While I like to think that I’m a nice guy, I do have my fair share of pet peeves.
Even beyond dripping faucets and loud gum chewing, the term “that’s gay” takes the pet peeve cake – especially when people excuse the marginalizing expression by saying that they didn’t mean “gay-gay,” but rather “stupid-gay.”
Guess what? Gay doesn’t mean stupid – and there’s definitely nothing “stupid” about my sexual orientation.
While at Escape in Palm Springs, I recorded today’s video rant on that very subject. Check it out – and share it with your friends on Facebook.
February 16, 2012 at 11:14 am
I <3 you Davey Wavey!!!!! You're the best!!! kisses from Miami Beach
February 16, 2012 at 11:21 am
Some good points here, Davey…thanks.
February 16, 2012 at 11:45 am
you need to tough it out Davey. My friends and me use ‘that’s gay’ all the time. Somethings are too gay-like this blog for instance. Its not bad or anything but really gay
February 16, 2012 at 12:16 pm
@Beth
Oh Beth, that’s really straight! Sorry, I didn’t mean straight-straight. I meant straight-stupid.
February 16, 2012 at 12:19 pm
Thumbs up for Davey! Thumbs down for Beth and her shallow friends.
February 16, 2012 at 2:01 pm
Beth and her friends needs to get reoriented.
February 16, 2012 at 2:02 pm
Great job Davey !!
February 17, 2012 at 6:29 am
This makes no sense at all Beth.
February 17, 2012 at 11:12 am
i get it. stop being so sensitive.
nice stereotyping too davy
February 22, 2012 at 6:55 am
Beth. Coming clean in a gay forum like this can’t justify your actions, regardless of it’s intent. Words are powerful and often mean things they are not intended for. If you really think there is nothing wrong with using the word Gay to describe something…change the word from Gay to the “black”. “Oh that’s so black, not colour black, African American black”. If you don’t think that would go over well, then I guarentee…from a gay mans perspective, it’s just as offensive.
February 16, 2012 at 11:51 am
Thank you thank you thank you. My bff always says, “that’s so gay”, then looks at me “horrified”, and says, Oh, I didn’t mean it that way”. Arrrrgh.
Maybe seeing Davey looking so cute and buff, telling her to stop being a biotch, she might finally get it.
February 16, 2012 at 11:53 am
Beth, you are so c**t. I don’t mean “c**t-c**t”. I mean “c**t-stupid”
February 16, 2012 at 5:48 pm
@Jack
Jack,
Use of the “C-word” is coarse, and offensive to any female watching this blog. In short, it’s really, really stupid.
February 17, 2012 at 6:10 pm
I proffer that it only offends women who have been culturally influenced to believe it offensive. A woman who speaks no English, for example, or one who had never heard the word before has no basis for feeling anything about the word. A word is a just a word. We fill in what it means for us.
February 17, 2012 at 7:58 pm
@Mosaic Dave
Your comment… banal semantics.
February 18, 2012 at 4:19 am
Things don’t need to be fresh to be accurate. To some people a f*g is a cigarette. No offense there. To others it’s an awful pejorative word. I can call my cat a c**t all day and she’ll still love me
February 18, 2012 at 4:25 am
@Mosaic Dave
Is your cat reading this thread? That must be some kind of special cat.
Words hurt, MD.
February 19, 2012 at 3:49 am
Consider the adage about sticks and stones. It’s wise. Words only hurt when we allow them to mean something to us – when we let them in, as it were. We control the keys to our respective kingdoms and (when we realize that) we can allow or disallow entry to whatever words thoughts or ideas we want to. It’s fine to say words hurt. Why not open people’s minds a little to the potential within them to filter out the ones that might not resonate well with them?
February 16, 2012 at 12:36 pm
It really doesn’t matter to me I tell my straight friends “thats gay” or “your gay” but like i said it doesn’t bugg me that much! lots of hugs from Texas!
February 16, 2012 at 12:41 pm
Clippersuper: touche’
February 16, 2012 at 12:51 pm
Amen Davey! I have been fighting the “that’s gay” battle and the “that’s retarded” battle along side each other for years. You should not make a value judgement on anything by using a word that describes what a whole class of people are…a terrible message to send.
