I’ve heard this sentiment that it is immoral a lot on the internet, and I would like to hear more about it. It feels intuitively correct to me, but I would like to hear the reasoning behind it.
Examples to further the title's meaning
- Calling someone ‘queer’ to mean they are weird, but not in a way intended as disparaging to those who are LGBT(Q+).
Not Examples
- Calling someone ‘queer’ to mean they are within the group known as LGBT(Q+). (or in any other neutral/positive tone)
- Calling someone ‘queer’ to mean they are weird, in a way intended to attack and/or disparage the LGBT(Q+) community.
- Calling someone ‘queer’ to mean they are weird, and you say you do not intend it negatively towards the LGBT(Q+) community, but you secretly do mean it negatively. (This is not intended as referring to anyone in particular /srs)
Discussion questions:
- How does this factor into meanings of words fading away?
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- Does it still pack the same “punch” after it no longer is commonly used as a pejorative?
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- If not, at what point is it generally considered okay to use?
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- How does this differ/compare with reclamation?
Some potential reasoning that I've thought of on my own, feel free to discuss.
- Bad actors can piggyback off of the use as a negative to help condemn the original target group.
- It may directly harm the group, by them (also knowing the original context) coming into contact with it and causing/enabling self-hate.
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- This may apply irregardless of if they know it was intended as non-disparaging to them or not, but this is just speculation based off of my similar experiences.
I apologize for any personal bias within this comment, I tried my best to limit it but I am fallible.
Though I would like a discussion in the comments, please refrain from insults and inflammatory statements towards your fellow lemmings, despite the hot topic. /srs
Wasn’t gay “fun” back in the day? As in, “I’m having a gay old time”
Non-native, so don’t know much about the history.
Yes. I never said any different. It was adopted as a descriptor by gay men, not bigots trying to denigrate them.
Oh, my comment was more of an honest followup question about the language, not an attempt to attack the validity of your comment. I Didn’t mean to come across that way.
Not the person you were replying too, but I didn’t think it came across that way. Something I’ve noticed about lemmy is how frequently people jump to conclusions and honestly don’t even really know how to hold a conversation. For a non-native speaker, you’re English in these comments is better than most native speakers. Too answer the question you had, yes, gay originally meant fun/happy. It was adopted by gay men and then was co-opted by hateful shitbags, most easily seen amongst school-children using it to pick on their peers, to bully anyone they didn’t like. Who wasn’t told, “What are you, gay”, when they were growing up?