““…make a radical change in your lifestyle and begin to boldly do things which you may previously never have thought of doing, or been too hesitant to attempt. So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservation, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun. If you want to get more out of life, you must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life that will at first appear to you to be crazy. But once you become accustomed to such a life you will see its full meaning and its incredible beauty.””
I admit it: I have been one of those people who has so frequently used the phrase “That’s so gay” to describe a variety of things over the last several years, it’s hard to know how many times I’ve said it or how many people I’ve managed to offend by doing so.
I remember, even, the first time I heard someone use the phrase. It was back in 2001 and my friend Malik described a mess someone had left in the kitchen in our house this way. “That shit is so gay,” he said, and I kind of got this creeping, gross feeling in my stomach after I heard him say it. My mind got glued to this concept — was that shit “gay”? Is this really an okay and acceptable phrase? Something inside of me, my instinct told me this probably wasn’t okay.
But as people who want to fit in are likely to do, I caught myself starting to use this phrase in my own daily conversations. If I’ve used the phrase 500 times, I’ve used it once, never thinking about how my gay brothers and sisters would experience that same creeping, gross feeling or, worse, be drawn back into feelings of anxiety brought on by a lifetime of harassment and homophobia.
Now, the Ad Council has worked with some well-known actors like Hillary Duff and Wanda Sykes to create a series of print and television ads (along with this website, thinkb4youspeak.com)that they hope will convince people to discontinue using the phrase because of its homophobic overtones and its hurtful implications. The ads, which began running last week, encourage people to recognize the damages and the danger of homophobia, particularly in our schools.
Almost 90% of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) students report being verbally harassed at school because of their sexual orientation. LGBT teens experience homophobic remarks and harassment throughout the school day, creating an atmosphere where they feel disrespected, unwanted and unsafe. Homophobic remarks such as thats so gay are the most commonly heard; these slurs are often unintentional and a common part of teens vernacular. Most do not recognize the consequences, but the casual use of this language often carries over into more overt harassment.
The uses of language are something that fascinate me: the way that we educate others through our daily speech, how we culturally develop our incendiary remarks through some evolutionary process, that we hand down our catch phrases in secret codes between generations — brothers and sisters to their siblings, from popular culture to music and entertainment. As a cultural sponge, I’m as guilty as anyone. I never took the time to really think about how totally irresponsible the usage of the phrase is & now that I think about it, it’s probably as good of a time as any to kick that phrase to the curb where it belongs.
