Helen Stringer's Blog - Posts Tagged "homophobia"
Here's An Idea: Think Before You Type, Text Or Talk
There was a bit of a kerfuffle over on my Facebook page yesterday. Basically, I had posted a link supporting the boycott of Barilla products because of the, quite frankly, vile remarks of that company's CEO about gay families. Nothing unusual there, similar links are everywhere at the moment. What was unusual was the first comment left by a fan and fairly long term FB friend. It just read: "Gay."
That's all. No emoticon. No wink. Nothing to say "I am being ironic," which I knew he was. I knew that this person was not bigoted, but that did not alter the fact that the comment was inappropriate. Under normal circumstances, I would have deleted it and sent him an explanation, but I was battling a cold and withdrew to bed instead. Big mistake. Big.
By the time I'd dragged myself back to my laptop, things had escalated. Not surprisingly, the comment had caused offense. This raises the issue of the correct response when you have (however inadvertently) offended someone. Is it (a) to explain at length what you really meant and why the other person should not be offended; or (b) to say something along the lines of, "I'm sorry." Just in case you were wondering, which I hope you weren't, the answer is option (b). I think we all know which option the poster went for. It was this: " "In the Anglosphere, this connotation, among younger speakers, has a derisive meaning equivalent to rubbish or stupid (as in "That's so gay."). In this use, the word does not mean "homosexual", so it can be used, for example, to refer to an inanimate object or abstract concept of which one disapproves." -- This was my intended meaning for the word as I typed it. However, since it refers to an article that concerns another - different - meaning for the word, there is a small amount of irony in it's use here. I found it more interesting and challenging to produce this irony during my daily Facebooking than were I to just respond with something less interesting and normal."
Did that help to smooth the waters? Of course not. However, I was somewhat curious about the source of his quote. It appears on Wikipedia and in a few other places, though I haven't been able to discover the exact origins. It is correct insofar as the word "gay" became a generalized pejorative term on playgrounds at some time in the '80s and '90s. How that happened is up for debate. Perhaps kids picked it up from their parents. Smaller children certainly had no concept of its meaning or its potential as a homophobic slur. The response to that is to correct the child, explain that it is hurtful and move on. Its use in that context by adults is more worrisome. There was a case in the UK where a BBC DJ used the term to mean "rubbish," and incited many complaints. An internal BBC investigation decided that while the word was indeed used in that way, it could also be construed as homophobic and should therefore only be used "with caution." This decision did not sit well with Kevin Brennan, the Minister for Children at that time, who pointed out that "the casual use of homophobic language by mainstream DJ's is...too often seen as harmless banter instead of the offensive insult that it really represents. ... To ignore this problem is to collude in it. The blind eye to casual name-calling, looking the other way because it is the easy option, is simply intolerable."
Quite right. At a time when online bullying is leading to a rising suicide rate among teens, great care must be taken by those in positions of authority or influence to avoid any impression of approval in potentially hurtful (or downright offensive) name-calling.
Of course, it's not just random Facebookers or foolish DJs who indulge in this kind of thing and then attempt to justify themselves by suggesting that they had a completely different definition in mind when they spoke. In a more recent case (last week), a British UKIP politician described women in a meeting at his own party's conference as "sluts." When challenged, he attempted to explain that he did not mean that they were sexually promiscuous, but that they were women of slovenly habits...because they did not clean behind their fridges. It was no more acceptable for him to claim that he was using the term in the 18th century sense, than it is to try to justify a homophobic slur based on its playground definition. The politician's remark about women followed fast on an earlier comment in which he described foreign aid as going to "bongo-bongo land," and together led to his resignation from the party. (He couldn't see what was wrong with the "bongo-bongo land" comment either.)
There are those who see things like this and immediately start to fulminate about the language being hijacked by people who are being needlessly sensitive to certain words, robbing them of their meaning, or reducing them to a single definition, and in so doing impoverishing our tongue. My Facebook acquaintance attempted to do this. He first messaged me to complain about the injustice of it all, but on my suggesting that he was in the wrong, instead resorted to his own wall with a rather rambling defense and righteous expressions of disdain for the "liberals" who designate certain words as inappropriate (he included the n-word in this) and thereby weaken the language as a whole.
