mondegreens

2456

Comments

  • Also: "cotton-pickin'." I only realized how bad that one was a couple of years ago.

    Yeah, I use "retarded" and "lame" a lot, although for some reason I don't use "gay." Regardless, I don't think it's a big deal. I think the words have become so ensconced* in our language that they no longer have any real association with the victim in question (retarded people, homosexuals, etc.), and as long as the speaker isn't intending any insult to those people, then there's no real problem. I really don't think it's subconscious associations that gay=bad; it's more, people say it and you pick it up. Sure, the people who first started using "gay" as an insult probably meant it in a derogatory way, but now most people don't even think of that; it's just part of their lexicon.



    *I'm sure that's the wrong verb, but I can't think of one I like...
  • I try very hard not to swear around children, and when children younger than HS age swear, it bothers me. High school is, IMNSHO, when you're old enough to start using words like that.

    And the whole "people who swear show a lack of vocabulary and a lack of imagination" thing pisses me off. I scored a 710 out of 800 in my SATs in verbal. I regularly placed in the 99th percentile in standardized tests in vocabulary. I taught myself to read at 22 months old and have always had an extensive vocabulary. (My teachers pointed it out on my report cards multiple times.) I have quite the vocabulary.

    I think the whole thing about that is just a standard retort that anti-swearing people come back with to try to make people stop swearing. I've never understood why. I don't get what's so bad about swearing.

    There's a long history of creative cursing. Look at Shakespeare. It's FILLED with creative curses. Of course, most people don't realize the curses in his literature when they come across them, but, oh, my god, that man was the KING of the alliterative insult.

    So, yeah, I'm not saying you were accusing me of it, I'm just saying that I think that excuse is a cop-out.
  • Woah. Cotton-pickin'.

    That never dawned on me until just now.

    A bunch of activists corrected me on the word "gypped" once. I never realized it.

    See... this is why we need to come up with NEW curse words. Didn't the Firefly fandom have a new set? I think it was one of those groups.
  • "Yeah, I use "retarded" and "lame" a lot, although for some reason I don't use "gay." Regardless, I don't think it's a big deal. I think the words have become so ensconced* in our language that they no longer have any real association with the victim in question (retarded people, homosexuals, etc.), and as long as the speaker isn't intending any insult to those people, then there's no real problem. I really don't think it's subconscious associations that gay=bad; it's more, people say it and you pick it up. Sure, the people who first started using "gay" as an insult probably meant it in a derogatory way, but now most people don't even think of that; it's just part of their lexicon."

    And, see, that's what makes it the worst thing of all. Because it's so popular, people don't even realize they ARE insulting gays or people with disabilities when they do it. But they are.

    Queer kids and adults ARE hurt when we hear people using "Gay" or "fag" or "queer" as insults. They DO still have association with those groups. Gay still means homosexual, so does faggot. (In American English. British English speakers need not apply.) And when people say "oh, but I didn't mean it like that", they're basically trying to excuse that homophobic action, even if they're not homophobes. It's the homophobic stuff like that, that's the most insidious of all. The homophobia that even accepting people and allies do because they don't realize they're doing it. At the root of it all, gay, the words meaning a homosexual, still is being used as an insult. And just saying "oh, I didn't mean it like that" doesn't cancel it out or excuse it.

    Just think what would happen if someone said the same thing about an ethnic slur. What would happened if someone used "Jewed out" to mean tricked out or to mean bargained out? The only difference between that and "faggot" or "retarded" is that ethnic slurs are unacceptable and insults based on sexual orientation, disability, and fat are still accepted in our society. (Have you ever noticed how much "and stupid" is stuck with "fat"? I'm fat and I'm certainly not stupid.)
  • "Queer kids and adults ARE hurt when we hear people using "Gay" or "fag" or "queer" as insults. They DO still have association with those groups."

    As someone who spent the entire holiday listening to my teenage nephews call each other "faggot" and "fruit" and refer to stupid things as "gay", I can attest to how much it hurts, no matter what the intention of the speaker.
  • edited November 2007
    This discussion is really interesting, and raises some interesting points, including things that are now going to make me sound hypocrytical, as I probably have used phrases like 'cotton-picking' and not ever thought of what it means.....

