As the world is progressing further into the future, we, as humans, are learning from our past mistakes and past judgements that were made and we are building on from the history and are working towards creating a better future for everyone. And, as we humans learn, we have learned that some words are okay to say and some are not okay to say. Like the words faggot/fag, shemale, hefemale and trannny. These word are considered nowadays to be very harmful and considered homophobic slurs. Now, I understand your question. “Okay, what makes a homophobic slur?” Well, we have to look at the definition of a slur first, then we can build off of that basis. The dictionary definition of a slur is:
“noun
an insinuation or allegation about someone that is
…show more content…
likely to insult them or damage their reputation.” Now, this is the textbook definition of a slur according to Merriam Webster. This isn’t my definition of a slur. But, I can say that speaking from personal experiences my definition of a slur would be any type of word that would insult a person for who or what they are.
Meaning that the words ‘faggot’ or ‘fag’ or ‘tranny’ are homophobic slurs to me. Now, why are these words slurs to me personally you’re thinking, well, it’s because I can speak from personal experience with words like these and also the negative connotations and the history that surrounds words like ‘faggot’.
What makes a homophobic slur is the negative history behind it and what they mean present day. We will work our way down the list but let’s start with the number one homophobic slur in my book. Faggot. This word has a lot of negativity and strong history behind it. The word faggot used to mean a pile or bundle of sticks to the British back in the Feudalism era. The word fag/faggot may have also been used to describe types of hazing that would be done to boys in British boarding schools but none the less, this word has a horrible past behind it. But, as time went on and more gay and LGBT people started to become more comfortable with themselves and came out to people they knew and came out to the world, that’s when the word was put to use as a slur. The term fag and or faggot was used back then to mostly belittle and demean gay men but it was also
used to put down gay women too. The word fag has such a strong contextual feel, when you read it, it just feels wrong. Well, at least to me. Just knowing that a word was used for so long that has so much hate and evil attached to it, makes it a homophobic slur. Now, as long as fag and faggot was still being used, other words like tranny and shemale and hefemale were also being used to discourage transgender people. Suddenly you’re thinking, wait, what does this have to do with homophobia? Well, let’s go back to the term LGBT, if you personally are not familiar with this acronym, the letters stand for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender community, or LGBT for short. The community is an umbrella for anything other than the societal norm, straight male or female. Now, getting back to the slur tranny, the slur tranny may have been used to suppress and describe transgender people. As a result, this word is considered a slur to many transgender activists and transgender advocates and transgender people. On the other hand, the term tranny is also considered a alright word to use to describe a transgender person or a drag queen or king ( The definition of a drag queen in the LGBT community is a male, usually gay male, dressing up as a woman and putting on makeup because he wishes to. Same applies to a drag king, it’s a female dressing up as a male because she wishes to.) and it was used to persecute them and used to describe them easily to other people. The word tranny has yet to be decided if it is an alright word/term to use to describe anyone who is a drag queen or king or is transgender, but for the most part, people of the transgender and drag community do not care for the word and consider it to be offensive.
In the article “Dude You’re a Fag: Adolescent Homophobia” the author uses pathos and logos to convey the audience the main point of her article. Rhetorical modes such as exemplification and description are used. C.J. Pascoe is trying to argue that the word “fag” or “faggot is not mainly used as a homophobic slur within high school boys, but more commonly used to describe unmasculinity.
are simply meaningless words meant to damage, humiliate and degrade certain groups of people. To prove those words worthless, the same groups of people that those hate words
After World War II, “ A wind is rising, a wind of determination by the have-nots of the world to share the benefit of the freedom and prosperity” which had been kept “exclusively from them” (Takaki, p.p. 383), and people of color in United States, especially the black people, who had been degraded and unfairly treated for centuries, had realized that they did as hard as whites did for the winning of the war, so they should receive the same treatments as whites had. Civil rights movement emerged, with thousands of activists who were willing to scarify everything for Black peoples’ civil rights, such as Rosa Parks, who refused to give her seat to a white man in a segregated bus and
Bissoondath says, that these terms are not easy to use or not easy to describe. They hurt people in every decent way. He stated in his story, once he met a person who said racial words to describe a particular race. Although, he says that the use of those kinds of words are not always indication of disapproval of their comfort wi...
