Except 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 "dum

Except 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.