    I actually find the general use of 'that is gay' and the like offensive, and I always politely point this out to people when I hear it (which is mainly in chat on World of Warcraft).

    And as for faggot, well, I can't think of any use of the word that is acceptable (except the meat dish, and even that makes me cringe)

    Queer is another one I don't like.

    All that said, I generally only take offense at people saying such things if that was what they intended. Otherwise I just point out that I don't like it and forget it.

    As previously said, I swear a great deal at my computer and then I tend to use 'fuck' and not a great deal else.
    When I was at university, I used to use another very offensive word, until one day a female friend heard me say it (jokingly) and was shocked, and told me so, and I now don't use that word, to the point where if feels so wrong to say it, I don't even want to type it anymore. Although, I do use it during my computer swearing too thinking about it.
  • "Queer is another one I don't like."

    As a lesbian, I actually find myself identifying with that word, and using it to describe myself quite often. I'm not entirely sure why I don't object to it... My username on other forums (places like LiveJournal) even includes the word ("queer_theory").
  • edited November 2007
    "And, see, that's what makes it the worst thing of all. Because it's so popular, people don't even realize they ARE insulting gays or people with disabilities when they do it. But they are."

    No, the thing is, they're not. If I call something retarded, it has <i>absolutely nothing to do with retarded people</i>. If I call something gay, that doesn't mean that gay people are suddenly relevant. Those meanings are totally discrete. They're just placeholder insults that no longer have anything to do with what they really mean. Just because people are hypersensitive and reactionary wrt stuff about religion/race doesn't mean they have to become that way about everything...personally, I think that'd be a bad thing. People just need to stop getting offended by stuff that wasn't intended to be offensive. I'm <i>not</i> saying "I didn't mean it like that." I'm saying "<i>It doesn't mean that</i>." Not in this context, not anymore.

    Sorry if I'm being offensive. I'll end with quoting someone from another messageboard because he is undoubtedly more eloquent, tactful, and relevant than I:


    "I'd never actually thought about saying "are you deaf?" for example, being offensive to anyone.

    I wonder if this links back to the earlier thread about when political correctness goes too far, and I think it goes to individual cause. I mean, as a gay person, when I hear someone say "that movie was so gay", for example, I don't honestly care. In most situations, I'm aware that they're not implying that the movie was homosexual, nor were they linking the movie's bad quality with homosexuality, it's merely a turn of phrase. But, say, if someone uses the word "faggot" as a derogatory term then I'll get offended, because they are linking homosexuality with being a bad thing.

    I'd like to think it's the same for the things you mention. I mean, I certainly agree that you are sensitised the more you are around people: I have a few blind friends, and so I think as a result of that I'd be unlikely to say "are you blind?" to someone for that reason. But I do think that sometimes we have to see that there is no inherent link between the phrase and discrimination, you know?"




    Oh, and re: "queer" - see, that strikes me as something that would be inherently much more offensive, and yet apparently now it's perfectly PC - I mean, we have classes like "gay histories, queer cultures" and my friend's sociology-professor-mom was reading a paper with a similar title the other day. So I think that supports my point that in the end a word is whatever you make it out to be, and so you should judge a speaker's intentions rather than his words alone, and that it's ridiculous to label everyone who uses the word "gay" to mean "stupid" a homophobe?
  • I think it is interesting how difficult it is for us to even discuss it. Nearly every post has an opinion that is then disagreed with in a later post. And we all pretty much seem to agree in general. I found myself getting a little hot just reading it, not embarrassed or mad exactly, but defensive! So strange.

    Fuck you all!

    Just kidding
  • edited November 2007
    I don't get offended by somebody commenting that a particular dining room pictured in a home decor magazine is "so gay." But I do get offended at the generic teen use of the word "gay" that I've heard way too often, because it basically means something like 'lame' or 'laughable' or 'stupid.' And regardless of the speaker's intentions or personal sense of whether they're homophobic or not, I just think it's a bad feature of our society to go along with that kind of equation.

    Particularly since there are so many kids in their teens who are grappling with questions around their own sexual identity. If I'VE heard teens say it, I can bloody well guarantee that some of those gay or bicurious teens have heard it more, and I just know that it hurts them deeply.

    I don't think it's an accidental unrelated thing that the generic word "gay" has accumulated all the negative energy that contemporary linguistic usage has given it. Lynching of black people in this country is only a generation or two in the past; killing or beating gay people to a bloody pulp is still going on today. I don't think it's so much a hypersensitivity issue as a realistic area of ordinary sensitivity.

    Do you have gay friends, Shruti? Have you asked any of them what they think about this particular debate? I'd be interested.
  • edited November 2007
    There are certainly cultural differences if queer is acceptable in the USA, as it is not in the UK. It lies somewhere between faggot and gay.

    I also strongly disagree with Shruti, that when you use words like gay and retard that they are not related to their original meaning. That is just nonsense, and if you believe that, you are very nieve. If the use of a word upsets a large group of people then that can not be the case, and a BBC Radio 1 Dj got in to a great deal of troube and made national news for saying something was 'gay' on his show.

    It takes over 100 years for words to lose their original meaning, after they become part of everyday language in their incorrect usage, and both gay and retard are not that old. Gay was invented back in the 50's to mean Good As You.
    The reason words take this long to lose their offensive meaning is due to people still being alive that remember the original meaning.
    While people take offense at a word, it is offensive.
    I take offense at gay being used to mean bad, ergo, it is offensive.
  • edited November 2007
    "in the end a word is whatever you make it out to be, and so you should judge a speaker's intentions rather than his words alone, and that it's ridiculous to label everyone who uses the word "gay" to mean "stupid" a homophobe?"

    I don't label everyone who uses "gay" to mean "stupid" a homophobe. I do my best to judge people based on their intentions. It isn't that the word offends me when used in this way.... It hurts my feelings. My visceral reaction is to feel hurt.
  • edited November 2007
    Damn. Okay. I guess this is just me being pseudointellectual and unfeeling, then. But I just don't...so wouldn't calling something "stupid" be offensive to stupid people? Is calling something lame *really* offensive to people who are lame? I guess I maybe I'm so frustrated by the notion of political correctness that I take it too far the other direction, but I just don't understand why people need to take offense when none is intended. Or maybe it's just that I'm always on the other end of it - like, I can't really think of any such derogatory terms that describe me, personally, so maybe I just don't get it. But I really don't see how I'm being naive, at all. I _know_ that some of my friends use words like "gay" and "retarded" as insults. And I _know_ that none of them harbor any resentment, etc. to those groups of people. So...I just don't see what the problem is.

    edit: also, cableflame, just saw your earlier post: "And the whole "people who swear show a lack of vocabulary and a lack of imagination" thing pisses me off." - yeah, me too; I agree with everything you said there. (800 verbal, bitches.)
  • I can't see why people would be offended if such words were to be used to describe a situation, since no-one (as far as I can tell) gets hurt, but as soon as it becomes focussed on people then yes, it is offensive to say such things. The main problem I see with the way teenagers use language is that they believe they can use it as "they are responsible enough to know when to use it" (I asked some people so it is a quote) but of course whilst there are those who are careful with what they say, there are always those that apply it to _absolutely everything_ (the un-imaginative linguists Shruti and c4bl3fl4m3 spoke of).

    I think what I'm trying to say is that so long as a person is not the focus of the sentence, there is no reason (in my mind at least) that people should take offence to it.
  • Kerrin -- how can "gay" have been invented in the '50s when the Christmas song "Deck the Halls" says "don we now our gay apparel" and that song dates from the 19th century (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deck_the_Halls)? I don't think you meant that its meaning was switched from happy to homosexual in the '50s, because then the "Good As You" thing wouldn't make sense.
  • I thought that gay was spelt "gai" to give us the word "gaiety". Although you're last point does raise some questions in my mind, i.e. What do you mean kerrin?
  • Well, that's the thing, though, about living in a plural society. If you just run around as a member of the majority group thinking "I'm okay, I feel fine, I'm not offended at being branded a member of any group, I'm not afraid of people vandalizing my home or my car because of the group I belong to, I don't have to worry about the possibility of death or bodily harm from strangers just because of my group" and then expect everybody in the minority groups -- especially minority groups with a history of abuse or marginalization -- to approach life with an equal level of sang froid, I think you're just not doing the work of empathy.

