I can't speak for all kids but I know that the majority of people I know don't mean it in a homophobic sense, including my gay friends and relatives who use the words. It's just the vernacular, although with rather unfortunate origins. Hell, when I first learned the word I don't think I even knew what being gay meant.

If anyone has some substitutes for that and "retarded" aside from ridiculous, weird, stupid, unfortunate, sucks, please let me know. I've been searching for good replacements for quite some time.

I agree that it isn't _necessarily_ meant to be homophobic (it often is), yes, but still, had he said "it's so nigger" we wouldn't really have this discussion, would we?

(to this non-native English speaker "teh ghey" is actually spelled so funny that it tones down the offensiveness somehow, but it's just me)


having said that, if you really play World of Warcraft you may not be gay to begin with, World of Warcraft is to the gays what pig farming is to the Jews, it just doesn't sound right ;)

Update, WD!

Yeah, about the word 'retarded'. It's really been used a lot recently. There's someone on a site I belong to who uses it all the time to refer to anything he finds stupid. I'm kind of surprised no one's called him on it. It seems so immature and ignorant for a grown person to call things retarded.

As far as substitutes go, I call things pathetic sometimes. It denotes pity and scorn, which I find very satisfying.

*cough*

had he said "it's so nigger faggot"

Fixed that for you :-)

No update yet, he logged off.

...by that I mean "faggot" and "nigger" are equivalent epithets in my mind, as far as offensiveness is concerned. Equating "queer" or "gay" with "nigger" just doesn't seem right, but it's hard to explain why.

felix, they're blowing them up

wd, OK, but no one would say "this is so black" lightly, either.

If anyone has some substitutes for that and "retarded" aside from ridiculous, weird, stupid, unfortunate, sucks, please let me know. I've been searching for good replacements for quite some time.

Indeed. I would put aside "retarded" forever, if I could find a word that provided the same descriptive satisfaction.

no one would say "this is so black" lightly

Huh? I hear that or a variation quite often, although it is usually meant positively. Then again, I live in Las Vegas and the racial mix here is so chaotic that native Hawaiians are 10% of the permanent population base.

You want bigotry? Ask someone of Mexican heritage in this town (largely Catholic) how they feel about American Indians -- basically their brothers once separated by a border. "Lazy heathen" is about the mildest phrase you could hear.

A word to replace "retarded"? Try "Republican Voter"... it's a perfectly accurate invective for willful ignorance, irrationality, and simultaneously anti-social and self-abusive behavior.

For extra emphasis, add "NeoCon", "Bush-Cheney" or "Ron-Paul-Supporter"...

My daughter says "queer" but she means "odd" or "unusual". I find it refreshing. She understands homosexuality because we were good friends with a gay couple in the states.

I often think that if we didn't have a bunch of deeply misguided bronze age religions guiding the sheep, no one would give a shit who fucked whom.

You want bigotry? Ask someone of Mexican heritage in this town (largely Catholic) how they feel about American Indians -- basically their brothers once separated by a border. "Lazy heathen" is about the mildest phrase you could hear.

I always find it sad when oppressed people take on the bigotry of their oppressors. In Rwanda, for example, it's been a huge problem.

Even servants used to take on the strict social mores and snobbery of the masters. Ever seen the scene in Gosford Park (a favourite of mine) where the servant have to change the order they sit in at the table because a Countess is visiting for the weekend?

I always find it sad when oppressed people take on the bigotry of their oppressors. In Rwanda, for example, it's been a huge problem.

What makes you so sure it's not self-starting entreprenurial bigotry? Sadly it seems to be the one universal thing the world over. No race, creed or color has a monopoly on it.

wd, OK, but no one would say "this is so black" lightly, either.

I've heard plenty of people, black and white, say 'that's so ghetto.' which isn't far off.

