Rampant Homophobia

[Hexen]

Have you ever noticed that most young people today use words like "Gay" "Fag" Faggot" and such? Not to mention the word "Gay" at one time used to mean "Happy" but the word got corrupted overtime for homophobic uses (I don't know when it did can anyone point out when the word "Gay" started being a derogatory term against homosexuals?). Is homophobia more rampant now?

It's very strange that our society claims that "prejudices are a thing of the past" but yet it still exists unnoticed as if humanity still has long ways to go to recognize ourselves as equals..

[TheLeftStar]

I too am disheartened by the corruption of the word gay to mean homosexual. Gay means being happy, being with joy. Faggot sounds offensive and derogatory. Despite the psyche abandoning prejudices, words indicating homophobia and invectives roll off peoples tongue like casual words in a chatter!

[JucheDPRK]

What a gay thread :lol:
It's just a cultural thing that passes with maturity and understanding.
I think it comes mostly from how some gays ham up their effeminate side, ie. in the media ect.
This may seem ignorant of me but I really don't understand how having sexual attractions to members of the same sex can alter one's voice and fashion sense and it pisses me off when I can spot one from a mile away, have they no self-respect, I'm heterosexual but I don't fall into the heterosexual stereotype just so to express that to people, my sexual orientation doesn't dictate my lifestyle, could someone please explain.
Anyway, to answer Hexen's question, no homophobia is not more rampant, most a these prepubescent kids that call the person who just killed them on Halo "fag" would, in any other instance defend people from homphobia. Like me, they, in most cases, have a distaste of the modern homosexual culture, not homosexuals.

[Queercommie Girl]

Serious homophobia is now less rampant. (Decades ago if you are queer in the US you would simply be arrested by the police) Even the genius computer scientist Alan Turing (who was gay) was forced to commit suicide by the British government.

But while serious institutional queerphobia have significantly lessened in the West in recent years, less serious and more colloquial forms may have increased in frequency somewhat among the general population, especially among school-age kids.

[lines]

What is the origin of this trend among the youth where they call each other gay as an insult? Another question I have is should this trend be viewed as a manifestation of bigotry or is it simply kids being silly and not a manifestation of bigotry?

[Astarte]

What has happened is a kind of "double-think" has taken over society in terms of racism and homophobia - so you will hear people saying "oh, thats gay", but then when you call them out on it they will say "oh, no man, i have nothing against gay people, i just mean it like stupid", etc ... Oh! Is that all? Its really derogatory on a qualitatively higher level that is degrading in a more subtle and unconscious way. The same holds true with racism - even on this board you will find some people saying "n*ggaz" - to me this is outrageous that some fucking people have the gall to come onto a communist forum and think they can go throwing around racial slurs in this new more subtle but even more insulting double-think way. I am not sure when people started saying "gay", but first remember started hearing it used like that around the mid to late 1990's - it probably started earlier though.:cursing:

[Bad Grrrl Agro]

Have you ever noticed that most young people today use words like "Gay" "Fag" Faggot" and such? Not to mention the word "Gay" at one time used to mean "Happy" but the word got corrupted overtime for homophobic uses (I don't know when it did can anyone point out when the word "Gay" started being a derogatory term against homosexuals?). Is homophobia more rampant now?

It's very strange that our society claims that "prejudices are a thing of the past" but yet it still exists unnoticed as if humanity still has long ways to go to recognize ourselves as equals..
Last I heard the G in LGBT stood for Gay. As for "Fag" and "Faggot" I've heard the word used endearingly amongst gay guys.

[Queercommie Girl]

What is the origin of this trend among the youth where they call each other gay as an insult? Another question I have is should this trend be viewed as a manifestation of bigotry or is it simply kids being silly and not a manifestation of bigotry?

Primarily a lot of times it's just kids being silly, what I mean is many of them aren't actually explicitly queerphobic. But on a more subtle level the use of implicitly racist, sexist and queerphobic language permeates many aspects of contemporary culture, so much that many people won't even be aware that they are using language which are implicitly not very good.

Also, there is a "campaign" against "political correctness" and "over-sensitivity of minorities and women" among some people today, which kinds of adds to the problem.

[Astarte]

What a gay thread :lol:
It's just a cultural thing that passes with maturity and understanding.
I think it comes mostly from how some gays ham up their effeminate side, ie. in the media ect.
This may seem ignorant of me but I really don't understand how having sexual attractions to members of the same sex can alter one's voice and fashion sense and it pisses me off when I can spot one from a mile away, have they no self-respect, I'm heterosexual but I don't fall into the heterosexual stereotype just so to express that to people, my sexual orientation doesn't dictate my lifestyle, could someone please explain.
Anyway, to answer Hexen's question, no homophobia is not more rampant, most a these prepubescent kids that call the person who just killed them on Halo "fag" would, in any other instance defend people from homphobia. Like me, they, in most cases, have a distaste of the modern homosexual culture, not homosexuals.