    Just because there are queer studies majors available in big coastal city universities doesn't mean that gay people in small towns, rural areas, or various pockets of prejudice all around you aren't leading lives filled with a certain level of shame and fear that you don't have to experience. And it's very probable that you know quite a few people who are gay or bi or tg and you just don't happen to realize it.

    People sometimes argue that being black or gay or disabled is no different from being Italian-American, or Lithuanian in descent, or whatever -- any given subdivision of what's basically the American majority -- but there too I don't think those people have bothered to think very hard about what it means to be part of a group that's despised & kicked around by big social forces. It IS different. It has a whole different set of consequences.

    When somebody argues that "those people" need to do the extra work of stuffing their feelings away and maintaining their cool and ignoring the slurs of unthinking people, it doesn't seem fair to me. Why aren't they willing to do a little extra work themselves?
  • edited November 2007
    *Well I did write a mini essay for this post but it seems to be lost so ummm, I'll try and recall.*

    Essentially: People hate different things so treat them differently (I do remember the "You can't say you do something just because of the way you are" discussion but in this case it's just true.). And I am not denying that some of the things that happen are terrible and should never happen-I've seen and received some things in my time so I do empathize with them-but to fix the problem requires a fundamental grasp of every single victim's problem-what happens, why, when it started, who causes the problem, what sort of background do they (both of them) come from, and so and so forth. Which is just implausible, although we can all do our bit for small scale world healing.

    In the attempt to recall 25 minutes worth of text I may have come across rather rash and uncaring/unthinking-trust me I did. A lot. Of thinking and caring, not a lot of uncaring.

    Also jinx "tg"? Never seen or heard before. Please explain if you wouldn't mind.
  • Transgendered. Somebody who feels as if they are stuck in a body of the wrong gender, whether they have taken the surgical/chemical steps to change that, or not.
  • Thanks for clearing that up. :)
  • No prob. :)
  • To my mind, offense is in the ear of the beholder, so to speak. Intent doesn't figure into it at all. (Sort of like tort law here in the US.) And while people are certianly free to say whatever they like, sometimes they should refrain for the sake of folks around them who don't share their values. I'm not advocating censorship, I just feel that way about all rights. You know, your rights stop at the end of my nose, and all that. :-) I used to swear like a sailor, but working with other people's children changed that.
  • > how can "gay" have been invented in the '50s when the Christmas song "Deck the Halls" says "don we now our gay apparel"

    I did actually mean the additional meaning was added. As we all know, 'Gay' also means happy (and that has been around a long time), but we know that people aren't using that meaning in the sentence 'That is gay' to mean bad.
  • @Jon Who: "People hate different things so treat them differently"

    I sort of agree with you on this, but I'm not sure I'm agreeing with what you actually meant. Seems like you conclude from this that the effort involved in analyzing & calculating everybody's behavior patterns & causes would be so overwhelming that people just realistically couldn't do it.

    If what you meant was that everybody has a different assortment of things that they hate (and presumably a history that would explain their individual assortments) then it really WOULD be impossible to sort out human behavior.

    To me, though, it seems like people resist and hate things they are struggling to *define* as different. We're different from roses, and elephants, and cordless drills, and paper napkins, but we don't often *hate* any of those things. What we really react to with venom is the stuff we're busy pushing away from ourselves -- gym rats are disgusted by people who are out of shape; stressed worker bees are fed up to HERE with those *shirkers*; conservatives positively spit at the idea of liberals.

    Just watching what we ourselves are pushing away is an explanation of our own inner conflicts, so self-knowledge is step one, and then application of that to other people and their conflicts is step two.
  • Humans are not the only species to alienate those within the species who are different...
  • edited November 2007
    jinx, re: your previous post.

    I understand that there are very specific minorities that for some reason or the other are, in some places and among some communities, targeted by the general public for discrimination, and I'm sure they suffer a lot for it. But I don't see why the venom of a handful of bigots has to somehow taint the speech of everyone else.

    As for the first part...okay, I don't know anybody that's gay who fears for his life on a daily basis. Faces some discrimination? Absolutely, but I mean, everybody's hated by someone. As for "ignoring the slurs of unthinking people" - if the people are simply "unthinking" and not "malicious," if the people are just saying something with no real significance, how can that be considered a slur? I can understand being offended by people who hate you for who you are, people who dislike you for no particular reason. But I just don't understand why you should be offended by people who are just using a word to describe something (negatively, yes) without even associating with their statement any sort of qualities about that word.

