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Mar. 15th, 2004 09:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stormdogAn issue I've had cause to give some thought to lately;
I have heard the word 'faggot' used by people as a general sort of insult, akin to 'jerk' or 'asshole'. That raises some troubling issues for me. Specifically, I am concerned by the disassociation of 'faggot' from a homophobic context.
To the general populace, faggot overwhelmingly is a term applied to gay people, usually men. Just as overwhelmingly, it is seen to carry such a negative connotation that, in polite company so to speak, the term is used with a rarity approaching that of terms like 'nigger' or 'wop'. In fact, I posit that faggot's generally percieved meaning, an insultingly derogatory term for gay men, is essentially inseperable from the term itself in whatever context it is used. I fear that the more and more common use of 'faggot' simply builds tolerance for verbal attacks against the gay community, no matter how the use of the term was actually intended.
Apart from that, there are many, many more sufficiently insulting terms that should do the job just as well as faggot. Unless, of course, faggot gains a certain power from it's association with it's roots in discrimination and homophobia, in which case it's really not just another slanderous, but non-homophobic, term, is it?
I'd be very interested in opinions on this.
I have heard the word 'faggot' used by people as a general sort of insult, akin to 'jerk' or 'asshole'. That raises some troubling issues for me. Specifically, I am concerned by the disassociation of 'faggot' from a homophobic context.
To the general populace, faggot overwhelmingly is a term applied to gay people, usually men. Just as overwhelmingly, it is seen to carry such a negative connotation that, in polite company so to speak, the term is used with a rarity approaching that of terms like 'nigger' or 'wop'. In fact, I posit that faggot's generally percieved meaning, an insultingly derogatory term for gay men, is essentially inseperable from the term itself in whatever context it is used. I fear that the more and more common use of 'faggot' simply builds tolerance for verbal attacks against the gay community, no matter how the use of the term was actually intended.
Apart from that, there are many, many more sufficiently insulting terms that should do the job just as well as faggot. Unless, of course, faggot gains a certain power from it's association with it's roots in discrimination and homophobia, in which case it's really not just another slanderous, but non-homophobic, term, is it?
I'd be very interested in opinions on this.
