That's SOOOOO gaaaaaay!

[mbranesf]

The other day I was listening to a radio program the general gist of which was that there is altogether too much use of the phrase "That's so gay!" and things like it to indicate disapproval and derision of a thing or a person. And how it can be hurtful to young people who are, in fact, gay. Obviously, this sort of speech is mostly confined to dumb-ass children and fuckwit  teenagers, but where I live I do actually hear it once in a while from people who are chronologically adults--people in their 20s and 30s--and it really casts them in a bad light. It makes them appear quite uneducated and unworldly, like a kid who has no education or life experience yet but is somehow moving in the adult world, a humanoid beast whose brain quit aging at thirteen while his or her body got to be thirty.

I have been thinking about this as I prepare my thoughts for the introduction to the queer anthology, the way that dumb kids use language like that and the way that other people use it in different ways. Words like gay and queer and fag, etc., as we know, get imbued with lots of connotations and nuance from one user of the words to the next, and, of course, it's got a lot to do with the context. Certain people in certain contexts can, for example, call me a fag and I do not take it as a pejorative, while certain other people in many other situations may do that, and I would consider it quite hateful. In both cases, it's quite intimate and extremely personal in what it carries connotatively: an observation or assumption is being made and then stated aloud about what gets my dick hard and what sort of sex acts they figure I like to engage in. Certain people can make this observation and mean it as positive thing, while others would bring negativity and even hate along with the word.  It's interesting how a lot of Americans tend to be quite puritanical about sex, yet most of us freely discuss each other's sexual orientations: "He's straight, he's gay, she's bisexual," etc. If one were to substitute language like "He likes to bone chicks, he likes to suck cock, she's been known to lick pussy from time to time" then the room (depending on what room you are in) might get real quiet. Someone might drop a glass. Someone's monocle might pop out of his eye. I don't advocate that sort of language be used in all situations, of course, but perhaps if people were more thoughtful and honest and good-humored about what  they are saying when referring to orientation, then maybe there'd be less "That's so gay!" noise pollution and a generally more relaxed, easy-going discourse about sex and life among people of different orientations.

But I'll tell you "what's so gay!"  in the best way: The M-Brane queer anthology, official title and TOC to be announced soon at the M-Brane blog!

[Image is of Rictor and Shatterstar locking lips in X-Factor]