In any case, I think this post is a great example of what Iseul and myself seem to be getting at.

[Queercommie Girl]

I think it comes mostly from how some gays ham up their effeminate side,

This may seem ignorant of me but I really don't understand how having sexual attractions to members of the same sex can alter one's voice and fashion sense and it pisses me off when I can spot one from a mile away, have they no self-respect


You seem to be assuming that it's intrinsically negative to be "effeminate" compared with "acting masculine", or whatever. Why is that?

Sexuality is not directly related to gender expression, but do you have a problem with men who are somewhat "effeminate" (they could indeed be completely heterosexual), or indeed male-to-female transgendered people?

I think it's implicitly sexist to assume that "feminine" things and behaviours are somehow worth less intrinsically than "masculine" things and behaviours. It's almost as if you consider "feminine fashions" to be not as good as "masculine fashions" in an intrinsic aesthetic sense.



Like me, they, in most cases, have a distaste of the modern homosexual culture, not homosexuals.
Modern homosexual culture is over-commercialised, but then so is modern heterosexual culture. I just don't like excessive commercialisation, I don't care whether such commercialisation is straight or gay, masculine or feminine in nature. A straight guy spending huge amounts of money on masculine-style grooming and muscle-building pisses me off just as much as an "effeminate" queer person spending huge amounts of money on dresses and nail polish. I don't discriminate between the "masculine" and "feminine" styles in an aesthetic sense, I'm only against the economic behaviour of over-spending in order to fit into some kind of "mainstream fashion stereotype". (Which is basically a way for the bourgeois to make more money)

If anything, much of the mainstream gay fashion focuses on gays who are attractive in a stereotypically masculine sense, rather than a feminine one, like this for instance:

http://malestars.codserver.com/cnt/rupert_everett/photos/19.jpg

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

Sexuality is not directly related to gender expression, but do you have a problem with men who are somewhat "effeminate" (they could indeed be completely heterosexual), or indeed male-to-female transgendered people?

I think it's implicitly sexist to assume that "feminine" things and behaviours are somehow worth less intrinsically than "masculine" things and behaviours.


The stereotypical behaviour isn't effeminate in anyway either (this notion of lisping, fashion-obsessed snobs living in some gentrified hell, all wealthy and elitist and occupied with nothing but polishing their nails). It's generally presented as such (effeminate) by detractors who like to obsess about this as a manifestation of their delusions about the "emasculation of the men" or some such nonsense, people who are obviously a bunch of sexist pricks. But really it's just about some sub-culture stereotype (not even some "homosexual stereotype", I'd say this "sub-culture" is media-driven and as a phenomenon, entirely unrelated to sexuality).

Acceptance of those behavioural patterns and so on as effeminate I'd say is definitely sexist itself.

[Queercommie Girl]

It's generally presented as such (effeminate) by detractors who like to obsess about this as a manifestation of their delusions about the "emasculation of the men" or some such nonsense, people who are obviously a bunch of sexist pricks.


This I agree, not to mention that it's associating "femininity" with elitist commercialised behaviour, whereas in reality "masculine fashion styles" can cost huge amounts of money too.

However, I would add that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with men behaving in a somewhat "effeminate" manner (in the real sense) either.

[JucheDPRK]

You seem to be assuming that it's intrinsically negative to be "effeminate" compared with "acting masculine", or whatever. Why is that?

Sexuality is not directly related to gender expression, but do you have a problem with men who are somewhat "effeminate" (they could indeed be completely heterosexual), or indeed male-to-female transgendered people?

I think it's implicitly sexist to assume that "feminine" things and behaviours are somehow worth less intrinsically than "masculine" things and behaviours. It's almost as if you consider "feminine fashions" to be not as good as "masculine fashions" in an intrinsic aesthetic sense.

