This has absolutely nothing to do with 'chic'. This is about an attempt to end a culture of inflicting pain through words. Take their weapons away and maybe, just maybe our children won't suffer the word inflicted pain that you have felt.
So, your answer is to leave the word weaponized and leave it's use to the fools and hateful. I can't see the end of pain in your choice.
I'm sorry that you feel that way because if we are to continue on as you would like, future generations will have to negotiate a world of venomized words. The pain just continues on and on and on.
At the dinner table after the game:
The next time she goes to make a move, slap her had to prevent her from making that move and report back.
Language and its use is never static. The approach you are suggesting simply means that everyone on the board including other gay and lesbian members now knows how to upset you and drive you off the board by using it. That is horrible power to hand over to someone. Boo's suggestion and the reason it is gaining usage among "the majority" today it exactly to deweaponize it as Boo suggests. Give the word no power. Wear a pink triangle proudly and deny it any threat which is exactly what two gay Brits did in the 1970s when they founded the Pink Triangle Audio company.
Anybody close to my age.hey! who you callin' "old"?
Actually you can. In fact only you can. You control whether you allow words to hurt you. If you don't allow it, then those who would use it have no power to hurt you.
I'm not suggesting that any of these words are OK to use to hurt people. What is being suggested is that it is our choice to continue on as we have been or to disarmed these words so that their use can't bring more pain.
I understand that it causes pain, but, yes, in the real world it can often work in just that way. It doesn't happen quickly but the more you claim a word for your own purposes the less power it has for others. There is extensive research in this.
You don't have to embrace it. But you can decide what effect it has on you. (didn't say it was easy)
Or you could put your hands on your hips and say "what are you? straight?"
Not talking about getting beat up, that's a whole other issue. I was just talking about words.
Well, the difference between this and the Redskins lies in the fact that the owner of the team is a white guy perpetuating a slur. If it was a group of native americans that felt the term better described them, it'd be entirely different. FWIW, I think there's a thin line between the "only you can make yourself offended by a word" mantra of the last two pages and apologism for bigotry. I hear you when you say that the word queer will never mean anything other than a slur to you, and I think that's OK. Frankly, if the word had been used against me the way it's been used against you, I might feel the same way. During the times in my life when I've been dating a man, the word gay was thrown at me in a negative way far more frequently than the word queer was (this is also probably a generational thing), so that word doesn't have the same visceral, emotional reaction for me. There is no simple answer here, because we're talking about the connotations of a word.