Back to the subject of the original post: I kind of think that 'gay,' has outlived it's usefulness as a term to describe homosexuals, possibly because of the connotations of the word's original meaning. It conjures up very la-de-da images of the stereotypical effeminate fairy, which is a stereotype I thought we wanted to rid ourselves of. 'Homosexual' is too formal and clinical. 'Queer,' sounds stronger and more assertive than 'gay,' IMHO. Just a theory. and even though I'm a straight guy, I've been on the recieving end of homophobia, so I'm not entirely in the dark, I think.

'Retarded' is horrible I think. I've had numerous mentally disabled co-workers over the years and I find people who pick on them to be the worst example of picking on the weak. Sadly, when dealing with a willfully stupid person, I've caught myself thinking 'are you fucking retarded??' Holdover from stuff we learned in childhood, before we even knew what the words meant.

Of course, this brings us to the question: is it the words or the intent behind them that's really the problem. Generally speaking, linguistic policing tends to backfire and sometimes can lead to sterile, patronizing terms, I think. But then again, as someone who spends a lot of time writing, I can't deny that words have power.

If anyone has some substitutes for that and "retarded" aside from ridiculous, weird, stupid, unfortunate, sucks, please let me know.

I have always found 'shit-for-brains,' to be good term for a stupid person.

no one would say "this is so black" lightly

I've never heard that either but I've definitely heard "white" used as a complement in rural Pennsylvania. I don't hang out with too many hillbillies lately but when I did, I heard things like, "thanks buddy, that's mighty white of you".

I use "fuckwit" and "fuckwitted" as substitutes for the r-word.

Octothorpe, I don't think white was used in a racial sense, but in its traditional symbolism: purity, virtue...maybe not innocence ;-). Contemporary writing up until the early 20th century used the word in that connotation.

I use "pappskalle" instead of retarded in Swedish. It's harsh sounding with all those consonants one can spit out when saying it, and means "paper head" literally. Box brain. Eeediot.

UPDATE ... so I outed myself. It got uncomfortable at first. He was a little angry that--I dunno--I didn't tell him way back when we first started playing when he was, like, thirteen. I told him I was more than a little uncomfortable telling him now, but that I felt it was a necessary thing to do. He asked why. I told him that I was trying to make him aware that, while he might not be hurting my feelings with his equation of the terms "gay" and "lame" (or "stupid"), he might have close friends and/or family that he could be hurting. He said he didn't think "gay" meant, well, gay, at least not to kids of his age. It's always meant "lame" or "stupid" and that more hurtful epithets, the mildest of which would be "queer", and ramping on up through "cocksucker" and "faggot" is how he and his contemporaries usually referred to homosexuals in a negative or offensive connotation.

We didn't go much further than that. Usually when he and I are both online, we're voice chatting via skype, but if we're both busy, we don't say much to each other. That's how things got after this conversation. When I logged off, I told him good night, and he responded the same, and called me by a nickname he'd given me several months ago. While his voice was subdued, I took the nickname usage as a good sign, and hopefully he'll integrate this new information about me and we'll move onwards. Time will tell.

Good on you WolfDaddy. Best of luck.

Best of luck, Wolfdaddy.

I agree that it isn't _necessarily_ meant to be homophobic (it often is), yes, but still, had he said "it's so nigger" we wouldn't really have this discussion, would we?
I agree - while the person saying it may not always mean it to refer to homosexuality in a negative light, that is the origin of the word - it is no different to someone saying "you're such a faggot", because it is the words that hurt people, not the intent.

If anyone has some substitutes for that and "retarded" aside from ridiculous, weird, stupid, unfortunate, sucks, please let me know.
I say that people are "a waste of skin", sometimes followed by "would have been more useful to make a lampshade out of him/her". But I'm odd.

I say that people are "a waste of skin", sometimes followed by "would have been more useful to make a lampshade out of him/her"

Since lampshades made of skin are a reference to the fate of Jews in concentration camps, I'd say it's a fair amount more offensive than 'retarded'. I mean, 'retarded' is pretty offensive, but at least you aren't bringing up genocide in polite conversation.

I never thought if it that way. Honestly. It certainly wasn't a reference on my part to that, but I see your point and won't be saying that again.