The Gaytheist Agenda

A recent report found that gay is the most frequently used term of abuse in UK schools. According to the report 83% of teachers stated they’d heard students using the word against other pupils as a slur.

For the current generation, “gay”, “bitch” and “slag” are the most frequently used terms of abuse, according to a survey by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL).
They are used by children of all ages, from nursery school upwards. But the worst offenders are secondary school pupils, says the teaching union.

The most popular by far is “gay”. Of the teachers interviewed, 83% said they heard it being used regularly and much more than its nearest rivals, bitch (59%) and slag (45%). So how did it achieve this dubious honour?

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“Every generation grows up with a whole lexicon of homosexual insults, in my day it was ‘poofter’ or ‘bender’,” says slang lexicographer Tony Thorne. “They were used much more because they were considered more offensive than ‘gay’, which is more neutral.

…..

“It’s only in the last four years that I’ve documented it being used so much by young people. It’s what we call a ‘vogue’ word, which is a fashionable word.”

One reason for this increase in use could be because “gay” has partly lost its sexual connotations among young people, he says. While still pejorative, for the majority of youngsters it has replaced words such as “lame”.

“I have interviewed scores of school kids about this and they are always emphatic that it has nothing at all to do with hostility to homosexuals,” says Mr Thorne, compiler of the Dictionary of Contemporary Slang. “It is nearly always used in contexts where sexual orientation and sexuality are completely irrelevant.”

The ATL survey seems to say otherwise, lumping it in with clear insults such as poofter and batty boy. But Katie, a 12-year-old from Colchester, knows it in different context. A bad pair of trainers is much more likely to be called “gay” than a person, she says.

“It’s used as more of a way to tease a friend rather than have a real go at someone. I wouldn’t call someone ‘gay’ because I know that’s sort of bullying them.”

Here is where the problem lies. When a person is using gay as an insult it doesn’t matter whether they’re using it to mean gay or lame. Either way their intent is to characterize gay as bad and the end result is the same; gay is associated with undesirableness. That is why whatever the intent, use of gay as a pejorative must be considered inappropriate.

But while “gay” may have changed for some, it is still being used as a means of bullying, as are many other homophobic insults (see table, above). Last year, the Westminster government announced the first guidelines for schools on how to deal with homophobic bullying.

Gay lobby group Stonewall says 65% of young gay people experience homophobic bullying. And many who aren’t gay also get labelled as such.

“It’s a form of peer group control,” says psychologist Helen Cowie. “Boys have to be masculine and macho and anyone who isn’t must go along with it or face being bullied. It’s a form of bullying that domineering people seek out vulnerable people and school age is a time of emergent sexuality which is itself a vulnerable time.”

Precisely why any anti-gay slurs of all kinds must be strictly disallowed. They are harmful by their very nature and only foster an environment of intolerance.

Fellow psychologist Ian Rivers says the potency of such words is in the fact they “go to the very core of who we are”. Yet sexual orientation is also invisible.

“It’s not about your heritage or your race, it’s not about things which someone can see.” So it can’t even be challenged, he says. “How can children demonstrate that they are heterosexual. There’s no effective recourse and this is what makes it so effective as a bullying tactic.”

Donald Christie, professor in the Department of Childhood and Primary Studies, says “sexual orientation” is a source of potential vulnerability. “If there’s an area of life that children themselves feel insecure about they’re aware of their own vulnerability. The whole point of bullying is about identifying and accentuating weakness in others.”

Such is the insidious nature of calling someone gay. How can they prove otherwise? Even if they publicly engage in behavior with somebody of the same gender people can easily accuse them either of acting to hide the truth or of being bisexual. It’s a no-win situation in a homophobic environment. And whether or not the person is gay, the belief of others that they are opens them up to myriad forms of abuse.

So despite what some may think about their casual tossing about of words, or their “right” to preach their cherry-picked Biblical viewpoints about gay people, it’s important to keep in mind that words do have power. Names can and do impact the lives of others in a very significant way. Please pass it on and help end the cycle of hurt.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, March 20th, 2008 at 12:54 am and is filed under Hate Speech, Homophobia, United Kingdom/N.I., Youth. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.