What about if someone says a woman is "butch" or a "bull dyke"? I think that's kinda mean.

But there's a double-standard involved. It's okay for women to be like men, it's not okay for a man to be like a woman.

There's a Madonna song about it.
;)

Get over it.

No, I don't think I will. It's a concern to me.

I'm trying to think if there has ever been a similarly popular phrase that was in reasonable interpretation an insult to blacks, or to jews or whatever.

I can't come up with one. So I guess the gay one is unique. But I can't help making the very imperfect analogy that blacks finally diffused the horror of the infamous "N" word when they started cheerfully referring to each other that way.

I know the better analogy is when gays happily call each other "Fag" or "Queer" and I think that has done wonders to take the sting out of those insults.

I undertand "That's so gay" is not the same at all, and yet I still think the best way to take the often unintended sting out of it is to just shrug it off or, as I do, say it just as constantly and breezily as straight kids do.


That's just my opinion. I try not to say it around my homosexual friends who are bothered by it. I haven't always been successful in that, and I apologize.


But I DO think it's only worse if we make a big deal about it, and becomes harmless to the extent we just accept it as a phrase that, in all honesty, does not mean "That's not a good thing because it's just like when men suck each other's dicks."

Sorry. Not taking the bait. You can argue with yourself. But do indeed restrain yourself from using it around me.

Brad, that's not bait. That's how I feel about it.


I understand how you feel about it, and I respect that. I try not to say it around you, and I don't always succeed.


Of course, it will soon be much easier. :(

I have found out several times today that "I must spread more mojo around" before giving it to Gemini Cricket again. :(

Hence my earlier point questioning drag.

It's okay by this middleaged married Midwestern mom, for whatever that's worth. As Carol Ann says to Vida Boheme in "To Wong Foo", "I know that I am very fortunate to have a lady friend who just happens to have an Adam's apple."

Though it varies widely by degree, I don't think it's ever been ok for a woman to act like a man. Sure, kids get away with a pretty much a pass for being a "tomboy," but manly women are assumed to be lesbians just as surely as effeminite men are assumed to be gay.

And yes, it's also different by a wide degree that lesbians are ok with men, while queers are threatening to them. Men are idiots, generally speaking. But the fact remains that men can never fear being a lesbian, and are too often fearful of their own homosexual urges.



I maintain, however, it's only a difference by degree. People acting outside of their own gender norms has traditionally faced scorn whether they are male or female.



Yeah, the phrase, "That's so gay" is expressing a negative value judgment on effeninentism. Probably one that the person saying it doesn't even really feel about actual people ... but it's a value that's been out there in society, thankfully fading, but not quite gone.


Before anyone gets their secretly worn frilly panties in a bunch, why don't you check all the stock phrases you use for any anachronistic value judgments embedded in the English language. There might be more of them than you think.



Think of all the offense possible with the innocently-intended "Happy Jew Coon." ;)