My response to this is a lovely old word: poppycock! It is arrant nonsense to suggest that the language is being harmed in any way by raising the awareness of certain words as offensive to others. The very strength of the English language lies in its flexibility. Words do not have a single meaning that remains, solid and unchanging over the millennia. The English language is nothing if not plastic, it adopts words from other cultures, gives new meaning to old ones, and creates brand new words as needs require. "Nice" now means "pleasant," where it used to mean "precise." "Pretty" originally meant "clever" or "deceitful," where now it means "good looking." It is simply not acceptable to use a word that you know to be offensive and, when challenged, attempt to defend yourself with one of the more arcane definitions in the OED.
But, of course, what we are really talking about here is manners. Words can cause offense. It is a fact. Knowing this, why would you continue to use those words? Why would you insist on taking some perceived moral high ground and shout them from the rooftops, or assert that "they're just words," so no one should be offended? Why would your knee-jerk response to someone's negative reaction to the use of a particular word be to vilify that person as over-sensitive or foolish?
The reason that we have codes of behavior, manners, is not to lord it over other people, or make fun of them because they use the wrong fork. The whole purpose of manners is to make people feel comfortable, to ensure that no one feels excluded. There is nothing clever or funny about making people uncomfortable or unwelcome.
Having said that, it cannot be denied that we all make mistakes. At some point every single one of us WILL say or do something that upsets or offends someone else. With the best will in the world, it will happen. The correct, mannerly response to this is not complex, it does not require that you retreat to your tower and defend your position with your last breath. It requires two words:
"I'm sorry."
It does not then require that you make a mental note not to say this or that in front of a particular person. It does mean that you now understand that certain words can cause offense and that you stop using them. Whatever thought you were trying to express, there is more than one word for it. The Oxford English Dictionary has around three quarters of a million words (not including those that are obsolete). Find a better one. Expand your vocabulary.
And, as all our mothers and grandmothers have said to us at some point in our lives: "If you can't think of anything nice to say, then don't say anything at all."
That's all. No emoticon. No wink. Nothing to say "I am being ironic," which I knew he was. I knew that this person was not bigoted, but that did not alter the fact that the comment was inappropriate. Under normal circumstances, I would have deleted it and sent him an explanation, but I was battling a cold and withdrew to bed instead. Big mistake. Big.
By the time I'd dragged myself back to my laptop, things had escalated. Not surprisingly, the comment had caused offense. This raises the issue of the correct response when you have (however inadvertently) offended someone. Is it (a) to explain at length what you really meant and why the other person should not be offended; or (b) to say something along the lines of, "I'm sorry." Just in case you were wondering, which I hope you weren't, the answer is option (b). I think we all know which option the poster went for. It was this: " "In the Anglosphere, this connotation, among younger speakers, has a derisive meaning equivalent to rubbish or stupid (as in "That's so gay."). In this use, the word does not mean "homosexual", so it can be used, for example, to refer to an inanimate object or abstract concept of which one disapproves." -- This was my intended meaning for the word as I typed it. However, since it refers to an article that concerns another - different - meaning for the word, there is a small amount of irony in it's use here. I found it more interesting and challenging to produce this irony during my daily Facebooking than were I to just respond with something less interesting and normal."
