Straight expectations

It’s always nice to be told, as an LGBTQ member of society, that homophobic language is okay and that we should stop being upset about our sexual orientation being used as a slur.

Maria Correa in her Nouse article ‘Setting the record straight’ argues that children and teenagers don’t know what they are saying when they use the language that contributes to 23% of gay or bisexual young people attempting to take their own lives and the general feeling of alienation that many LGBTQ youths experience at school.

As someone who has always generally been pretty open about who I am, and who I am attracted to (at least to my classmates), and yes, someone who many people at school kindly pointed out, looks like what many class as a stereotypical ‘queer’, I can attest to the fact that the use of the phrase ‘that’s gay’ and other phrases like it do make at least some of us feel like we are not welcome at school. It draws attention to the fact that we are different. And that difference, like the thing you are describing as ‘gay’, is seen to be wrong. Imagine that, hearing affirmed pretty much every day that who you are and the way you love the person you love is seen by the people around you as wrong. It may seem like a trivial phrase to you but it is a symptom of a society which still effectively murders LGBTQ youths and at the very least makes us feel out of place.

This isn’t ‘lefty PC rubbish’, it’s the lives of young people that we have an obligation to protect and make bearable. We aren’t trying to police what children are saying any more than we are when we tell kids off for calling each other fat or weird or stupid, for swearing and spitting and slapping each other in the face. Homophobic behaviour is bullying in the same way that all of this is. Sure, the phrase ‘that’s so gay’ may seem trivial in comparison to a slap in the face, but imagine hearing it hundreds of times a week. Imagine hearing it every time you walk in the playground and for some people this is exactly like being slapped in the face each time it happens. If we allow the word ‘gay’ to be used as an insult, we are also opening the door to more homophobic behaviour, we are siding with the bullies and normalising the hatred of those who don’t fit the norm.

The argument is also made in the Nouse article that the word ‘gay’ no longer means ‘homosexual’, it means ‘bad’ so the use of it in the playground shouldn’t upset anyone anymore. Sure, words change.  Our language is forever evolving. However, I think that it is too early for this argument to be made in this case. The word ‘gay’ is still predominantly used to describe a sexual orientation. If I said ‘Fred is gay’ in 1900, people would think that I was saying that Fred was happy. If I said ‘Fred is gay’ now, do you think that I am saying ‘Fred is rubbish’ or ‘Fred is attracted to other men’? I’m assuming it is the latter.

To conclude, I don’t think that the writer of that Nouse article is giving children and teenagers enough credit when she argues that they don’t know what they are saying when they use the word ‘gay’ in a derogatory manner. I’d argue that the people at school who bullied me to the point in which I felt I was disgusting and wrong, and that I had to hide my sexual orientation from people I cared about in case they reacted in the same way, knew exactly what they were doing. The people who sniggered and smirkingly said ‘That’s gay” in my earshot weren’t making a mere linguistic error. They were making an attack.