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Also historians: gay meant happy back in the day. Of course it did, how could so many people be gay, back in the day.
(Yes, I know it really did mean that...)
Gay was one of those substitution words to imply a different meaning, that eventually became the word itself. No one wanted to say "homosexual," so they instead said that some guy was "gay" (happy) around other men. Wink, wink.
Eventually, it got overused to the point it became synonymous with homosexual, and now that's the preferred term. For a while it became a slur, but gay people have reclaimed it over the years. Bigots still try to use it as a slur, but it has very little effect nowadays.
'Queer' however still sounds like an insult to me
I have to agree that one will never sit right with me. Not after realizing once I was a teenager how fucked up it was that they toaght as a game as small children and told us it was called "smear the queer." The implications are absolutely vulgar and grotesque, as well teaching small children that LGBTQ+ people should be "othered." It isn't for me to say, and if that's how people identify, that's OK, but there will always be that little twinge with that word for me
In elementary school, my classmates played "smear the queer," during recess one day. They were chasing me around the playground and punching me over the head, back, and shoulders. The PE coach was walking by and started yelling all of us, myself included, that what we were doing was very hurtful to a lot of people.
So the other kids asked the coach, "can we play 'get the Jew'?" She said that was fine and the kids went back to chasing me and beating me.
I've never understood how "hurt xgroup" was a fun game but only if you chose the right group to malign...
That is absolutely disgusting and I'm sorry that happened to you. Also, that is very different version then we played. Ours just involved one person with a football and everybody had to try and take them. If you made a successful tackle, you became the "queer." Fortunately, I saw my friends kids playing recently and the name was changed to "the qb," so that was good to see.
I'll never understand how Q made it into the official lexicon and F was suddenly too horrendous to speak. My gay friends called themselves F's. I called them F's. But queer was insulting, off the table.
Queer smells of it's original meaning, there's something off about you, something wrong with you.
Yeah, it makes me feel othered and stigmatised. I know that some LGBT+ people identify with that term and they can do what they like, but for me it still feels exclusionary and judgemental.
"Light in the loafers"