Prejudice and Pride

Otto Goodson

Gay, Queer, Trans, Girl… I have been called all these names over the years, but here’s the thing, I’m not any of those things and I’m not offended by being called them, I am very much an ally (of the lgbtq+ community – not the name callers, though I may have funded bullies over the years through their stealing of my dinner money). But it leaves me to think, why do people use terms like this in jest, when they are not funny, and what impact does it have on our community when it is said?

Language is constantly evolving through our own moral progress and understanding of the world as a collective society. The word Gay, appeared in the

English language in the 12th century, its primary meaning was joyful or carefree, bright and showy, in the 14th century it attained associations with being carefree with morals, a Gay woman was a prostitute, a Gay Man a womanizer. Its association with homosexuality came when identifying young male prostitutes for male clients as Gay Boys. In the nineteen fifties and sixties it carried this dual meaning, appearing in subculture in a knowing ambiguity and a wink. In the nineteen nineties and lad culture the word becomes a slur, someone calling something or someone gay is showing disrespect or hostility or identifying something is rubbish.

‘Hopefully

So language is always evolving, but it’s important to realise, there isn’t a vote overnight where everyone agrees certain words now mean certain things and not other things (although if you want to pretend there is, grab a dictionary and some tippex and go nuts!); a word doesn’t have a score about how ok it is to use, it’s all about context. The context is the situation within which something exists or happens that can help explain it. Context can change the meaning of language. Which brings us to intent, the words themselves should not have the power to offend, it is surely how they are used, but these things are never just black and white when one sense of a word is used to identify a group of people then using that same word in a derogatory or negative sense, it’s just unhelpful. It shouldn’t be controversial, nobody is saying you can or can’t use words in certain contexts and as shown with the example of ‘gay’ there can be positive change to the context but it’s still important to be responsible for how they might be perceived.

Our language is like a river that can never be frozen, we will never be able to control it completely but we do have a responsibility as a modern day society to police our language. We must protect marginalised groups from these slurs that have derived from semantic change and new words and phrases being coined. Hopefully one day our language will reflect a society that values and celebrates differences in their entirety, rather than reflected ingrained prejudices that impact on our pride.