When people say "faggot"

[LeicsDom]

To me, it's just like the word "nigger". It carries a heavy connotation of prejudice from certain people who mean ill will

Exactly. It can only be offensive if you allow it to be.
If someone use it at you then don't take offense and it won't be offensive.

Back in my dim and distant youth I worked in a very straight environment and a few of my workmates would make derogatory comments around me. I would defuse the situation completely by turning the 'insult' on them. For instance, one guy asked for a blow job, implying that as I was gay it would embarress me. I asked, in a loud voice, whether he was checking if the rumours were true that guys sucked better than girls. Not that he would know how a girl sucked!

 

[Lipper]

No, it doesn't bother me. I rise above it and consider it their problem, not mine.

 

[luckynumbah7]

Exactly. It can only be offensive if you allow it to be.
If someone use it at you then don't take offense and it won't be offensive.

That's not how language itself works. You can change the way you react to some things if you work really hard and you don't have a deep rooted disgust about it, but none of that changes a words' history or meaning overnight; therefore, the word is offensive, at least in the usa.

Since language is used for communication deciding what is offensive in it all by your lonesome and insisting others take your definition, turn off/modify their emotions to words with recent and current nasty history is neither practical nor applicable. Words are meant to be heard or read, so when you use words where someone besides yourself is takin' them in, that would be insisting. It's one of the reasons politeness was invented and every culture has a version of that concept in speech.

 

[dereperez]

This reminded me of a conversation I had with a friend just yesterday. I'm kinda torn halfway in between just letting people who say it "casually" say it and saying anything about it, only because to me it's almost more uncomfortable when someone who otherwise drops the word casually all the time abruptly stops themselves, looks at you and says "oh no offense", or changes the word midstream because you are present.

It is a bit frightening and disconcerting when one hears little kids drop the "fag" bomb, but I guess I should get used to such things. One of my younger cousin's friends (he's maybe 10?) probably used that word at least 10 times today when they were playing video games. "Come on, don't be a fag"...."haha, faggot!"..."Fuckin' faggot...". I felt like I wanted to smack the little guy around a bit but is it really his fault that his "generation" is basically like that?

 

[DonQuixote]

I don't hear it much at all, if ever, around me.

 

[Draven]

The word has always held malice and enmity behind it. I've never been referred to as "faggot" as a term of endearment by my mom, grandmother, or any of my friends or teachers. Fag and faggot has always been used as a slur to belittle and out the queer juvenile in grade school. When one straight guy referred to or called another guy a fag it wasn't because he was his buddy and wanted to go bowling with him later, it was to let him and everyone else know that he was "gay" and therefore less of a person and that he would probably be getting his ass beaten after school that day.

 

[Yuki Sohma]

Ok y'all Yuki S. Says that it is a hate word

 

[mikemizanin729]

In England the word "Queer" or " Ass bandit" is used more. Whenever I hear it I just laugh.To me, it's no different to when a woman gets called a "slag" or a "whore" even when they don't sleep around I basically do this.

 

[ScottishBiTeen]

I've always hated the word, no matter what context it's used in. If it's being used to describe something stupid, why not use the appropriate words?

 

[JPGhost]

No, it doesn't bother me. I rise above it and consider it their problem, not mine.

lovin your attitude

 

[Rickrock]

I am not fond of it, but it depends a lot on the context. If two friends are calling each other faggot, I frown but shrug it off.

 

[aaggii]

I didn't take anything out of context but OK.

You quoted just a few words from my post. Of course you took out of context.

 

[Lipper]

lovin your attitude

Thanks, JP!