Modern homosexual culture is over-commercialised, but then so is modern heterosexual culture. I just don't like excessive commercialisation, I don't care whether such commercialisation is straight or gay, masculine or feminine in nature. A straight guy spending huge amounts of money on masculine-style grooming and muscle-building pisses me off just as much as an "effeminate" queer person spending huge amounts of money on dresses and nail polish. I don't discriminate between the "masculine" and "feminine" styles in an aesthetic sense, I'm only against the economic behaviour of over-spending in order to fit into some kind of "mainstream fashion stereotype". (Which is basically a way for the bourgeois to make more money)

If anything, much of the mainstream gay fashion focuses on gays who are attractive in a stereotypically masculine sense, rather than a feminine one, like this for instance:



I when I say Effeminate I am referring to, at least in this context, the objectively negative personalities that society have atrributed to women unfairly, for example squeamishness, vanity and decadence.
The mainstream homosexual male culture looks to me as a outsider to be riddled with the negative qualities that woman are said to posses by male chauvinists. But the thing is, it seems that people today, not just in the LGBT but also, to a seemingly lesser extent, in the Heterosexual community seem to make choices based mostly on their sexuality. When I wear a certain T-Shirt it is mostly other factors, like comfort, that make me put it on and I do not feel like announcing my sexual orientation to the world like some LGB&T do. Diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks I suppose but I think it's best if what I like to get up to behind closed doors doesn't spill out onto my everyday life.

[Queercommie Girl]

I when I say Effeminate I am referring to, at least in this context, the objectively negative personalities that society have atrributed to women unfairly, for example squeamishness, vanity and decadence.


Well, it's pretty sexist to simply associate "squeamishness, vanity and decadence" with femininity in any kind of intrinsic and general sense. This kind of sexist attitude is frankly more of a problem than any particular personality trait solely in itself.



The mainstream homosexual male culture looks to me as a outsider to be riddled with the negative qualities that woman are said to posses by male chauvinists.
Then you've been influenced by negative propaganda against the LGBT community. Because frankly the majority of LGBT people don't fall into those negative stereotypes that society thinks they do.

But as I said before, the problem here has more to do with the sexist attitude that male chauvinists have - which associate certain stereotypical female attributes with negativity, than it does with these attributes in themselves in an objective sense.

What I'm trying to say is that some of these "feminine attributes" may not even be negative in an objective sense, they are only negative in the eyes of male chauvinists, so it's not really the fault of some gay people who apparently possess these traits (though as I said it's less prevalent than the stereotypes would suggest), rather it's the fault of male chauvinists who automatically dismiss anyone who have these traits, whether they are women or gay.



But the thing is, it seems that people today, not just in the LGBT but also, to a seemingly lesser extent, in the Heterosexual community seem to make choices based mostly on their sexuality. When I wear a certain T-Shirt it is mostly other factors, like comfort, that make me put it on and I do not feel like announcing my sexual orientation to the world like some LGB&T do. Diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks I suppose but I think it's best if what I like to get up to behind closed doors doesn't spill out onto my everyday life.Objectively sexuality is independent from one's fashion sense and expression etc, but it's a good thing for the LGBT community to have some "identity politics" to some extent, not because any kind of "identity politics" is intrinsically a positive thing, but because in a pragmatic sense relatively disadvantaged minorities need to have their own identities in order to fight against oppression. This is also why ethnic minorities in the West often possess a stronger "identity" than white people.

Having said this, it's also the case that when such "identity" becomes excessively commercialised, as is the case today to some extent, then it no longer effectively function as a tool/weapon against oppression, but merely become a play-thing in the palms of the bourgeois.

[JucheDPRK]

Iseul
I understand allot more now, thank you.

[MattShizzle]

Certainly not new. This was about the most common insult when I was growing up in the 1980s.

[Bubba Rugged]

What is the origin of this trend among the youth where they call each other gay as an insult? Another question I have is should this trend be viewed as a manifestation of bigotry or is it simply kids being silly and not a manifestation of bigotry?

I'm sure it has to do with their own insecurities as does the majority of bullying and bigotry. For people who have no issues with confrontation, it's an easy way to gain power over others.

In kids it's kind of hit or miss, isn't it? Sometimes they're trying to gain an upper hand, other times they use these words to fit in/follow the crowd so they don't put a target on THEY'RE backs.

It's all very unfortunate but I'm convinced that most of it comes down to parenting. Kids look to their parents and their parents must make an effort to set GOOD examples... I see a lot of teen mom's these days who seem to see their kids as accessories (perhaps I'm just projecting).

[Die Rote Fahne]

It's a result of the acceptance of the epithet into casual discourse.

For the most part, kids I know who say gay, faggot, etc., are for gay marriage, have gay friends, are progressive. However, they don't think about the word, it's meaning, etc.

Ignorance for the most part.

[DinodudeEpic]

Gay....

.The name of many small towns
.having/showing a lively merry mood
.bright and showy
.The name of a bar
.An insult that basically means 'stupid' or 'dumb'
.homosexual person
.in a homosexual manner

Everyone (including me) uses the 5th definition all the time.

also.... youtube.com/watch?v=Ajw9MNFEY_4&feature=related

:laugh: