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Most people use the word "gay" the same way most people use "nigga". The only people that still get mad over people that aren't black using the word "nigga" are what most of us black people call "ignorant".
Nigga is a common term that is used in the same context of "dude", "bro", "homie", etc...
Nowadays when people use the word gay, its not being used in a homophobic sense. Its just being used to describe something that is well... negative. Like whenever I get killed in a ridiculous way in fps game like Gears of War, the first thing I say when transitioning to the next round is "nigga that was gay as fuck" (referring to the 2 piece if anybody is familiar with that. or even active downs). I dont use it in a way that is supposed to be seen as negative to gay people, I just use it to describe something stupid.
Call me ignorant. Call me Homophobic. Call me an asshole. But never say I hate gay people because my older brother is actually gay and he doesn't find the word "gay", when being used to describe stupid shit, very hurtful at all. Hell, he says it all the time.
Not really sure what to say about the people that committed suicide but this quote is directly from my brother:
"If they had to kill their selves over the word "gay" being used to much, then maybe they should've just became straight."
If you cant take the heat, stay out of the kitchen. Gay people are slowly becoming more and more accepted around the world, but there are still people who hate gay people... the same exact thing can be said for black people, white people, disabled people, etc... Hell, people just hate people in general. Why do you think wars happen?
Hate is always going to be around, but if you are constantly looking for the negatives in the positive (positive is being alive), then you won't experience that positive thing in a positive way for long because you are forcing your view to be negative of it.
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Personally, i'm glad to see this thread bumped. I've been shocked by how much I see people casually using words like Fag / Faggot since I got into Sc2 ; especially when those using it appear often to have some semblance of intelligence. To claim that the world has moved on and that words evolve misses both the importance of historical context in language and the implication, by use in an insulting context, that there is somehow something negative about being gay.
I asked my Gay half brother about it, thinking I was just behind the times - he assured me that hearing people use these words hurts just as much as it ever did. It's sad. Especially sad when popular figures in the community say it so often - influencing those who look up to them and reinforcing the idea that to be gay is in some way negative. Destiny, to use an earlier posters example, seems like a fairly interesting, bordering on likeable, cerebral chap - seems he enjoys philosophy and deep thought; yet Faggot appears to be his 'go to' insult. He's in the majority from what I can tell. It's saddening and to me, slightly suprising.
To those who say we can't, as individuals, make a difference by refusing to use this implicitly homophobic language, I say rubbish! I run a community of 1500 gamers - all of whom 'get' the poison of the term. Manlove abounds in our community - whether you are gay or straight, with a few younger members even feeling safe enough there to 'come out' to us before they do to their real life friends. I should point out that we're just a gaming community - probably 95% of us are straight - but in my view It's important that we do our bit to find other, less demographic specific 'insults', if we want to hurl insults at all. You can claim you're not being homophobic all you like - but the fact remains that gay members of our communities have often had tough times dealing with much prejudice and whilst they soon learn to develop thick skins, we're all people brought together by a common interest - gaming - and personally, I want gaming to be as inclusive as possible. Frankly, I couldn't give a damn what consenting adults get up to - whatever their orientation - and i'm pretty sure the same is true of many who casually throw sex bias insults around. If we don't voice our concerns about this, there is very little hope of it changing.
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Hmm seems I missed this thread the same time through. A quick piece of input though, personally I don't want to be indistinguishable, in language or any other way, from a homophobe, so I don't use the word gay as an insult. Surprised that view isn't more common.
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On February 28 2012 18:21 Ballistixz wrote:
i am so sick of seeing this argument on pretty much every site i go to. the use of the words "faggot" or "gay" is ONLY harmful if YOU make it out to be harmful. its a word, why let a word get to you so badly? especialy when 90% of the time the use of those 2 words has nothing to do with sexuality?
if you let those words anger you then guess what? you are satsifying the person who insulted you. that is EXACTLY what they want from you. when someone insults you they WANT to hurt you, they WANT to make u cry and they WANT to make you feel bad. that is what a fucking insult is.... when u call someone a "bitch" it is no diffrent from calling them a "faggot". when u call someone a "whore" it is no diffrent from calling him gay. even something as small as saying "your a idiot" or "your a moron" has the same exact goal which is to make u feel bad about who you are.
so the best thing to do is LET IT THE FUCK GO. seriously, stop letting them get to you or the insulters will only insult you more. why? because they now know what buttons to push to make u mad. dont let them get to you and just ignore it... there is no reason to bump this thread and no reason for it to have existed in the first place.
there will always be someone that insults you because they dont feel good about there own self. because of that they will personally attack you to make you feel as bad as they are feeling, but if you ignore that and dont let it bother you then the insultor has failed at his goal. the person that insulted you will feel even worse about himself because he could not make you feel as bad as he is feeling. you are still happy and he is still in a bad mood, u have won. so why give them what they want? by making threads like these u are publically saying "HERE IS MY BUTTON! PLEASE PUSH IT SO U CAN MAKE ME FEEL BAD!"
just let it go...
I feel like you didn't read my post, but the short answer is, it is not just words. The words reinforce an idea which is grounded with important meaning about social standing, acceptance, and interaction with others. And that translates into real world advantages and disadvantages, and is one of the primary foundations for people's behavior. So, its a lot more than just words.
I also addressed the let it the fuck go argument, citing how oppressed communities responded once the oppression was "lifted". You don't just automatically become a different person with a different worldview. Maybe you didn't pick up on that argument. My point was you don't understand why you can't just "let it go" because you didn't spend your formative years in that manner.
There will always be people who challenge you with insults or otherwise in order to improve social standing or for other complicated reasons, yes. You also have to learn to deal with them, but when you're part of a class so thoroughly, so effectively, marginalized, it is beyond the norm, the typical, the stamina and fortitude of the average human being. Using those words just piles more on top of that.
In Malcolm Gladwell's book, "Outliers" he makes a convincing argument about how people who tend to do well later in life were taught important thinks about themselves and how to modify their world and came from solid backgrounds.
Agitprop
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On February 28 2012 18:40 Flondra wrote:
It isn't seen as much ingame, but there's plenty of Christian bashing as well going on. Plenty of ignorant posts in general chat about it, many of which are extremely offensive. I've just ignored them, because people won't change over the internet while their identity is protected. Best advice I can give to the gay community would be to get used to it and ignore it. It sucks, but the average user isn't able to convince a much larger community what they are doing is wrong when there is no consequences involved.
I find that fighting back creates change and tends to make you feel better. Everyone acknowledges the importance of Dr King to black civil rights, but would he have been as effective without the show of strength via black power, Malcolm X, W E. DuBois, and other militants?
Also, the internet might be a wretched hive of scum and villainy, but I think there are important parts of high level communication, and TL.net tends to be a more respectable medium where reputation does in fact matter and is in fact built up.
Agitprop
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gay was many many years ago... considered a bad thing and thats why "gay" in gamer culture is considered being bad or stupid in regards to a game sittuation. "aw man that updates mad gay" a common phrase in gaming culture.
its insulting to gay people. that being said i call anything i dislike in games gay. i cant help it and i think "gay" doesnt really describe a man who is attracted to another man anymore and you need a dif word.
also no ones gay bashing in sc2, thats the internet... every topic that mentions things like this is tbh more or less adding to "gay bashing" then anything else. i for one never think about a persons sexual pref when gaming, it just isnt on my radar and anyone who DOES have this in the back of there mind is a bigot and who gives a shit what he thinks, hes mentally unsound or else why would he harbor some illogical hate of something we dont fully understand, human attraction.
i think gays girls whatever you wana talk about need to just focus on being people that they are rather then trying to make topics like "the gays of sc2" "the girls of sc2" how about, the people of sc2, we are not any dif and so there isnt a need to bring this to the attention of people who are otherwise ignorant to begin with. i applaud your attempts to open the eyes of some but the ones who you should care about already dont have any issues with gay people or anyone else who is dif from them for that matter
i guess TLDR words are as powerful as the connotations that go with them and to escape this "bigotry" and "racism" we need to stop labeling people based on what they do. emo nerd jock these are less insulting to you but they were at one point the focal point of societal grouping/mocking so once we get past name calling we will be ready to move on. you are not gay, you are a person thats it
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"In the latest researches gay people are apparently about four percent of the population [1] That means that in your division about four people are gay, that from the about 250 players in GSL history, about 10 are gay,"
That is an incredibly spurious statment. You are assuming the SC2 community is a representative sample for the world. SC2 is an incredibly niche community, and from the male/female ratio, there is evidence that genetic factors of some form will influence whether you pick up the game. While no one can really demonstrate any causal relationships in these speculative claims, there has to be at least some acknowledgement that in terms of genetically determined personality characteristics, there is some bias in the SC2 community.
Of course, none of this is to defend gay-bashing. It's one of the most backwards things many people do in the modern times. Just trying to keep the discourse at a slightly more reasoned level here.
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did you register to post that....
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I DO agree with the OP. calling something gay might not have to do with homosexuals at all, it just discribes something bad or annoying. then again, most people would take offense if I'd use "thats so european/american/religious/atheistic" to discribe something stupid or ignorant (and they'd be right about it) - if everybody does it, it still doesn't justify it, now does it?
thats exactly the point, everybody uses it, and people grow up using it. and exactly this "its not so bad, it doesn't refer to gays anyways"-behaviour is whats actually the most offensive.
I'm gay myself, and I'm using gay/fag as an insult - but I always regret it the next second, and whenever I notice I'm about to say it, I'm rethinking what I'm going to say. not all gays take offense by it, but it still should stop.
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You are not very used to the internet. It is full of jerks that it is impossible to get rid of them. People be real dicks online cause they can hide who they really are. You just have to ignore it. There have been more offencive things said than this but I do know where you are coming from.
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I'm not sure if im going to do a good job putting my thoughts across but here goes;
Through out multiple games, communitys etc i've always had my sexuality questioned. Due to a lot of my "mannerisms" can occasionally be concidered stereotypically "gay" but it didnt bother me if people thought i was gay. (Also it ended up being a good way to weed out people who were actually offensive to people that were gay, lesbian etc.)
But the easiest way i found of stopping people using the term "gay" as an insult is to just stop being offended by it. Just like if someone were call me "black". I wouldn't find it offensive, its just incorrect. I've found its the exact same with being called a fag etc. Its not offensive its just incorrect.
Lets apply this to starcraft, if somebody goes around calling people "fags", "gay" or "homos". If that person gets little to no response. That term as an insult loses a large portion of its "power". These people tend to be trying to illicit a response. Trying to make someone angry. Going off on them on why they are wrong why they shouldnt be doing something ends up being a great response.
So if one day "Johnny mc angry pants" goes onto the ladder has 10 games in a row where he starts the game with a "ur a fag" and gets little to no response (or generally a response that has nothing to do with the supposed insult). They become less inclined in the future to use that insult because its not producing the desired effect. So if say the 11th game is vs a teen who is in that tricky period questioning their sexuality "johnny mc angry pants" is less likley to start the game with "ur a fag".
Or thats just how it has worked in the past with me.
Btw i start games with a "GL HF Sir! :D" (occasionally i get corrected and reply with a GL HF Madame!  " So i occasionally get the "fag" response too.
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I am straight but don't consider be calling gay an insult since I cannot see that a person is better or worse if he prefers a particular gender for having sex. If I would be gay I think I wouldn't consider it an insult either because if I would be gay, it would just describe me how I am.
DongRaeGu likes IU for her looks. Me too. If he would rather like another singer for her looks, so what. If he – or any other person – rather prefer a male singer, so what. Categories (male / female, straight / gay) are not too useful in my opinion. A human being is a human being. It's social class, race, gender, sexual orientation are rather unimportant since "human being" isn't defined by those categories.
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The worst part about most of these replies is that they rationalize reasons to maintain personal behavior patterns, without understanding how that applies in the larger cultural context. Take a moment to try to understand why you shouldn't just consider the event in isolation..
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On February 28 2012 22:48 TemujinGK wrote:Hmm I do think this is an issue for some, mostly because they don't understand that although they most probably mean 'dumb' or 'stupid' when they use homophobic slurs, those slurs can be harmful regardless. http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=147829¤tpage=lastseems like a more appropriate place to discuss this rather than its own thread though...
That thread is not a catch all for all things gay. That thread is about gay starcraft players, this thread is about using the words "gay" and "faggot". There is a difference.
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On February 28 2012 20:52 orangesunglasses wrote:
gay was many many years ago... considered a bad thing and thats why "gay" in gamer culture is considered being bad or stupid in regards to a game sittuation. "aw man that updates mad gay" a common phrase in gaming culture.
its insulting to gay people. that being said i call anything i dislike in games gay. i cant help it and i think "gay" doesnt really describe a man who is attracted to another man anymore and you need a dif word.
also no ones gay bashing in sc2, thats the internet... every topic that mentions things like this is tbh more or less adding to "gay bashing" then anything else. i for one never think about a persons sexual pref when gaming, it just isnt on my radar and anyone who DOES have this in the back of there mind is a bigot and who gives a shit what he thinks, hes mentally unsound or else why would he harbor some illogical hate of something we dont fully understand, human attraction.
i think gays girls whatever you wana talk about need to just focus on being people that they are rather then trying to make topics like "the gays of sc2" "the girls of sc2" how about, the people of sc2, we are not any dif and so there isnt a need to bring this to the attention of people who are otherwise ignorant to begin with. i applaud your attempts to open the eyes of some but the ones who you should care about already dont have any issues with gay people or anyone else who is dif from them for that matter
i guess TLDR words are as powerful as the connotations that go with them and to escape this "bigotry" and "racism" we need to stop labeling people based on what they do. emo nerd jock these are less insulting to you but they were at one point the focal point of societal grouping/mocking so once we get past name calling we will be ready to move on. you are not gay, you are a person thats it
Words are far more powerful than connotations. Words indicate ideas. Intent is often irrelevant in communication. You are received a certain way. Behavior patterns, socialization, and how one receives those ideas are grounded in the past and can be extremely powerful. It is easier to drop elective behavior (saying the words) than ideas built into your world view (gays are bad) and we just reinforce the latter when we use the words that way.
I do not believe talking about this does more harm than good. I think not saying anything at all is worse.
It is also impossible to move past labels, we need them to categorize, we need categorization to aid understanding. It is how language functions. I often argue that we should change how we categorize the queer community, but that is going to take quite awhile.
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On February 28 2012 23:12 Archybaldie wrote:I'm not sure if im going to do a good job putting my thoughts across but here goes; Through out multiple games, communitys etc i've always had my sexuality questioned. Due to a lot of my "mannerisms" can occasionally be concidered stereotypically "gay" but it didnt bother me if people thought i was gay. (Also it ended up being a good way to weed out people who were actually offensive to people that were gay, lesbian etc.) But the easiest way i found of stopping people using the term "gay" as an insult is to just stop being offended by it. Just like if someone were call me "black". I wouldn't find it offensive, its just incorrect. I've found its the exact same with being called a fag etc. Its not offensive its just incorrect. Lets apply this to starcraft, if somebody goes around calling people "fags", "gay" or "homos". If that person gets little to no response. That term as an insult loses a large portion of its "power". These people tend to be trying to illicit a response. Trying to make someone angry. Going off on them on why they are wrong why they shouldnt be doing something ends up being a great response. So if one day "Johnny mc angry pants" goes onto the ladder has 10 games in a row where he starts the game with a "ur a fag" and gets little to no response (or generally a response that has nothing to do with the supposed insult). They become less inclined in the future to use that insult because its not producing the desired effect. So if say the 11th game is vs a teen who is in that tricky period questioning their sexuality "johnny mc angry pants" is less likley to start the game with "ur a fag". Or thats just how it has worked in the past with me. Btw i start games with a "GL HF Sir! :D" (occasionally i get corrected and reply with a GL HF Madame! " So i occasionally get the "fag" response too.
When your mom told you to stop being offended by a handful of kids calling you names, she was arming you well against them. When the gay kid's mom, father, sisters, brothers, grandparents, etc threw him-her out, disowned him-her, fought incessently with him-her, told him-her they were going to hell, send him-her to ex-gay camp, etc.. When the principal didn't listen because some other dude bashed the gay kid's nuts in for being gay, or sexually harassed him, or calls him a queer every day, when the gay kid lives in constant humiliation, when you spend your whole formative years feeling like a spy in your own life, an interloper, then its a little different. You can't just flip into "I won't be offended by that" mode. You try, it takes effort, you heal slowly over the years, but the original damage is there.
In the meantime, using the words this way encourages others who use the words this way to continue to hurt children and teenagers, and you yourself look indistinguishable from them, because perceiving intent is difficult. Do you really want to be that person?
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I can't really empathize for what it feels like to be gay - I've had some long talks with myself and I can't really see down that road. However, given that three years ago I was openly homophobic and now I'm WAY more accepting. However, I'm looking at this:
IDK if someone brought this up already but there was a South Park episode on the word "fag", how gays get angry that the word is being misused and in the end the dictionary meaning of the word gets changed to "a person who acts like a douche". The point of this, to quote Wikipedia, is:
"The F Word" advocates a philosophy that language is malleable and ever-changing, and that the idea of taboo words are only assigned their stigma because society allows them to become so. The word "fag" is used casually and extremely frequently by the characters throughout the episodes, and Comedy Central agreed not to censor the word. The characters use the word "fag" very frequently throughout the episode as an attempt to reclaim and disempower the word, so it will no longer be offensive to the gay community.
