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I hate the word "fag" with every fiber of my being
8 years ago
And it's not because the word itself bothers me, but because people use it without knowing the actual history of the word. Every now and then, especially in porn, I'll come across a sentence that addresses gay men as "fags." Sometimes they'll even go for a humiliating approach such as "know your place, fag."
I think most people who throw the word around do so without knowing what it actually means. That the word is on the same level as calling someone a "jew," a word that references a point in history in which people were being massacred for just being a certain way. And least of all with the image of people watching a man burning to death in a fire.
I think most people who throw the word around do so without knowing what it actually means. That the word is on the same level as calling someone a "jew," a word that references a point in history in which people were being massacred for just being a certain way. And least of all with the image of people watching a man burning to death in a fire.
(both serious and jokeful, because multiple meanings)
Words run on Planescape rules; they only have power if people convince themselves they do.
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=faggot
And those who use it as an insult can all die in a fire themselves, of course.
It's such a hard mindset for people to break because the way these words take root to begin with is for people to think it's acceptable social behavior. To anyone else reading this reply, I'd recommend watching some Jane Elliott to understand the depths of this problem. The way she challenges people's mindset really goes a long way to show how ingrained our norms are in our code of conduct. The moment people start realizing how cruel a word "fag" is used to describe homosexual people is the moment the word will stop being used in that context.
so like wow it's so great that it doesn't bother some ppl personally but that has literally zero bearing on the rest of the world, at all. one man's opinion has zero effect on the tides of culture and history. it's such a fucking solipsistic, myopic statement it's borderline intentional ignorance
If you get so easily offended I'm sorry. I know how much you cherish your own opinions above all others (and if you follow your own words that does mean your own opinion means jack all). So stop calling people names like bigot, solipsistic (accurate for yourself?) And such other fancy sounding words cause everyone is entitled to their own opinions and that doesn't make them wrong. Not everyone has to think like you. Calling people names like those frankly can be the equivalent of me calling you a fag for doing so.
have you even seen any of those homophobic low-lifes who rallies against homosexuals?
http://www.motherjones.com/wp-conte.....Ben-Phelps.jpg
http://cf.mp-cdn.net/90/21/74113e41.....servatives.jpg
yeah.. it's "just a word" indeed /roll-eyes
I'm kind of on the mind set of "sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never break me"
Words evolve all the time and I feel like over the course of time they lose their power.
Like being called a "Jay" (origin of jaywalking) which was a large insult in history, now to most it means diddly squat, and because people stopped caring about the word others no longer call people a Jay as an insult bacuse they don't get the desired effect to hurt you.
'Cause black people call each other the 'n' word all the time, ignoring it's history because they take it upon themselves not to care if they share the same coloured skin.
As clpfox said, the words only have power if you give them power.
Think every time Marty McFly got pissed off in "Back To The Future" when someone called him "chicken". While calling the average person "chicken" today would illicit a response like "Really? Are you in 2rd grade or something? Who the hell says that any more?"
Some gay guy or friend calls me a fag: I say, "The faggiest!" Term of endearment.
Straight guy calls me a fag: I say, "Okay sister fucker." or "There is only one way you would know that!" Turned around and thrown back.
Guy drives by on a noisy motorcycle: I say, "loud-assed motorcycle attention whore fag!" (south park reference)
It really depends on the context for the usage.
It seems they replaced the word "FAY" for a flamboyant gay guy, with fag over time. Hell, to the Brits and most of Europe a fag is still burning tinder and refers to cigarettes. Words and meaning "semantics" change from place to place and as time moves on.
Personally I find the word "queer" more worthy of offense. It means strange and abnormal. And self identifying as "strange and abnormal" isn't helping to assimilate and be seen as "normal" by the rest of society.
Disagreement isn't discrimination. The responses you find not supportive aren't oppressive or abusive. One corrects the etymological misconception the linked video is premised on. Others offer their own opinion that allowing a word to have power over you empowers those who would wish to hurt you with it, while leaving yourself vulnerable to what is, in and of itself, just a particular noise that comes out of people and thus harmless.