February 16, 2012 at 1:39 pm
When str8 people use the term “that’s gay” or “that’s so gay, whether they realize it or not it is a put down to all of us. They don’t really have the hurts and joys of being gay as we do.
In much of the Black community the use of the “N word” can be appropriate within the Black community (but certainly not all of it). So too one of the most pejorative words that str8s can use is “f*g” when speaking to or about us. Yet when we are together and bantering around talking about ourselves, “f*g,” in fact, can be a positive identifier. But when used by str8s, it is a “fightin’ word.
February 16, 2012 at 1:41 pm
Would you rant the same way if I said “That’s Queer.” and I mean wierd/bizzaro/strange queer, instead of homosexual queer?
February 16, 2012 at 2:23 pm
This expression has always made the hackles on the back of my neck stand up. It seems like it is mostly used by younger people who don’t fully understand they are using gay as a pejorative when doing it. It feels like a passive-aggressive way for straight people to twist an otherwise positive term into a negative…getting their point across to us how they really feel.
February 16, 2012 at 2:45 pm
Just yesterday I commented on a friend of a friend of mine on Facebook who responded to their post about where to find a cheetah comforter as “gay”! I said, ” So cheetah comforters are happy? They’re a homosexual? Rude!”! And today I see your video! I have to share! Davey you are so right!
February 16, 2012 at 3:12 pm
Davey, I’ve tried to get people to look the word, “gay”, up in the dictionary. I even offer to let them use my dictionaries, one that goes back to the 1930s, and only really has the “happy – gay” definition, and a more modern dictionary that would also includes “gay – guys who like other guys sexually”. In the 80s and 90s, when I had teenage foster sons, they had a problem with fellow classmates giving them a hard time because they lived with that “gay guy”. I talked them into seeing it as a compliment since they knew they were happier and better off living with this “happy – gay” guy. One kid came home from school with a black eye, actually, just a bit swollen, and I got him to tell me what happened. To be honest with you, I felt sorry for those jokesters who probably got the worst end of any fight. But I told my son that he didn’t have to defend me against such wise guys. After that, he took it easy on them and their smart ass remarks.
February 16, 2012 at 5:26 pm
What bothers me the most is that people know it’s wrong (why else would they be apologizing), but do it anyway and then try to explain it away.
February 17, 2012 at 1:12 am
I tend not to react and ignore it, but it is annoying.
February 17, 2012 at 8:23 am
I do not know that expression that considers gay people as stupid. I had the idea that the word gay means “alegre” in Spanish. Anyway, nothing as stupid as considering that being gay means being stupid… There are lots and lots of very intelligent gay people. I said some days ago that it would be great if you started a series on gay celebrities, some of whom have been very important persons, such as Alan Turing. That would be great.
About the previous post, about abstinence, I would say that I don´t agree. Although it is known that married men and women live more than those that remain single, ¿does that mean that sex is necessary for the life itself? Sex may be funny, good for your mind, and even good for your body -considering that it is a sport…-, but it is not necessary for living. I know a lot of people who remain virgin all their life, most of them priests (and a lot of them gay priests….) and leaving or giving up sex is for me as respectable as having a different love every night. More than that, I thing that promiscuity is fairly more harmful than not having sex at all. That´s my opinion.
Anyway, I must admit that I´d like to have more sex than I actually have… But that is my own bussiness, jaja.
Saludos, Davey.
February 17, 2012 at 10:17 am
@Inigo
First off, sorry my computer has an ignorant keyboard and prevents me from placing a tilda over the “n” in your name. Also unable to use the cedilla under the “c” in Portuguese, French and a number of other languages, or the upside down question mark at the beginning of a question — a really capital idea which lets alerts someone who might be reading the text aloud that a question is coming up.
Your suggestion that famous and not-so-famous gay celebrities be a subject for a future blog is a good one. I suspect that the inventor of the “Turing Machine” is pretty much forgotten in the U.S. and perhaps in Europe also. A real shame, as Alan Turing enabled the British to break the German “Enigma” codes, shortening the war and saving many lives. Following the war, he was persecuted by British authorities for his homosexuality, jailed for a time, and eventually committed suicide.
