I grew up with an older brother who would call things gay in a derogatory way back when we were teenagers and i also picked up the habit even though I had never met a gay person and have never had (and still dont have) any hate for them or anyone regardless of sexual preference or gender identity
I still call things gay tho to this day, usually when something kinda annoying happens (e.g. that was kinda gay when the teacher made us do extra homework)
I’m sure there are people who might feel hurt about that so i filter myself when meeting new people and i generally use it less these days but it happens sometimes
Anyone else relate to this?
I think it’s the kind of thing you don’t say in public. If you end up haveing to explain to someone that you’re not homophobic, you’ve already fucked up.
I have a nasty habit of using “retarded” to describe things I find unfathomably stupid, but im very careful not to say it around anyone who might take me seriously.
Also, odd choice to post this question in 196. Besides not really being on theme, 196 is very trans positive, and left leaning. Don’t be surprised if you get accosted a little bit.
It used to be part of the cultural lexicon back in the late 90’s and 00’s, I used to say it all the time and I know gay people who did it as well lol
I think there’s worse offenses but at the same time it’s not hard to just not say it and I feel like it’s a bit insensitive and outdated, if it slips out from time to time it’s not a big deal but I think you’d be better off just training yourself out of the habit.
Yeah totally. I still hear people using it now, people who don’t have anything against the gay community.
Oh, the worst one was when I called something gay in front of my boss and his wife whose name was Gaye.
I avoid using it entirely in a derogatory way now. I even avoid using ‘faggot’ so I don’t insult the harley davidson community.
You’re talking about using the term as a pejorative. I graduated HS in 2001, and it was pretty common to hear “gay” used as a pejorative back then. If I were to take a guess, I imagine you might live in a rather rural area.
It’s probably best to just retrain your brain about using the term as a pejorative… unless something is just gay… like shirts with rainbows that say “Pride”… those are gay.
Do you still call things retarded too? Best to retrain that one out of your vocabulary too, unless you want to be an edge-lord when you talk about music that has slowed down.
retarded
Off topic but the video of Linus Tech Tips casually mentioning how he used to “drop hard Rs when he was younger” was hilarious to me. For context, he was confused and thought the term hard R referred to that instead of to the N word.
It’s one of those dangerously funny jokes. I’ll see things starting with R and want to make a callback to that moment by jokingly incorrectly calling it a hard R. But also, it is a pretty niche joke that few people are aware of, so for about a week after it I had to stop myself from doing stupid jokes like calling rye bread “hard R” in public and getting myself cancelled lol. Because what the hell would you do!? Someone just stops in the bread aisle and stares at you then you say “oh, sorry, there was a video recently where someone got hard R mixed up with the R word instead of the N word and I thought that was funny so I was jokingly calling anything starting with the letter R as a hard R to get a chuckle and remind people of that humourous moment of confusion but you didn’t see that so you thought I was just referring to it as a synonym of the N word.” Yeah, that would go over great!
I don’t think it’s weird but it’s hurtful and I think you should make an effort to stop. Like the others said anyone who grew up in the 2000s probably had a phase where they said it constantly.
To give you some perspective, I did and I found out that my brother was gay later. I still cringe at the things I said when we were kids and wish I could go back in time and slap myself… he doesn’t hold it against me but it doesn’t matter, when you grow up you start taking responsibility for what you say and do and to make sure your words reflect your ethics. If you’re not a homophobe then stop saying homophobic shit yo!
I can see how you maybe never had a lot of external pressure to stop but just imagine that it’s likely that there’s at least one person you know who is in the closet and you owe it to them to do better!