The harm words can cause only happens one of two ways:
A word is used with the intent and purpose to be hurtful, and directed at a target individual or group.
A word has been taught to be taken as hurtful regardless of intent or context.
Even if you haven't heard a particular slur before, if someone is clearly acting with hate towards you and they fling a slur at you, you're probably going to pick up the intent and infer that whatever that word was, it's not good. They called you something ugly because their manner and tone and all surrounding cues are ugly and hurtful. The word could be "apple" or anything with any meaning, benign or nonsensical, and if you'd never heard it before it was thrown at you hatefully with an ugly intent behind it, you'd take it as a slur. But the word itself is harmless and meaningless, it's the intent behind it that made the act of slurring you bad - not the slur word itself; the intent to slur you. So by all means judge people who do that when they do it.
But if you hear a word, WITHOUT all that ugly and hurtful intent, just used because people are discussing a topic where the term is relevant, or even people using it in a completely different intent, context, definition (like those saying they see it as an endearment term) - if you disregard all intent and context of the usage, and just deem a word inherently damaging and hurtful in and of itself, well, that's simply nonsense. There are innocuous words in one language that mean something terribly offensive or insulting in another language. A word that may in one language demand instant violent retaliation may sound like a weird insect name in ours. That specific combination of sounds is not inherently damaging; only the associated meaning given to it. So yes, people can - and as has been shown here by most of the responses, DO - simply choose to not allow a word to have power over them. Everyone who makes that choice is better off for it.
Let's say for the sake of argument we have two groups of people, teach both groups the word "shooba" means such and such horrible thing, and traces back to this and that past unspeakable atrocity, and to use it to refer to someone is to label them as just about the most vile thing imaginable. Now convince one group to react to the word shooba as if the usage is a VALID and applicable statement about their personal vileness, but teach the other group that it's just a word, and if someone uses it, it has no actual bearing on them as an individual, and only speaks to the poor character of the speaker who used it with the intent to do harm or insult. Which of these two groups will suffer more pain and damage? Which is objectively more desirable: a group of people who can become emotionally upset and tipped off their normal level of balance and calm by the mere utterance of a word, or a group of people who are not negatively impacted by the chance occurence of some fuckwit wanting to stir up a shitstorm of emotion and hurt without having to do more than speak a word?
You can hand people who would wish to cause you distress a simple and effortless means of doing so by merely uttering a word, or, you can deny them that, and spare yourself the entirely self-inflicted damage that the word does by throwing off the fact that you are TAUGHT to let a word be so damaging.
This is an artificially constructed weak point people inflict upon you by insisting words are inherently damaging. Dismissing their desire to handicap you with such a weak point is not in the slightest dismissing the horrible truths and histories of why the word came to be, nor is it dismissing the wrong of people who seek to hurt others by slurring them, regardless of which noises they string together to construct words, new or old, to do so.
The community frowning on the word "furry" when it is used as a slur is not the same thing as frowning at a word universally, divorced from intended usage. This community defines itself by the term "furry." If people were to begin taking a non-slur term a group self-defines as and using it as a slur, it is still the intent to slur that is the bad to be denounced and discouraged, not the word itself. For example, when people say "that's so gay" using the word "gay" to mean something bad, nobody demands that we stop using the word "gay" because it's now being used as a slur. They denounce the usage of the word as a slur.
Because it's obvious people (not you, but some chickenshits who won't actually engage in conversation, but just cowardly shitpost out of context elsewhere) intentionally misunderstand this, let me clarify:
You are not "wrong" for simply disliking the word. You're not "wrong" for having a problem with it or being bothered or upset by it. But people who try to tell you and others that you have no personal Agency in the effect the words of others have upon you - they ARE wrong. You do have Agency and a choice. You can CHOOSE to continue allowing yourself to be easily and effortlessly upset or damaged by words, or you can CHOOSE to deny the people who'd wish to cause you such damage the ability to do so. I feel a better choice for yourself would be to not let yourself be vulnerable to such a thing, but that doesn't mean your choice is "wrong."
