Exactly what I mean in this case-

Kids at the school use it to mean "lame", but they also ARE calling my son gay as in Gay. He's not (and we have discussed it)- but because of his level of maturity, his tendency to come across very emotional and sensitive ("traditional female" traits:rolleyes: ), his decision to have long curly hair, and the fact that his two friends are boys who are also prone to be targets - has made the "bully" kids decide that he is full blown Gay. Not just lame-

If he was Gay-he could never say it- not in that atmosphere. I want to convince him to blow them off- because he needs to not take the bait, but he's sooo touchy. Add to that the fact that there is still stigma attached, negative stigma- he sees it all as an insult. It's a rough corner to be in.

You know, I don't mind being called - or calling myself - a fag hag, but I HATE the term fruit fly. I'm not absolutely sure why that is, but somehow, fag hag just seems like the right phrase.

Cause you are too tall to be a fruit fly.
You take fag hag, I'll take fruit fly.

No one has ever used the term fag hag as anything less than an insult around me. I hear it used nicely, then maybe I will acknowledge it.

re: "Homosexual" - I think it's because of the subtext of why they so pointedly stick to that word. They're saying, "Look, I'm very carefully using the technical term so you can't accuse me of using hate speech or being prejudice, therefore it lends credence to my overall statement". It often comes across in that, "I'm saying 'homosexual', but you know what word I'm really thinking" kinda way.

Exactly.


I don't know how I feel about 'fag hag' sometimes. I mean I say it every now and then, but it doesn't feel right often. If a girlfriend of mine calls herself that, it doesn't bug me if it doesn't bug her. Like if someone gay calls himself /herself or me 'fag', it doesn't bug me. My sister calls me 'fag' and I call her 'dyke' it doesn't bother either of us.

I don't know. Reading this thread over, I'm feeling like I have too many hang ups.
:D

Really, you need to learn to let go and move on...

I oscilate back and forth...one part of me says, "The word is just a word. It doesn't matter what word you use, if you're bigotted it'll come through and if you're not, it'll be obvious so who cares." Another part of me sees the view that getting lazy with language and pretending that language doesn't matter makes it hard for people to distinguish appropriate from inappropriate attitudes.

Douglas Hofstadter wrote a rather provocative column 20+ years ago called A Person Paper on Purity in Language. He wrote it as an aside in the ongoing (and in 1982, very topical) discussion of gender non-neutrality in the English language. He invented a world in which the English IS gender neutral, but, NOT race-neutral, and then proceded to make the same arguments defending this status-quo as were being made to defend gender non-neutrality. It may not prove anything at all, but it certainly makes one think.

Language is an intereting beast - sometimes the euphamism becomes the next epithet, othertimes it becomes a badge of honor - just look at:

Colored
Negro
Black
African American

All at least one time were prefered useages - but over time the connotations attached to each morphed both meaning and intent.

I like the idea of siezing langauge - there was an ioten in NPR not too long ago in which they talked about how some of the success of the republican party has been their ability to define the terms in their favor - but that's even more of a derail - perhaps I'll come back later and create a language thread.

Well, give a girl time! I just came to terms with that very idea yesterday...
:D

Yup. This happens to a lot of groups. The words say "I'm socially correct" and the tone says "I have dog sh!t on my shoe."