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Or he realized he has done something wrong and wants to be clear that's not who he wants to be? I was out drinking with friends from my University course, back
by Latty 9y ago
Or he realized he has done something wrong and wants to be clear that's not who he wants to be?
I was out drinking with friends from my University course, back in the day, and made some statement like "uh, well don't be fags about it" - a hangover from my days at a boys only secondary school where "gay" was the most common term for bad and "fag" was the most common insult.
Now, I have no issues with people's sexuality and would never want to offend anyone - but I was drunk and years of using the term as a generic negative insult just lead to me using the term habitually. The issue was, it wasn't just my close friends, but a larger group of people I knew less well.
One of them made the point that he was Bi and didn't appreciate the comment, and I wanted to curl up and die - instantly I had to try and explain myself and apologise. How I acted didn't represent my views, it isn't who I want to be, and it's not how I'd want to interact with anyone. I put that guy - and anyone else there - in a shitty situation and while he was fortunately understanding, and spoke up about it, someone could have just heard me and felt a bit of rejection from the world.
Now, you can argue about the sincerity of this guy's apology, and how possible it is to repeatedly do something and do the things he did in the context he did, etc..., but there comes a point at which if the message is good - which this apology is - it's a flat statement that his behavior was wrong, flat out, which is the right place to start from at least, I think you have to give some level of benefit of the doubt.
People do fuck up. Consequences for that are fine, but you have to try to give people routes to hold up their hands and reject things they did, that has value.
To note, obviously my usage of the terms during my schooling years was just as wrong, but I was a child and it's harder to judge myself at that age because of the environment and lack of knowledge I had at the time. Something I still regret deeply though - it must have been incredibly hard to be gay with so much constant negativity surrounding it in that environment.
- sangnoir 9y ago> How I acted didn't represent my views, it isn't who I want to be, and it's not how I'd want to interact with anyone. I'm sorry, but this does not make sense to me. Of course what you said and how you acted represented your views at the time. It wasn't who you wanted to be, but it was who you were. You absolutely used the term fag as an insult and you meant it. I'm posting this not to judge you or be self-righteous about it, but in the hope of gaining some understanding. I have seen it happen far too many times: a person's racist/sexist words go viral on social media or in the press, and they reflexively publish "That is not my view or a reflection of who I am. Everyone who is close to me knows this". This disassociation puzzles me greatly. How is it that you have the conviction to do/say something and then disavow it when challenged?
- kd5bjo 9y agoIn an emotionally-charged situation, it's easy to forget that curse words have an actual meaning other than being an insult. In the situation where your views on what's acceptable have changed, like Latty described, you can slip into old verbal habits pretty easily without realizing it.
- sangnoir 9y ago> In the situation where your views on what's acceptable have changed, like Latty described, you can slip into old verbal habits pretty easily without realizing it. I fully agree, however, I think that's just your views slipping out. You might not want to be that way, but you are that way, possibly because of how you were raised or some other factor you didn't have control over. Saying "that is not a true reflection of who I really am" seems ingenious to me.
- Latty 9y agoExcept I didn't (and still don't, of course) hold any negative views about gay people. I'll make the same analogy as I did in my other comment - people use "dumb" to mean stupid all of the time. Do those people harbour subconscious anti-mute sentiments, or are they just picking a word that they think of as meaning "stupid"? Likewise, at the time, I could have replaced "fag" with "dick" with no qualms at the time. It was an insult, and it's meaning didn't matter to me. (Until I was reminded of it's meaning and harm I was causing, which made me stop using it). I guess I'd describe it as - I'd become desensitized to the meaning of the term and used it not expecting it to cause any harm. You can say that surely it's obvious that it causes harm, but it wasn't obvious to me until the described moment that I was propagating this negative idea of homosexuality. When I did notice that, I stopped.
- Latty 9y agoExcept I didn't hold the view that being gay was a negative thing, rather I had gotten so used to the terms being thrown around that I used them in that way despite not agreeing with that. It's similar to how I can use "dumb" to describe someone as stupid without believing that people who can't speak are stupid. I meant to insult the person (and if I'd chosen another word, that would have been fine as it was clearly intended as a friendly, joking thing), but I didn't intend to imply that being gay was a bad thing. It's a fine line that mostly relies on knowing my own intent - and I make no reservations in stating that whatever my intent, I know I caused harm at the time and I actively worked to ensure that I don't use "gay" and "fag" in that way, because it does have those effects.