The n-word evolved from the word “negro,” meaning “black,” as early as the 17th century as intentionally derogatory (Price, “Straight Talk About the N-Word”). “Faggot” originated with the Middle English “fagot,” meaning a bundle of sticks that was usually burdensome (dictionary.com). This word then became a term for a contemptible woman circa 1590, and circa 1910, the word picked up a ‘g’ and became a highly derogatory reference to flamboyant, gay men (dictionary.com). This word, in particular, could be speculated to have been chosen for gay men because they were a contemptible burden on society at the time. “Slut” originated in 1402 as a slovenly, untidy woman; later in the 15th century, the near modern usage of “a sexually promiscuous woman” appeared. (dictionary.com). The scarlet letter Hester wears is modeled after centuries of shameful branding. In England, under the Poor Law Act of 1697, after receiving relief from their parish, the poor were required to wear a badge of blue or red cloth in an open and visible manner. This was meant to discourage them from collecting additional aid unless they were highly desperate, as few people wanted to be seen doing this while wearing such a “shameful” branding (Hindle, “Dependency, Shame and Belonging: Badging the Deserving Poor,
The Freedom to speak one's mind is one of this country's citizens' most venerably held rights, and any discussion which deals with government imposed limitations on this right should not be taken lightly. Completely banning speech that is deemed by some to be racist only serves to bury the problem of racism itself, and is not an acceptable solution. Thus, the First Amendment should continue to protect racial slurs as well as all other speech in order to preserve and ensure the freedoms we have today. In conclusion, I'd like to quote one last ruling from the 8th circuit Federal court from 1946: "[The] First Amendment is intended to assure privilege that in itself must be so actual and certain that fear and doubt are absent from [an] individual's mind, or freedom is but abstraction."
Homosexuality has existed since the beginning of recorded human history and yet, attitudes towards gay and lesbian individuals vary extensively. Some societies tolerate them; others openly welcome and encourage them; and most blatantly condemn them (Bates, 46). Throughout our country’s history, homosexuals have been misunderstood and discriminated against, leading many to acquire an irrational fear of gays and lesbians. Known as homophobia, this fear has prompted heterosexual individuals with a feeling a superiority and authority when using the word “homosexual” interchangeably with the words pervert, faggot, sodomite, and so on. Homophobes typically perceive homosexuality as a threat to society. Nonetheless, the Gay Rights Movement has achieved impressive progress since 1973 when the American Psychological Association (APA) eradi...
As far back as my mind would let me travel I remember my grandmother telling me, “Jaylon, there are three things in life you can’t escape. Death, taxes, and sunday school.” Well it turns out she was right. Come rain or shine I was there every single Sunday morning service and since all my other grandmother’s grandsons took to playing sports and chasing women they left all the singing in church choir to me. Now I was always different and in my little town of Mount Pleasant they let you know just how different they thought you were. They called me weird, punk, sissy, and gay. My momma just called me special. The first time I ever heard the word “faggot” was when I was playing in the back of a pew one sunday after church. My pastor’s son, Matthew, delivered that two syllable death punch directly to my face after I showed him my Britney Spear’s album that I had gotten for my seventh birthday. Faggot? He called me a faggot. I was a faggot? What did that word even mean? Why did he call me that? Was I acting like a faggot? Upset and confused I asked my mom what it meant to be a faggot. She just looked at me with a calming smile, clasp my hands together and told me to pray. And I did. For years and years I prayed, but if there was one thing my grandmother was wrong about, it’s that there is a fourth thing you can’t escape in life, yourself.