    I'm not really trying to defend the use of "gay" or "retarded" to mean "stupid" - I don't really think it was wise to choose those words, and there was originally probably a lot of rancor behind them - but I'm just saying that every time those words are used as an insult doesn't actually intend to insult gay/retarded people as well, and so when you look at what context the words are being used in ("That movie was so gay"), I mean, it's not like the movie somehow displayed homosexual tendencies and was therefore reprehensible. That would be a bad thing. It's just a placeholder insult that doesn't even associate the characteristics of gayness to the movie, a placeholder insult that people pick up because everyone around them is using it, and so it becomes commonplace, and begins to lose its significance (I'm not saying it's all the way there yet, either, just that that's what the process is).

    "especially minority groups with a history of abuse or marginalization" - eh, if you yourself are not being abused or marginalized, you can't really expect benefits/sympathy just because your forefathers were.

    God, I've been trying to think of a way in which I could be discriminated against but I can't. I mean, based on my beliefs, sure. I mean, nobody's going to vote an atheist-of-Indian-parentage into public office. (I'm pretty sure polls say that people are more willing to vote for a Muslim, despite [unwarranted] associations with terrorism, than an atheist.) But, I mean, that's a choice I made, more or less - well, maybe less; I can't really force myself to believe in a higher power or whatever - so I can't really fault them for that. People want people with similar beliefs as them to represent them (although I'm perfectly okay with voting for a Christian - not that I really have a choice - so I don't see why the reverse shouldn't be true.) Actually, come to think about it, I know a whole lot of people who would be totally unwilling to vote for a female for President too, which is just mind-boggling, considering that they're females too and yet they cite the whole "oh-women-are-too-emotional" crap. I mean, I clearly have no emotions. Haha, that's kind of sad but true. :( Anyway, this is getting really far off track and not voting for someone is pretty different from discriminating against them on a daily basis. Oh, I guess maybe when my dad had just immigrated here and was going to school in Alabama in the seventies people said some pretty bad stuff to him, but, I mean, that was decades ago and I wasn't alive then, so I can't say I know much about it.


    Ok, I'm not sure if the "you" you were using in that post was a generic "you" or if it was targeted at someone specifically, so I won't respond to the rest until I figure that out.
  • Shruti --

    I wasn't directing my post to you in particular, I was countering the argument that "other people shouldn't be bothered by something I say if my intentions are good."

    We're all in danger of unwittingly offending somebody else by putting down something we don't like or think well of, only to discover that, omigod, this girl standing next to me is the person who TOOK that disgusting photograph, or omigod, that old man I just dissed is actually Jason's grandfather or, omigod, I didn't realize that YOU were one of those clueless English majors, etc. etc.

    I just think that piling onto persecuted or recently persecuted groups is a bad thing, even if -- as you say -- that wasn't the point of the term.

    I guess I'm feeling easily nettled by America's current "lite" versions of discrimination -- all the hysteria about *illegal immigrants* and the same-sex marriage boogeyman and so on. Big crowds of gullible people are being manipulated into handing power over to cynical manipulators just because those manipulators are pushing the hate buttons. Something makes me react to even mild forms of group-based putdown.
  • Fair enough. Haha, I'm exhausted of talking so much. You have valid points. :)
  • I have nothing to say except to point out that this thread has digressed all the way from "'scuse me while I kiss this guy" to homosexuality.
  • Bry blends tact with irony in the nicest of ways. :)
  • Hehehehe. I never really understood the original purpose of this thread but I do know how we got here at least.
  • Surely it should be enough that there are a fair number of people it offends, regardless of intent, to stop using terms like "that is gay" or "don't be retarded"?

    As a gay man, I have always been very laid back about people saying things that they clearly don't mean, and am happy to joke about on the subject. For example, I'm currently working for a client called Benders (which is slang for gay in the UK, although the company predates that slang), and something was being annoying, so I said 'It was a pain in the arse' and to be honest, I wouldn’t have cared if one of my work friends had said it, as we get on well. If someone I had never met before had said it, I would have wondered about their intent, but not been bothered. Jokes like that would offend people, but I don't see any harm in it, if the person saying it was not meaning to be nasty.