I mean, it's an insult, but it's only an insult against the gay community because we said it is.
Example - gay hasn't actually meant happy for a loooong time. Before the 1960's, a "gay" man was a straight man who had lots of sex. "Gay lady" was 19th-century slang for a prostitute, etc.
During the 1960's however, the gay (as in homosexual) community started using the word to describe homosexuality, I forget if it was as sarcasm or hiding themselves, but they did it nonetheless. And 50 years later here we are.
It'll be replaced by another word, but on the plus side it will once again be clear whether someone is calling someone a homosexual or an asshole.
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On February 28 2012 20:22 agitprop wrote:Show nested quote +On February 28 2012 18:21 Ballistixz wrote:
i am so sick of seeing this argument on pretty much every site i go to. the use of the words "faggot" or "gay" is ONLY harmful if YOU make it out to be harmful. its a word, why let a word get to you so badly? especialy when 90% of the time the use of those 2 words has nothing to do with sexuality?
if you let those words anger you then guess what? you are satsifying the person who insulted you. that is EXACTLY what they want from you. when someone insults you they WANT to hurt you, they WANT to make u cry and they WANT to make you feel bad. that is what a fucking insult is.... when u call someone a "bitch" it is no diffrent from calling them a "faggot". when u call someone a "whore" it is no diffrent from calling him gay. even something as small as saying "your a idiot" or "your a moron" has the same exact goal which is to make u feel bad about who you are.
so the best thing to do is LET IT THE FUCK GO. seriously, stop letting them get to you or the insulters will only insult you more. why? because they now know what buttons to push to make u mad. dont let them get to you and just ignore it... there is no reason to bump this thread and no reason for it to have existed in the first place.
there will always be someone that insults you because they dont feel good about there own self. because of that they will personally attack you to make you feel as bad as they are feeling, but if you ignore that and dont let it bother you then the insultor has failed at his goal. the person that insulted you will feel even worse about himself because he could not make you feel as bad as he is feeling. you are still happy and he is still in a bad mood, u have won. so why give them what they want? by making threads like these u are publically saying "HERE IS MY BUTTON! PLEASE PUSH IT SO U CAN MAKE ME FEEL BAD!"
just let it go... I feel like you didn't read my post, but the short answer is, it is not just words. The words reinforce an idea which is grounded with important meaning about social standing, acceptance, and interaction with others. And that translates into real world advantages and disadvantages, and is one of the primary foundations for people's behavior. So, its a lot more than just words. I also addressed the let it the fuck go argument, citing how oppressed communities responded once the oppression was "lifted". You don't just automatically become a different person with a different worldview. Maybe you didn't pick up on that argument. My point was you don't understand why you can't just "let it go" because you didn't spend your formative years in that manner. There will always be people who challenge you with insults or otherwise in order to improve social standing or for other complicated reasons, yes. You also have to learn to deal with them, but when you're part of a class so thoroughly, so effectively, marginalized, it is beyond the norm, the typical, the stamina and fortitude of the average human being. Using those words just piles more on top of that. In Malcolm Gladwell's book, "Outliers" he makes a convincing argument about how people who tend to do well later in life were taught important thinks about themselves and how to modify their world and came from solid backgrounds. Agitprop
to be honest no i did not fully read your argument because i really do not care and i was not refering to you directly anyway. ive been called names all of my life, every name in the book even including fag/gay even though i am straight. if you honestly cant let stuff like that go then that is your own problem because the fact of life is you will ALWAYS be called a faggot/gay/whatever and no argument typed up on the internet will stop that. u seriously have to learn to deal with it. a random post on the internet will not change a entire soceity.
i do understand these words may hurt your feelings, but THEY WILL NOT KILL YOU. now i can smell a "well what about the ppl that killed themselves because of the name calling?" argument coming so i will say this before that starts.... the only person that makes the decision to suicide is yourself. my views on suiciding in general is something saved for another thread, but lets just say i do not sypathize at all with someone weak minded enough to off themselves because of a damn 3 letter word.
you can call me cruel/heartless/souless or whatever you want but guess what? i dont care because that is the way i feel about the situation. the way i personally see it is that if you let those words hurt you then you must not be proud of who you are. show some pride and not let it hurt you. a word means only what you make it out to be. fag means ciggaret in another country and gay means to be happy. pick a definition for the word and roll with it.
User was warned for this post
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sorry for double post, comp lagging x.x
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