What really grinds my gears is seeing homophobia in the modern world. Yes, I acknowledge that it is seen as a sin—especially in the early times when people believe in witchcraft. Seriously, it’s 2016 and we’re having a little fit over who uses what bathroom? We’re having worse things going on! We have ISIS, we have a potential war coming up, we have school shootings and gang violence, and worse of all we have the possibility of Trump being our president and people are losing their marbles over who uses what bathroom? It’s just a bathroom! If it makes you so uncomfortable to go into a bathroom that is gender neutral, then don’t use it! Simple! Being a gay boy in school made me uncomfortable going to the boy’s bathroom/locker room. I grew up in a small town—Oroville, WA—where homosexuality wasn’t really seen, and some people felt uncomfortable by it. I hated going to the boy’s bathroom/locker room because I constantly felt I didn’t belong with them, but I didn’t belong with the girls either…I didn’t know where I belonged. I felt if I went into the boy’s bathroom/locker room, then they would judge me or feel uncomfortable with me in there—I used to think that boy’s hated me in there because they felt that I was looking at them or checking them out
What constitutes a hate crime? What makes a hate crime different from a crime or are they one in the same. If you believe that there is a different between a hate crime and a crime, then how can we legislate hate crimes fairly and without bias on a consist basis? When it comes to hate crimes their seems to be more questions then answers and there also seems to be a lot of uncertainty within the law itself. Hate crime laws should no longer exist in are justice system because every violent crime involves an element of hate and it is impossible to prove a person’s motive or hate in the court of law.
LGBT have thousands of derogatory names that they are called or labeled as. Lesbians, gays, and bisexuals are called names such as dyke, fag, fag hag, and queer. Transgender on the other hand are called different names like cross-dresser, drag queen, drag king, and gender-queer (Eli R. Green). They are called these names by the ones who thought of the them which is society. Society uses these derogatory names against LGBT to try and make them change their ways (Eaklor 73). LGBT are also called these names because they are different...
That is because the human mind and personality is more complex than a single word or even a single phrase. Of course, one word may stick out in one's mind more than others, but that does not mean that it is the only word that describes that person. An LGBT man or woman is more than his or her sexuality. Only a series of several words or phrases can be used to partially describe a person. The word “homosexual” is the only word that can be applied to a person.
Gay, Faggot, Dyke, and Butch are a few examples of gay slurs that society has used in negative light. “’Man, that’s gay’ gets dropped on the daily/we become so numb to what we’re saying/call each other faggots…/gay is synonymous with the lesser” (Macklemore Ln 35-36, 39). These lyrics identify how we as a society make the idea of being gay a bad thing. When he says that gay is synonymous with the lesser, he is saying that society thinks that because you are gay, you are lesser than everyone else. It’s the same idea that woman and black people have gone through in history. Black people were believed not to have a choice because they were below white men and the same idea went for woman as well until people fought for their rights. He wants us to realize that this war for gay rights has already happened in different forms: “It’s the same hate that’s caused wars from religion/gender to skin color, the complexion of your pigment” (Macklemore Ln 40-41). He also adds imagery to this statement by showing images from the past of a black and white woman running at the beach and laughing together and the American flag flowing. The image of the flag is shown because it is supposed to represent freedom but for a homosexual person, it restricts them from being who they
The dictionary defines discrimination as the unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people or things, especially on the grounds of race, age, or identified sex and sexual orientation. The term LGBT stands for, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender. These terms refer to sexual orientation and also gender identity. Every day people of the LGBT community suffer wrongful terminations and oppression in their schools for their sexual orientation or identified gender.
...t and understanding they would want in return. People would be the back bone and emotional support for one another. In a precious world such as that, homophobia would not exist because of the kindness and respect of its members towards one another would mean that differences within the community would be valued and celebrated. Homophobic societies deny these differences and are strongly prohibited. The effects on homophobic bullying causes vicious attacks mentally and physically toward those of the gay community as well as straight people who "appears to be gay" or supporters of gay rights. Homophobia forces the ideology of stereotypes and that man are perceived to act "macho" and woman to be "feminine". Homophobia limits our individuality and self-expression to appreciate the diversity and unique traits within our society that are not viewed as the “norm”.