Wednesday, February 28, 2007

That is so gay

I had work published today. I opened up my copy of mX on the train, turned to page 12 and saw my letter to the editor (more an SMS to the editor, really) printed in their Vent your spleen section. The only problem is that it was edited and now doesn't say what I wanted it to say.
I wanted it to say "Kids, if you don't like something, don't say it's gay. Your brother might be gay. Or the person next to you too." I realise that what I wrote isn't terribly grammatically correct, nor totally unambiguous, but it was late and I was half asleep on a train when I wrote it. On Monday afternoon there were two teenage girls on the train, chatting loudly as teenagers are want to do, talking about various different subjects. Each subject included something gay. That movie was so gay--Have you heard their latest album? It was crap, really gay--You know that guy? He's so gay. I hate the way people use the word gay as an adjective meaning sub-standard. I was sitting there getting annoyed when I read the vent your spleen section in the mX and decided to send a message off. I figured, while I was at it, I may as well alert people to the fact that they never know if a gay or lesbian person will hear their conversation and take offence. I wrote it all out on my phone and then added in the "your brother might be gay" bit, considering Sister appears to be totally clueless to her own brother's gayness.

Unfortunately the editing has made it sound like I was saying that "maybe your brother could be sitting next to you" on the train while you're blithely homophobing all over the place. Even so, hopefully the people who read it are clever enough to figure it out.

2 comments ... click here to comment:

Collette said...

This has been one of my pet peeves for years Dan! All throughout high school I constantly corrected (or told off, depending on the circumstance) people who repeatably used the term 'gay' to describe something they disliked.

The worst part is, most of the people who use it don't even mean any harm by it. It's just become so natural to call something 'bad' 'gay', that they don't even think about what it's really saying.

So I suppose in some sense you should not allow it to offend you too much, since the person usually just uses it as a figure or speech without thinking - but I do think you should always correct people and let them see how it can be hurtful, and also how it technically makes no sense (last time I checked, Penrith Plaza couldn't be 'gay'), and also that it is homophobia and anti-gay, even if they didn't mean it to be.

Hope you're going okay my friend.

Take care,
Collette

Calla said...

I LOVE that be 'blithely homophobing' LOL

Yay for new words! Poor old Firefox's dictionary is having kittens!