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all these people who say gay was never a slur are too young to remember those psas that told you to say stupid instead of gay

what

idk if this is a “i dont believe you” what or a “you mean there are people who havent seen these??” what but allow me to enlighten you

i havent watched this commercial in 10 years (which was also when it was posted) but yes i remember this playing on TV when i was younger

heres an article from 2009

heres an interview from 2009

in fact, these were so culturally relevant that i distinctly remember watching a dane cook special where he had a bit about it (i think he also mentions rape so tw for that) 

i grew up hearing gay be thrown left and right as a derogatory term, and its a small part of why i dont identify with the word.

if youre going to say that queer is a slur, then you have to mention that gay is used as one as well. otherwise, youre just spewing t///er/////f propaganda and im not about that bullshit   

hey, thanks for providing sources! i genuinely did not know these existed because i never saw these PSA’s

no problem! i dont think they were on air for a long time, so im sure there are a lot of people who dont know about ‘em! 

There was a PSA made as recently as 2 or 3 years ago in New Zealand to stop using gay as a derogatory term

hey, i’m 31 and actually lived through the period where gay was used as a derogatory slur. It was the major formation of my highschool and middle school years. Kids constantly would call each other, ideas, concepts, things “Gay” when they meant “stupid”. I literally had to retrain my brain for 5 years to not use it and I am part of the lgbtqia community. I was just too young to know better. 

This absolutely happened and is a major reason why we gotta be not only aware of our words but also understanding that people change. 

I’m 35 and queer and I lived through that era, too. “Lesbian” was a term for any girl that was disliked, spoken in various intonations of disgust. Kind of used the same way incels spit the word “feminist,” now that I think about it.

But there’s more to it that some people aren’t getting, either.

“Gay” and “Lesbian” were used as weapons; even if someone wasn’t queer, if they were hated enough, the rumors spread. “Don’t hang out with her, she’s a lesbian.” “Hey, should (name) be allowed to change in the locker room? You know they’re gay, don’t you?” And so on. Depending on where you were, especially if you were trying to have a career (like a teacher) being labeled “gay” enough times to be believed cost someone their career, because of “concerns,” especially if the job involved particularly young kids. And that’s just the people who got lucky enough to only lose a job.

Anything used to label us is coated in blood. Even the “good words” came from a bad past.

I lived through this shit as well, when I was being viciously bullied in middle school they used to call me a lesbian all the time, as a way so to indicate how awful gross and terrible I was. You’ll still run into people my age using gay as a synonym for stupid and bad.

So, I had the enormous privilege of actually listening to the private recording of a girl who bullied me in high school, as in a recording she made of herself saying things she assumed no one but herself and her friends would hear*. And in this video, she goes into how terrible me and my friends are, how ugly we are, blah blah blah. 

And she specifies various things (my one friend with dyed hair looks like a troll doll, a different friend has bad teeth), but at the end of the video, she says, “Anyway, they’re all lesbians.” And it’s not that she hates us because we’re lesbians – it’s an afterthought, like she just tacks it on at the end there – it’s just a catchall term. It’s not specific, like our appearances, it’s generic. Everyone would understand what she meant, and it wasn’t “they all date women, therefore I don’t like them,” it was, “I don’t like them, therefore they date women.”

This is why I’m never going to be on board with the “queer is a slur” thing (outside of it just being TERF rhetoric). Because I’ve actually literally had “gay” and “lesbian” used against me, personally, as a slur, but I’d never demand that people tag those terms or stop using them to describe themselves or their communities.

*how I got this recording is a long story, but I rewatched it multiple times and it is indelibly in my memory, even though it’s been ten years.