February 20, 2012 at 7:16 am
Thank you.
February 17, 2012 at 4:14 pm
will you all stop being so gay
February 17, 2012 at 6:36 pm
Most people use the term “gay” to mean undesirable for the same reason they use the term “sick” for something that is desirable. It’s what they’ve heard other people use. It runs contrary to the traditional usage of the word but people use it. They don’t, typically, intend offense. And yet so many people derive offense from it because they have so little security that being gay is OK (unless they have agreement form others). We don’t need people to think we’re OK to be OK. And we don’t need to engineer their thoughts and their speech to suit us. We need to stop being so prissy, fussy, bitchy, easily offended and so goddamn gay. And we need to start being proud, strong, secure, happy and GAY.
Ryan brings up an excellent point. Would you feel the same about the word “queer” which, traditionally, means different, strange, unusual, out of the ordinary? It seems obvious to me this is why “gay” has taken on the tone of being undesirable. It makes a hell of a lot more sense, etymologically, than “sick” as something positive or exciting.
I and many of my friends grew up using the term gay to mean ridiculous. I’m gay and I can’t think of a single one of them that has bashed me or that thinks less of me or that treats me as anything other than a friend. I’m not sure it’s really accurate to say that young, impressionable kids might grow up believing that gay is not OK strictly because of a colloquial usage of the word that differs from the traditional usage. Are we really worried that if we tell our kids “Grandma is very sick.” they’re going to think she’s outrageously cool? People know the differences between words and the various meanings the hold in various contexts.
I think we’re better focused on issues that have real consequences like actual discrimination and violence than on minutia like this.
February 17, 2012 at 8:56 pm
@Mosaic Dave
You’re not writing your doctoral thesis here, are you? Your last sentence was succinct and to the point. The rest was mostly fluff. Tighten it up, man!
February 18, 2012 at 4:21 am
You’re welcome not to read it if you find it too fluffy.
February 18, 2012 at 4:36 am
@Mosaic Dave
Thank you for releasing me from this mostly unpleasant task.
February 18, 2012 at 5:19 pm
this thread is really gay
February 18, 2012 at 8:34 pm
@Beth
It’s supposed to be, sweetheart. Haven’t you figured that out yet? Why are you still lurking around the site?
February 22, 2012 at 3:12 am
@clippersuper:@Beth:
Thanks,clipper,for straightening out that canine female Beth!!
I’m really surprised the evil ho is still commenting__Actually,after reading her[it's?] numerous malicious remarks on the “Daddy Date” post,I figured she might not really exist.It seems that I was
wrong,sadly.
February 22, 2012 at 6:06 am
I think that as you get older, more experienced, wiser, more cultured…you need to find someone that can more adequately compliment where you are and or want to be in life. I just turned 27, I have a brand new career in law enforcement, and I have managed to stumble across a 33 year old(soon to be 34 in April), amazing, talented, cultured, traveled, financially secure guy that I’m madly in love with. I realize that 7 years isn’t a Huge age gap, but a lot can happen in 7 years! Right?! I see a great deal of where I want to be in life in him and what he’s been able to accomplish. Maybe it’s a little weird, but I really look up to him…not really for guidance or anything like that, but as sort of a directional beacon.
And…I really can’t wait to spend 3 weeks with him on vacation in April. Having to leave him at the end of the 3 weeks so I can head back to work in another state is going to kill me inside, but time heals…and will eventually make you stronger.
February 22, 2012 at 5:24 pm
@Ken:(No Barbie?!)
Great response,far above,to the odious Beth,Ken !! It Reminds me of the GLSEN ThinkB4YouSpeak.com poster I have:”That’s SO ‘JOCK WHO CAN COMPLETE A PASS BUT NOT A SENTENCE.”
February 29, 2012 at 5:48 pm
Davey, that video is so straight! Oh – I don’t mean straight-straight, I just mean stupid-straight.
No, in all seriousness, what you discussed also is a pet peeve of mine. Thanks for this video!