The current social screaming match across all topics often boils down to "take personal action to lessen the ability of others to harm me" vs "try to control behaviors of others that are not harmful to anyone who has not been successfully convinced to be harmed by them" and in that particular argument, the latter will always lose. If an action is harmful in and of itself, that means that people cannot NOT be harmed by it. A gunshot, a stabbing, a punch. Those are things that are inherently harmful. When the majority of your responses to "this hurts me" are to the effect of "I am undamaged by this" then it means the thing - in and of itself - is not inherently harmful.
So yes, there are people like me who encourage EVERYONE of all stripes "don't let random assholes have an easy way to hurt you with no effort" and there are others who want to convince everyone "words are violence" and that they SHOULD be significantly impacted by fucking words. The former want people to be less hurt - and less ABLE to BE hurt - while the latter CAUSE more avoidable harm and damage and upset and strife, yet we of the former get denounced as being the bad guys in that equation.
Even if we will never agree on the specific points of words, can you at least understand why, from the perspective of myself and others, the argument to maintain the damage and harm potential of just words makes no sense? <:C
If I'm being dismissive here it's because I'm really not looking for to engage in an argument, my journals are a more personal medium and I treat them as such. I still appreciate the effort and length you go to help counsel me but what I needed from this journal I've already gotten---Croup's perfect example of "gay" being used as a slur being a thing of the past and the news that "fag" is nearly phased out as well. It makes me sincerely happy to know that we don't have to live in a world where we just have to ignore offensive words and our language has already become much less homophobic.
I don't feel you've been dismissive. I offered what I intended to be helpful suggestion, and you took it for what it was meant to be but politely let me know it wasn't needed. There's nothing rude or dismissive there. I appreciate the response. Thank you. ^_^
I'm glad your journal served its purpose and you got what you were looking for out of it.
First of all I'd like to offer my support. I hate it how it was used against me as a little kid, before any of us were old e ouch to understand or even know about sexuality, period, and I feel for you. It always twinges just a bit when I hear it or read it in the chat feeds of video games, especially counersttike and tf2.
So my main problem with the word "fag" or "faggot" is that it SOUNDS insulting. It had the short "a" like the word "bad" and it ends on a plosive consonant in both contracted and full forms of the word giving it a little extra bite. There's no way to use it in a sentence without it seriously punctuating the flow of speech, in a way that "Jew" and even "nigger" don't quite do. It just plain SOUNDS bad! I almost equate it with the way "varmint", a universally negative word, sounds. Of course, it's also one letter away from "maggot" which is the larval form of a broad range of insects. Nobody wants to be equated with bug babies!
The way I see it, the word faggot is just plain BAD. I'm amazed people still refer to cigarettes as "fags." It just.... sounds bad!
So to comment on what others have said, I'll say that you can't really change people in the ways described. All of the above have an effect on the meaning of the word, and the only thing we can do as individuals is to watch the evolution of the word play out. I'n fact, with kids online these days, I think they use the word without knowing at all what it means. They see one person say it ("Fucking fagot hacker!") and perceive it as a simple negative word, not one with racial or sexual connotations.
So I propose this. Change the meaning of the word! Make Fag or faggot mean simply "asshole" in a similar way to how "asshole" now means "jerk" instead of "anus". That might have been s bad example, but you can see what I mean. Hell, I sometimes call cheaters and griefers faggots, and I'm just as gay as the rest of you.
I doubt the word faggot will go in the same direction as the word "nigger" since there really isn't enough of a shared cultural identity as African Americans. I don't see gays in the future calling each other "faggots" the same way blacks call each other "nigga." But that's just my prediction.