackled, but please don't derail. Take it up elsewhere. My school has worked hard and stamping out disabilist language, but are struggling with the gay thing as its less black and white, and I dont know if the teachers know where to start.

Snarf - what about 'thats so gay?' - I told my son why this was wrong, but his teacher said they have to be careful what they say about homosexuality.

Should add my son is 7, though he knows some gay people, some kids in his class wouldnt even know that homosexuality is an option.

blessedhope I have to agree with you on this

If you don't associate gay with homosexuality, you're probably in a very small minority.

And the old adage - given the suicide and self-harm rate among teenagers - is bollocks.

I agree that it is inappropriate to railroad this campaign. Can we please focus on celebrating and working with Stonewall on this campaign which is completely essential to many children's wellbeing. I also look forward to seeing other campaigns around 'hate' crimes and the abuse of language and will celebrate them within their own space.

I fail to see how it is railroading a campaign to add considered posts that are relevant to the strategic aim of a campaign? Additionally, if more people had responded to the OP, then Newbluecoat and my contributions would have been significantly diluted. It's not our fault that nobody bothered to discuss the Stonewall campaign. There were, after all, 3 hours between the OP and NBC's contribution, with only 2 posts in between.

I'm a bit confused on this one. I agree that any hate crime should be stamped out and am all for tackling it however I do have a bit of concern here regarding the evolution of the English language.

My mother is now in her 80s and has expressed an opinion on occasions that when she was young the word gay meant happy and carefree and it is sad to her that it can no longer be used in that sense. This word was chosen by one particular community to replace words with negative associations that were then used to describe them and the general acceptance of meaning changed, which is fine, but is it then reasonable to "reclaim" a word that already has different meanings within living memory?

Young people have always had their own use of language and being offended or confused by it is what adults are meant to do.
I don't believe that children using this word as an insult associate it with homosexuality so their intention is not to insult gay people in any way and, even though we as adults understand the origins, surely the key is the intention with which it is delivered. The words gay and lame are often used in the same context, both have negative origins but are not used by young people with intent of hate crime.

Having heard somebody asked not to use the phrase "get down to the nitty gritty" in a business meeting recently because it, apparently, originated on slave ships referring to the black people in the lower parts of the ship and is therefore racist, I think we have to be careful to distinguish between true hate and use and evolution of our language. Ultimately it is for us to just quietly educate our children to be caring, decent human beings without hate for any community (which I'm sure most of us try to do anyway)

I take your point Timid. That does happen.

However the word gay has a much more cure and widely known alternative meaning, namely homosexual .

My kids used that word a few times, and I explained why it might offend. Now they don't, and correct others.

Gay meaning crap has its roots in prejudice and thus its use should be discouraged.

I've had a few pupils call themselves a spaz when they have been clumsy. They don't know its origins, so I explain and ask them to stop using that word too. I don't think many would approve if spaz became the common teen-slang word for clumsy, however unknowing the teenagers were.

I think the acid test for any word that can be used to describe a proportion of society, being used as an insult is 'Would you ever use this to describe someone positively?'

You'd never hear someone say 'aww, I love Ben. He's so gay!' You'd only ever hear it when someone is being critical of someone else, and the only reason it's an insult is the implicit inference that to be 'gay' is to be 'lesser, inferior'.

Just like spaz, mong, cripple, retard, 'tard, autistic, etc. - No-one is ever going to use those words to infer that someone is totally wonderful.

I bang on about Sassure, but his work on signifiers and the signified really does make it clear. No word in itself means anything. It only becomes meaningful when there is a concept linked to the word. For 'gay' that used to be 'happy, joyful...'. However, if you ask 100 people in the street to tell you what they 'see' when they hear the word 'gay' you can guarantee that 99% of them will say 'a person who is attracted to someone of the same sex.'

So when someone says 'that's so gay' about something that has annoyed or irritated them, they are saying 'that's as bad as two people of the same sex being attracted!'.

I am so glad that MN is supporting this. My DD has been on the receiving end of this kind of thing. It started off with people using the word 'gay' to mean rubbish about her clothes etc, but very quickly changed to insulting her as a person they believed to be gay in terms of sexual orientation. it has included her being targeted on the internet.

The school has recently tried to tackle homophobia and played the Macklemore song in assembly, and DD has found that helpful. Schools have a huge part to play in this. DD and DS are in different secondary schools and there is a zero tolerance policy on homophobia and gender based slurs. DS and his friends simply do not use them because it is not in the school culture. It isn't inevitable or something kids just do to shock adults. It is something they do because the school or the home environment teaches them it is okay. It isn't. I'm so grateful to organisations like Stonewall and how supportive adult gay men and women are of young people.

I'm glad about this too. One of my DC was also on the receiving end and it was definitely intended to be homophobic and not just naivety.

Imagine that a load of people thought exaltedwombat was talking shit. Because they thought exaltedwombat was talking shit they started referring to people talking shit as exaltedwombat. Eventually it catches on, and becomes an internet thing. Someone talks shit on twitter and everyone goes "that's so #exaltedwombat"

People on other forums with the username exaltedwombat start getting pissed off at suddenly being associated with talking shit, by people who don't even know the original exaltedwombat. They protest, but everyone rolls their eyes and says 'we don't mean you, it's just a word, get over it'

Eventually most posters called exaltedwombat change their names so that they can post in peace.

But you can't change your sexuality. We can, however, change the word for that sexuality being associated with being crap.

noblegiraffe, I think I love you.

First time I've ever wished there was a like button!

exaltedwombat that's really immature.

On noble do stop talking exaltedwombat, seriously.

It is pretty catchy...

On a more positive note, i spoke to two of my kids schools today and they were both really up for getting involved.

my 7 year old frequently hears 'thats gay' it enrages me that such young children are already using derogatory terms like this, today he came home and told me his friends said santa is gay! he doesnt understand of course.

As an aside im AMAZED only 1.5 % of the uk is gay including bisexuals, dont beleive that for a second tbh

This is daft. Why do you need to put this in our childrens faces.

Because it's coming out of our children's mouths?

Because it's already in our children's faces?

This isn't a campaign about something that might happen in the future, it's about something that children have identified is harming them now.