Year 3 son being called gay

[beeperhistory]

I'm sure it's been covered before .... yesterday my year 3 son asked me what gay meant as he'd been called it at school. I wasn't sure whether the word had been used in the "sad" sense that unfortunately many children seem to use it nowadays, or in the gay relationship sense, but it seems to be the latter. Apparently if you stand next to another boy at the urinals or near him in the changing rooms you are labelled gay.

Basically he knows about same sex relationships but didn't actually know it was called being gay so that was fine, we had a discussion, and he is absolutely OK with what it means and that if people are gay it's cool with us.

BUT I'm seriously p**d off that this is being bandied about as an insult at school. What do I do? Do I say anything to the teacher? If so, how?

Great, have spoken to the teacher and she gets where I'm coming from. She said they regularly have discussions about words and being kind to each other but will address this specifically. I'm happy she understood my concerns and will wait to see what ds tells me!

As I said before, this really is the first time I've even considered discussing name calling with the teacher, but I feel happy now I can say to ds that I've done so and my reasons in this case.

Things are changing though. There was a time when "it's only words" was used to excuse racially abusive language. That's not to say people don't use that language anymore, but it's definitely taken more seriously within schools and workplaces.

Maybe in 20 years time we'll look back at today's attitudes and find them very bizarre. It's not just the effect of namecalling etc. in the immediate sense, it's the fact that it leads to people being afraid to challenge (or even just uncomfortable) for fear of standing out. Won't it be nice when people in the public eye are just who they are, and not "that gay Tory politician" or "the only gay footballer in the Premiership" or whatever?