bad word?

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mathman

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Recent episode of Law and Order revolved around the use of 'f...' (fairy) to describe a male homosexual. The speaker was blackmailed and the blackmailer was murdered. What puzzles me is that 'fairy' is bad, but 'gay' is OK?
 
mathman said:
Recent episode of Law and Order revolved around the use of 'f...' (fairy) to describe a male homosexual. The speaker was blackmailed and the blackmailer was murdered. What puzzles me is that 'fairy' is bad, but 'gay' is OK?
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Well, because the gay community does not take offense to the use of 'gay', and freely use it themselves.

Contrarily, 'fairy' is a term often applied to the gay community by haters as a disparagement.


As with another loosely-related thread, if I knew you well enough, I could surely come up with a term for you that is disparaging and call you that, instead of the term 'Mathman' you have asked to be called by. you would probably take offense if I kept calling you by the name I chose. If only because you know the connotations in my use of it.
 
mathman said:
Recent episode of Law and Order revolved around the use of 'f...' (fairy) to describe a male homosexual. The speaker was blackmailed and the blackmailer was murdered. What puzzles me is that 'fairy' is bad, but 'gay' is OK?
Click to expand...

fairy is used as a pejorative and has been for decades.
its meaning is
weak idiot coward
 
RainbowSingularity said:
fairy is used as a pejorative and has been for decades.
its meaning is
weak idiot coward
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As if we didn't know

"Hence, figurative adjective use in reference to lightness, fineness, delicacy. Slang meaning "effeminate male homosexual" is recorded by 1895."
https://www.etymonline.com/word/fairy

to the OP How long is a piece of string?
Language evolves. When I was at school "gay" meant "happy" ,I thought.

"Fairy" was the same as "Queer" (which has also changed so I don't even know what it means now.)
 
DaveC426913 said:
Well, because the gay community does not take offense to the use of 'gay', and freely use it themselves.

Contrarily, 'fairy' is a term often applied to the gay community by haters as a disparagement.


As with another loosely-related thread, if I knew you well enough, I could surely come up with a term for you that is disparaging and call you that, instead of the term 'Mathman' you have asked to be called by. you would probably take offense if I kept calling you by the name I chose. If only because you know the connotations in my use of it.
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It can be hard to keep up with this sort of thing. Sometimes former terms of disapproval get taken up with gusto by the community that was originally disparaged. "Queer" for instance meant what we now call gay, back in the 1970s. Yet queer is now used with approval to denote some other form of non-standard sexual interaction - though I really can't be bothered to find out what exactly.

There must be hundreds of terms for male homosexuals, some now considered OK, some not. Personal favourites are "one who bowls from the pavilion end" and Matthew Parris's term "badger botherer" (arsing from a notorious incident involving a bisexual Welsh MP). Parris is himself gay so he gets more licence than most.
 
A possible error on my part, the 'f' word was never said. I had assumed 'fairy', but it could have been 'faggot'.
 
mathman said:
A possible error on my part, the 'f' word was never said. I had assumed 'fairy', but it could have been 'faggot'.
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There was a fast food trailer near where I lived in London and positioned just across the road from a busy pub

The trailer sold faggots

Screenshot_2022-11-04-15-14-08-31_680d03679600f7af0b4c700c6b270fe7.jpg

:)
 
Or it could be some kind of an informal introduction in a social gathering "(John)Faggit ,meet Ms.Ball"
 
mathman said:
Recent episode of Law and Order revolved around the use of 'f...' (fairy) to describe a male homosexual. The speaker was blackmailed and the blackmailer was murdered. What puzzles me is that 'fairy' is bad, but 'gay' is OK?
Click to expand...

It's an expression that apparently hasn't been "endearingly claimed and refurbished" from its negative roots in certain contexts. In contrast to, say, rapster and gang-culture utilization of N word derivations. Or the gay community's and academia's own renovation of the once demeaning Q-term.

Be wary of "harmful words and safe-speech" lists that aren't updated, since even language that was approved and advocated as correct a few years ago can be re-evaluated as the opposite later on. (Also take into account your own sex, income, and whether or not your ethnicity is or isn't of privileged status, too, with respect to your use of GoodSpeak and BadSpeak vocabularies.)

Brandeis University students maintained an updated list here (hopefully that's still the case):

https://sites.google.com/brandeis.edu/parcsuggestedlanguagelist/categories

_
 
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RainbowSingularity said:
Black privilege
all those professional sports players who are millionaires.
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My guess is that just about all of them have stories about being pulled over by a white cop who didn't recognize them.

"Where did you steal that Ferrari, boy?"

"You play for WHAT Denver Broncos?"
 
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