Congrats Bernard, happiness to you and yours!!!! :-D Now, the important piece, when is the party?
Cheers! Andre On Sat, Feb 20, 2010 at 8:21 AM, Bernard Devlin <[email protected]> wrote: > On Sat, Feb 20, 2010 at 9:14 AM, Sarah Reichelt > <[email protected]> wrote: >> I think it is changing again. My teenage sons refer to anything they >> don't like as being "gay". >> So a difficult assignment is "gay"; missing the bus is "gay"; a >> teacher who growls at them is "gay". >> >> It doesn't have to be a person, and while it has certainly not >> reverted to it's original meaning, it is losing it's homosexual >> connotations. But maybe that is just here in Australia. > > Not just limited to Australia, I've heard that usage on South Park for > years. I've no idea if South Park was creating or following a trend. > > Clearly we've now lost the use of that charming little word. Although > in all truth, I think homos had been feeling 'gay' was a rather 70s > word and was now as unfashionable as flared corduroy trousers. (Hang > on, I think they came back in and went out again a few years ago...) > > Anyway, homos have got a variety of other epithets (hostile and/or > clinical) by which they can described. Now that the majority of > people describe themselves as 'straight' or 'heterosexual', we are in > a different world from the late 1960s when gay people (along with > black people) started to declare terms they wanted the majority to use > to describe these minorities. I still have some old manifestos of the > Gay Liberation Front -- they are hilarious. But I think the world I > grew up in was already quite different from the world where those were > written. > > Back then straight people would describe themselves as normal i.e. > they didn't have a term for themselves. There's even videos from the > 1980s of people being interviewed on the streets of London, and when > asked "are you heterosexual" they would reply "no, I'm married". > Since then we've had metrosexuals, transexuals ('men giving birth'?), > gay coming to mean 'naff''. I doubt there's anyone left in the UK who > doesn't know the difference between heterosexual/homosexual. > > Personally I've always thought queer was suitable for gay people -- > I've always found people who wanted to be normal to be rather creepy. > Being oneself I can understand, but suppressing individuality to go > with the crowd seems to reduce us to sheep. Mind you, queer would > then become an inclusive term that meant 'those who resist being > normalized'. I'm sure there's more than a few people on this list who > would describe themselves as 'queer'. > > Having married a man recently, I certainly feel less than outré than > in my youth. > > Bernard > _______________________________________________ > use-revolution mailing list > [email protected] > Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription > preferences: > http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution > -- http://www.andregarzia.com All We Do Is Code. _______________________________________________ use-revolution mailing list [email protected] Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