    The problem with 'that is gay' and the like, it that there is nastiness in that statement, even if it was not meant by the user of the sentence. That has always bothered me, and probably always will.
  • "Surely it should be enough that there are a fair number of people it offends, regardless of intent, to stop using terms like "that is gay" or "don't be retarded"?"

    Isn't the point of using an insult like that to slightly offend? Otherwise, why use it?
  • edited November 2007
    i generally don't mind when people will occasionally use 'that's gay' as a generic insult, but it does remind me every time of the insidious and pervasive nature of homophobia in this country. just because i don't get halfbricks flung at me for putting my arm around my boyfriend on the subway doesn't mean i don't get degraded by people who either hate me for no very good reason, or who have decided that they're very tolerant and openminded and are willing to accept my inexplicable fondness for cher and interior decoration, despite the fact that i am not actually particularly fond of cher or interior decoration. i'll ignore the occasional use, but regular use even by someone who doesn't mean any harm grates on my nerves for this reason.

    also, even despite one's intentions, better believe it deeply wounds people who're still in the closet every time it's used.

    it's unfortunate that the impersonal 3rd person pronoun has become anachronistic. it is very useful for situations just such as this.
  • edited November 2007
    [EDIT: gratuitous rant stifled]

    I'm sorry to be curmudgeonly, but the "What's the big deal?" attitude strikes a nerve with me. I'll just go rub some liniment on my joints, take some Geritol and get back to my rocking chair now. ;-)
  • And anyway, Colleen -- who can stay curmudgeonly on JoCose Day?
  • LOL... I really liked your rant, Colleen. I was lucky enough to read it.
  • Me too Colleen. I read it last night and liked it too.
  • Thanks, but after reflecting on it, I felt it was unproductive and a bit ad-hominem-y. And Bry likes to keep things positive here on the fora. Especially on December 1st, I'm sure. :-) Happy JoCo Day.
  • Back to what this thread was originally about. I just realized that my 5 year old has been thinking that Code Monkey was "Cold Monkey".
  • Aw... poor thing. You'd think it'd like hot coffee and toast -- something to warm up those chilly paws.
  • Well, the cold monkey does get up and get coffee. And the cold monkey wants to take a bath and a nap. Makes sense. :-)
  • Shruti: "But I don't see why the venom of a handful of bigots has to somehow taint the speech of everyone else"

    To bring it back to the "gay" thing, all I have to say is that the word gay used like that would have never entered our speech as an insult if people hadn't originally started using it to mean "homosexual" in a bad way. Basically, it was the bigots that STARTED using it like that, and then EVERYONE started using it like that. It's not like the word gay was an insult first and then it was associated with homosexuals and homosexuality being bad. So they didn't taint the speech of everyone else... everyone else started using their venomous speech.

    And didn't this thread start out about mondegreens? :-)
  • Speaking of mondegreens, I just started a thread asking for clarification on First of May because several people insist on posting in my YouTube upload of Spiff's video for FoM that the lyrics say "bring your favorite lady or at least your favorite thing". Posing the url for the official lyrics hasn't seemed to help convince people they're singing the wrong lyrics.
  • Oh, and as for cussing ... check out Penn & Teller's episode of "Humbug"

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8batfkb5HrU - part 1
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uC9KH7ow63Y - part 2
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vd49BPck7jk - part 3
  • "And didn't this thread start out about mondegreens? :-)"

    It has gone back to being about mondegreens as well. :-P

    But you make a good point about "gay".
  • Sorry to bump this thread, but I just had to mention. I didn't realize until just now as I was formatting Yngve's "Bozo's Lament" tabs that I'd been mishearing the song this whole time.

    I thought the chorus went, "Behind my face (behind my face) / Five days a workweek, it's in my face," which makes no sense (I guess I figured it was another "Tears of a Clown" type song, about the man behind the makeup and everything). The lyrics, of course, are "PIE IN my face, five days a workweek, it's in my face."

    I know, as mondegreens go it's not so funny, but the enjoyment I derive from this song just trebled and trebled again. So let me share this moment with you while you all laugh at my brainlessness.
  • I always thought he was saying "Hide my face". :-P
  • 3 cameras, 7 diapers...
  • Sounds like my family vacations except that it's light on diapers.
Sign In or Register to comment.