An Old Person's Rant on Change

And in reading this, I paused for a moment in offense that you're not happy you can't say "fag" any longer, but I thought more into that and realized that my offense at that proved your point exactly.

When I was of the age when your superiority was determined by who could call you the most offensive name you could think up, "fag" was unacceptable.  Don't read that as, "we didn't use the word," just that, "be prepared for an ass chewing and subsequent lecture if an adult heard you use it."  It's not that we didn't say "fag," we just made sure we said it out of earshot of adults.  I used it before I understood what it really meant and how it was intended to hurt a certain group of people, and I'm not proud of that, but I am also not going to pretend I didn't use it while hurling insults at kids who pissed me off.  I'm not perfect.

But when you were growing up in a time a little different than mine, that wasn't as big of a deal as it was during my youth, and even then, it wasn't as unacceptable then as it currently is now.  We didn't know what gay was, we were eight years old, we weren't calling each other fags because we knew what homosexuality was and wanted to seriously and purposefully offend and hurt gay men, we just knew it was a word we shouldn't use, and in assuming that, we figured, "if we can't say it, it must mean something bad, and I want to call Jimmy over here something bad because he pushed me on the playground at recess, I'll call him a fag and that'll show him."

Consequently, I grew up when the AIDS epidemic was being acknowledged in a culture where homosexuality was either 1) unacceptable or 2) ignored and not talked about in hopes that would make it go away or some silly thing like that.  As I was growing up and as I came of age, society started to realize, "hey, these people are human beings who love another human being and maybe the sex of either person doesn't really make that big of a difference and we're making a big deal over nothing," and slowly, we started to comprehend that being gay was NOT bad and it was hugely inappropriate to use gay, fag, dyke, etc., as insults designed to put people down.  Adults chewed our asses and lectured us when we used the word, and we grew weary of the ass chewings and lectures that the term "fag" was used less and less as I grew up.

You, on the other hand, grew up in a time and place where homosexuality wasn't really a thing, most people didn't know a gay person, (or thought they didn't), so they didn't have the same reference level as I did, given my uncle was gay, as were all of his friends he brought home whose family disowned them simply for revealing their identity and being honest about themselves.  They got dumped by their family, and the Pope family swooped in to snatch them up and make 'em one of us.  (What?  The Popes collect orphans.  If your family doesn't want you for whatever stupid reason, don't worry, Baby, the Popes do.  Get your ass over here and hang out with us!)  I had that life experience where I knew and loved someone who was gay and, therefore, had a different idea of what gay was, its use as an insult, etc., that you did not have, and that isn't to your discredit.  It's simply a matter that I grew up in this time and place, and you grew up in that one over there. 

My offense to your use of "fag" is because society changed from when you were a youth to the time I was one.  We decided, as a society and for the best, I feel, that insulting someone by using terms affiliated with homosexuality wasn't cool.  It hurt people and we decided that we weren't going to do that.  I'm sure you had zero intentions of hurting gay people as well, but society did not have the same opinions, acceptance or tolerance of the LGBTQ community that were prevalent in my childhood.  "Fag" didn't change, that's the same word; its meaning and its acceptability to be used to hurt others, (or absolute lack thereof), that changed from your childhood and mine.

I personally detest the word, I will NOT use it under any circumstance.  And as wishy washy as it sounds, I will also not tell a person they can't use it because controlling everyone else's expressions is not my place or my business.  I will politely and quietly request the term not be used in my presence, but that's the end of it.  I don't lecture about it or chew ass, I just ask and let it go from there.  I also try to remember that if you say that word, based on society's opinions during your childhood, it may not mean what it means to me.  I want to stand up for everyone, but even if I did, I might be standing up for someone who was never a target of the insult to begin with.  A word can mean one thing to one person during a certain time and then something completely different six months later.  That's partially why I don't lecture about "hurtful words," because I am not certain that the word I'm hearing is the word the other person is meaning.

So I took momentary offense, and yes, it was a knee jerk reaction, but I was able to stop and see that my association with the word's meaning may be 110% different than yours, which is exactly the point your entry makes.


MLP