Did that help to smooth the waters? Of course not. However, I was somewhat curious about the source of his quote. It appears on Wikipedia and in a few other places, though I haven't been able to discover the exact origins. It is correct insofar as the word "gay" became a generalized pejorative term on playgrounds at some time in the '80s and '90s. How that happened is up for debate. Perhaps kids picked it up from their parents. Smaller children certainly had no concept of its meaning or its potential as a homophobic slur. The response to that is to correct the child, explain that it is hurtful and move on. Its use in that context by adults is more worrisome. There was a case in the UK where a BBC DJ used the term to mean "rubbish," and incited many complaints. An internal BBC investigation decided that while the word was indeed used in that way, it could also be construed as homophobic and should therefore only be used "with caution." This decision did not sit well with Kevin Brennan, the Minister for Children at that time, who pointed out that "the casual use of homophobic language by mainstream DJ's is...too often seen as harmless banter instead of the offensive insult that it really represents. ... To ignore this problem is to collude in it. The blind eye to casual name-calling, looking the other way because it is the easy option, is simply intolerable."
Quite right. At a time when online bullying is leading to a rising suicide rate among teens, great care must be taken by those in positions of authority or influence to avoid any impression of approval in potentially hurtful (or downright offensive) name-calling.
Of course, it's not just random Facebookers or foolish DJs who indulge in this kind of thing and then attempt to justify themselves by suggesting that they had a completely different definition in mind when they spoke. In a more recent case (last week), a British UKIP politician described women in a meeting at his own party's conference as "sluts." When challenged, he attempted to explain that he did not mean that they were sexually promiscuous, but that they were women of slovenly habits...because they did not clean behind their fridges. It was no more acceptable for him to claim that he was using the term in the 18th century sense, than it is to try to justify a homophobic slur based on its playground definition. The politician's remark about women followed fast on an earlier comment in which he described foreign aid as going to "bongo-bongo land," and together led to his resignation from the party. (He couldn't see what was wrong with the "bongo-bongo land" comment either.)
There are those who see things like this and immediately start to fulminate about the language being hijacked by people who are being needlessly sensitive to certain words, robbing them of their meaning, or reducing them to a single definition, and in so doing impoverishing our tongue. My Facebook acquaintance attempted to do this. He first messaged me to complain about the injustice of it all, but on my suggesting that he was in the wrong, instead resorted to his own wall with a rather rambling defense and righteous expressions of disdain for the "liberals" who designate certain words as inappropriate (he included the n-word in this) and thereby weaken the language as a whole.
My response to this is a lovely old word: poppycock! It is arrant nonsense to suggest that the language is being harmed in any way by raising the awareness of certain words as offensive to others. The very strength of the English language lies in its flexibility. Words do not have a single meaning that remains, solid and unchanging over the millennia. The English language is nothing if not plastic, it adopts words from other cultures, gives new meaning to old ones, and creates brand new words as needs require. "Nice" now means "pleasant," where it used to mean "precise." "Pretty" originally meant "clever" or "deceitful," where now it means "good looking." It is simply not acceptable to use a word that you know to be offensive and, when challenged, attempt to defend yourself with one of the more arcane definitions in the OED.
But, of course, what we are really talking about here is manners. Words can cause offense. It is a fact. Knowing this, why would you continue to use those words? Why would you insist on taking some perceived moral high ground and shout them from the rooftops, or assert that "they're just words," so no one should be offended? Why would your knee-jerk response to someone's negative reaction to the use of a particular word be to vilify that person as over-sensitive or foolish?
The reason that we have codes of behavior, manners, is not to lord it over other people, or make fun of them because they use the wrong fork. The whole purpose of manners is to make people feel comfortable, to ensure that no one feels excluded. There is nothing clever or funny about making people uncomfortable or unwelcome.
Having said that, it cannot be denied that we all make mistakes. At some point every single one of us WILL say or do something that upsets or offends someone else. With the best will in the world, it will happen. The correct, mannerly response to this is not complex, it does not require that you retreat to your tower and defend your position with your last breath. It requires two words:
"I'm sorry."
It does not then require that you make a mental note not to say this or that in front of a particular person. It does mean that you now understand that certain words can cause offense and that you stop using them. Whatever thought you were trying to express, there is more than one word for it. The Oxford English Dictionary has around three quarters of a million words (not including those that are obsolete). Find a better one. Expand your vocabulary.
And, as all our mothers and grandmothers have said to us at some point in our lives: "If you can't think of anything nice to say, then don't say anything at all."
