4 ms·

If the word "gay" was being used as a pejorative then I'd fully agree with you. When I was at school it was _the_ insult to use, and in the context of an adject

If the word "gay" was being used as a pejorative then I'd fully agree with you. When I was at school it was _the_ insult to use, and in the context of an adjective meant that things were lame, pathetic and bad. It was used everywhere and constantly, and as someone who identified as LGBT every time I heard it in passing I'd panic slightly and my heart would skip a beat. This is the exact opposite though. The `--gay` flag is the best option; it's the most colourful, flashy and fun. I _want_ more people to use the term in a positive context because every time it happens, the pejorative context looses more power and anything that stops these sorts of words being weaponised is a good thing. And as other commenters have already said, it gets defined in dictionaries as "light-hearted and carefree" or "brightly coloured; showy.", both of which descriptions fit the use case perfectly.

Cullinet 6y ago
Google for "what a gay day" and, if you are entertained by such stories, read all about Larry Grayson, the prime time game show host in my childhood and the most incredibly awesome man who slogged his way into showbiz through two decades of gruelling nearly empty houses in Yorkshire miners / working men's clubs where he, among other acts, put on full drag. I don't believe that the present time is actually more open and safe for different folk. When I grew up nobody but nobody would dare to speak of anyone's sexuality let alone make a point of it and assaulting up a homosexual man would land you on hospital when the neighbours reacted in horror at the effective attack on the man's mother (I confess to typing on gay men living with their mothers but I didn't know one exception until moving to London in the late 80s. Mining towns in Yorkshire were probably the safest place to be gay ever. You wouldn't be "out" only because nobody's private lives were on display. The untold horror of the Thatcher breaking of the National Union of Miners is the fractures through communities unravelled the most intricate social support web and exposed the most vulnerable people to possibly the most heightened emotional communal period in post war England. The miner's union was also a huge contributor to the widows most likely to have their gay sons looking after them and the collapse in union finances forced many ill prepared and not still young gay men to seek better economic possibility. Sending ca 40 yr old highly protected parochial gay men who would do anything for their mums or the mere idea of their mothers, into late 80s cities in search of suitable work, was just the most terrible consequence.
Cullinet 6y ago
I'm so sorry I entirely forgot my pertinent point : I am totally for the general public recapturing the word gay because of the positive effect this will transfer to historic derogation and separate identification of homosexual men as gay. First, I think this is well appreciated now, different folk reappropriated the word gay from pejorative connotation. But it only worked so far. Gay was a prejorative quite without any sexual inflection or connotation. "Don't be gay man" criticising the way someone is digging a trench for the vegetable garden, is entirely valid and non assimilative of personal sexuality Derogation. That phrase is akin to "we're not digging up the begonia bed lad, this is our potatoes for the whole year and if you don't do that double trench properly the first frosts will have the lot ". I have obviously expanded and provided explanatory context. There's nothing gay about double trenching potatoes in late fall at the same londitude as Moscow. If I had to define the derogatory use of gay, my own experience would make me place far more emphasis on the adduced insult to be ineffectual or unnecessarily fancy and therefore wasteful and inefficient. From there to get to mean not very manly seems to me a much easier etymological path.

Cullinet 6y ago

Google for "what a gay day" and, if you are entertained by such stories, read all about Larry Grayson, the prime time game show host in my childhood and the most incredibly awesome man who slogged his way into showbiz through two decades of gruelling nearly empty houses in Yorkshire miners / working men's clubs where he, among other acts, put on full drag. I don't believe that the present time is actually more open and safe for different folk. When I grew up nobody but nobody would dare to speak of anyone's sexuality let alone make a point of it and assaulting up a homosexual man would land you on hospital when the neighbours reacted in horror at the effective attack on the man's mother (I confess to typing on gay men living with their mothers but I didn't know one exception until moving to London in the late 80s. Mining towns in Yorkshire were probably the safest place to be gay ever. You wouldn't be "out" only because nobody's private lives were on display. The untold horror of the Thatcher breaking of the National Union of Miners is the fractures through communities unravelled the most intricate social support web and exposed the most vulnerable people to possibly the most heightened emotional communal period in post war England. The miner's union was also a huge contributor to the widows most likely to have their gay sons looking after them and the collapse in union finances forced many ill prepared and not still young gay men to seek better economic possibility. Sending ca 40 yr old highly protected parochial gay men who would do anything for their mums or the mere idea of their mothers, into late 80s cities in search of suitable work, was just the most terrible consequence.

Cullinet 6y ago

I'm so sorry I entirely forgot my pertinent point : I am totally for the general public recapturing the word gay because of the positive effect this will transfer to historic derogation and separate identification of homosexual men as gay. First, I think this is well appreciated now, different folk reappropriated the word gay from pejorative connotation. But it only worked so far. Gay was a prejorative quite without any sexual inflection or connotation. "Don't be gay man" criticising the way someone is digging a trench for the vegetable garden, is entirely valid and non assimilative of personal sexuality Derogation. That phrase is akin to "we're not digging up the begonia bed lad, this is our potatoes for the whole year and if you don't do that double trench properly the first frosts will have the lot ". I have obviously expanded and provided explanatory context. There's nothing gay about double trenching potatoes in late fall at the same londitude as Moscow. If I had to define the derogatory use of gay, my own experience would make me place far more emphasis on the adduced insult to be ineffectual or unnecessarily fancy and therefore wasteful and inefficient. From there to get to mean not very manly seems to me a much easier etymological path.