<p>If I said "My parents are so gay" or "My cell phone is gay" or "That rule is so gay", would gays take offense to that?</p>
<p>Similarly, if I said something like "Being sick is so Jewish" or "Our teacher is so Jewish", would Jews be offended?</p>
<p>I don't really know many gays or Jews and I don't know any gay Jews so I figure I'd ask CC.</p>
<p>whoa. that whole thing was like a tongue twister.</p>
<p>i don<code>t know myself, but i would not recommend using such terms. maybe they wouldn</code>t feel offended? i don`t know.</p>
<p>I don't take strong personal offense, really, but I think it is rude and disrespectful. I also think it makes you sound a little dumb. But, that's just me. Different people will feel different ways. I know straight kids who are very offended when people say "gay," and I've heard of gay kids who use it themselves (although none I know do). </p>
<p>I have never heard the Jewish thing. Ever. So maybe that's just where you're from...</p>
<p>if ur asking this question to decide whether you should use this word or not, then I'll just tell u that I, as a straight person, think it is pretty offensive so that should be enough for u not to use it</p>
<p>but if ur just wondering what gays think of it... i wonder that too. i mean it is pretty hard to put urself in another person's shoes. in english we're reasing Huck Finn and we were talking about blacks, whites, and the N-word. and how people felt about it. so, yeah... it would be interesting to know what they (the gay people) really DO think, that is, providing that they can realize how they feel (its all that human psychology crap.. for example someone could not realize/be in denial of the fact that a certain phrase may be unknowingly offending them)... did that make any sense? lol</p>
<p>I've heard the term jewish before, but it's not used very often.</p>
<p>The problem with the word gay is that it's been used so often that its meaning has been changed in urban society to represent anything that sucks.</p>
<p>I'm gay, by the way.</p>
<p>Robot,
[quote]
The problem with the word gay is that it's been used so often that its meaning has been changed in urban society to represent anything that sucks.
[/quote]
The fact that this is true does not make it right. This is something that can certainly be changed and phased out, so that in ten years the meaning of gay as lame would sound absurd.</p>
<p>I agree with all of the above.</p>
<p>I once heard a kid call a tree gay. I have no idea why. In my opinion, it definitely makes the person sound dumb. I've heard it used less and less since middle school--to be replaced with more...uhh...colorful language. :)</p>
<p>I don't see the sense in using a word that <em>might</em> (even for reasons you don't understand or care about) offend other people, when there is no need to do so... same logic goes for swearing in general.</p>
<p>More relevantly, the GSA (which is more of a GA with the "A" standing for association rather than alliance, unfortunately) is very very much against the use of "gay" as a general insult.</p>
<p>five years ago, my sixth grade teacher got really ****ed at the class because the poor usage of the word "gay" was spreading. she then told us that she would give a detention to the next person who used "gay" inappropriately.</p>
<p>Nobody used the term "gay" until ninth grade here.</p>
<p>I think gay people call each other gay or queer or whatever, but they would take offense to other people using the word to describe a non-homosexual noun.</p>
<p>By the way, most people in my school's GSA are straight.</p>
<p>It really, really, really bugs me when people can't think of a better word to use than "gay" to describe a thing or a situation that isn't what they think it should be. But then, the word bugs me a lot anyways. Who decided that gay, an acronym for happy and lighthearted, should mean homosexuals? The only thing that might make them, as a whole, more LITERALLY gay is the fact that now they're out in the open and a few decades ago they were suppressed. I know a number of gay people, and I haven't found them to be any happier than others. I think most of the teenage lesbians I know have chosen that lifestyle as a facade that protects them, when it really isn't who they are. Some of my friends agree with me on this.</p>
<p>But anyways, when I hear people say "That is so gay" (and I hear it quite frequently around here) it really bugs me. Which meaning of gay do they mean? Probably none of them, unless we take robotFOOD's "anything that sucks."</p>
<p>I think it makes a person sound extremely stupid. A kid in my lunch must've used the word gay to describe something at least twenty times per day. I finally to mad at him one day and told him to read a dicitonary (and unloaded a bit of real profanity on him). Sweeeet!</p>
<p>well.. i've never met anyone gay, and most people here are not really familiar with any gays, so everyone's used the term 'that's so gay' so many times that it's stuck.</p>
<p>Like, I'm trying to not say "oh my god" and instead say, "oh my gosh" for my chrisitian friends that take offense. But it's really hard..</p>
<p>Similarily, I've described many things 'gay'. I dont really mean to offend gays, but it just rollls out of my mouth, and i'm not proud of it. I've been trying to describe a bad situation/thing with other words though dont worry.</p>
<p>And if I ever met a gay person, I would definetly never ever describe anything gay. I would surely watch what I say.
Same on cc. I know that there's a tiny weeny small gay population on cc, and I watch what I type.</p>
<p>
[quote]
well.. i've never met anyone gay,
[/quote]
Haha. Yeah, you have. You just didn't know they were gay. Hell, maybe even they didn't.</p>
<p>^ haha.</p>
<p>As a gay person,I generally dont care when people use "gay" to describe bad things.</p>
<p>Gay means happy DUH :P</p>
<p>Haha... Im asian and I always give the excuse of "I'm asian" when I am cheap or I call people your being asian when they pick up pennies :)</p>
<p>a theory from a friend who is gay:</p>
<p>"_______ is gay."
in this case, gay is defined as "sucks," basically.
does this imply that gays suck?
(of course, we don`t mean to do that, do we?)</p>
<p>therefore, some gay people do take offense when the word is used that way.</p>
<p>I think its in bad taste to use gay to describe something, unless you are using the actual dictionary definition of something being gay as in happy. </p>
<p>I don't hear a lot of it where I live, mainly because English is many people's second or third language and they haven't really picked up slang uses of it yet. A lot of the Americans straight from America use it though. I just think its stupid and reflects lack of intelligence and eruditeness. If you can't come up with a better word than gay that doesn't look so well on you.</p>
<p>"I'm gay, by the way.</p>
<p>Robot,
Quote:
The problem with the word gay is that it's been used so often that its meaning has been changed in urban society to represent anything that sucks.
The fact that this is true does not make it right. This is something that can certainly be changed and phased out, so that in ten years the meaning of gay as lame would sound absurd."</p>
<p>I agree. My brother has gotten into the habit of using the word gay as a derogatory statement and I get so mad at him, he just doesn't understand. When you can fairly substitute "gay" with "sucks", there's a problem. What kind of message about human rights and equality are we sending to children like my brother when we can use this kind of language?</p>
<p>(I'm gay too BTW. :) )</p>