Why does gay mean ‘rubbish’?, asks Rob Lyons

Apparently the term ‘gay’ is now in common usage among young people to mean ‘lame’ or ‘rubbish’. This has caused some controversy, especially among gay rights groups who don’t like the idea that being called ‘gay’ is now seen as something negative. Last year Radio 1 presenter Chris Moyles was the subject of an internal BBC inquiry after he described a ringtone on air as ‘gay’. Leaving aside the question of why there has to be an inquiry every time a broadcaster says something un-PC, it is reasonable to ask: where could young people have got the idea that ‘gay = rubbish’?

How about from another term, very closely associated with gay culture: ‘camp’. ‘Camp’, as Stephen Bayley argued in his scratch-their-eyes-out book on New Labour, Labour Camp, is just a synonym for rubbish. Or, as Susan Sontag observed in Notes on Camp, first published in 1964, ‘The ultimate Camp statement [is] it’s good because it’s awful...’ Sontag noted that Camp culture tends to emphasise ‘texture, sensuous surface, and style at the expense of content’; and that ‘homosexuals, by and large, constitute the vanguard - and the most articulate audience - of Camp’.

It doesn’t take a huge leap of the imagination to re-work ‘camp’ as ‘gay’, especially when so many gay celebrities tend to wallow in kitsch. If you, like many people both straight and gay, think Graham Norton and Will and Grace and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy (now there’s a show that emphasises ‘style at the expense of content’) are pretty dreadful, then surely no one could blame you for associating ‘gay’, at least in its cultural sense, with ‘rubbish’.

This isn't new, everybody I know has been using the word gay to mean lame since I was in junior high school, which was a long time ago.

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Jason Priest
1999 E430
1995 E420 - retired
1986 420SEL - retired

Don't these people have anything better to do?

Somebody give them a gameboy or whatever the latest contraption is - that will keep them infront of the TV, playing games, and more importantly, keeping them from uttering anything.

Yes, I do realize that me posting this is an additional minute of my (and yours, now) life that I won't get back. - Sorry

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It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so. Robert A. Heinlein


09 Jetta TDI
1985 300D

Yup. I'm not gunna lie. My school uses it and has used it since I can remember. No one takes any offense to it.

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1981 300 SD 213k miles "Stock for now"
1999 Super Duty 7.3L 113k miles
1981 300 SD 180k miles "Heavily modified" SOLD

I don't suppose that it really matters anyway. You can't control the way people talk.

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"There are a lot of pebbles on the beach, but there's a Little Rock in Arkansas."

Logan

1983 300D Turbodiesel
1976 300D Rustdiesel

Rubbish? Psh, thats gay.

Yeah I'm surprised someone actualy took the time to write that. Gay means that something is dumb, stupid, or lame.

Thats how my friends and I talk when we are tipping back a few beers.

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1999 SL500
1969 280SE
2023 Ram 1500
2007 Tiara 3200

The people who take the time to actualy care about this stuff enough to get "offended" should go to this site:
http://www.youfail.org/

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1999 SL500
1969 280SE
2023 Ram 1500
2007 Tiara 3200

What was once old is new again. I remember hearing the phrase back in the early '80s during high school.

This pc garbage is crazy, what's next, dairy farmers becoming offended by the use of the word cheesy?

Richard Simmons claims he is not gay. He "doesn't act like a typical man."

ok 'Lance'.

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TXBill



Former owner of a few diesel MB cars
1998 Lexus ES 300 In Chicago We Trust

I want to laugh at this and feel like I should, but fill me in man--I don't get it

The double "This is Gay "post was put up by Forced Induction.
"Forced Induction's" signature is "Lance"
So, I guess D4me was pointing this out to us. "Lance" being slang for ....

Looks like this thread is headed for a swordfight.

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-Marty

1986 300E 220,000 miles+ transmission impossible
(Now waiting under a bridge in order to become one)

Reading your M103 duty cycle:
http://www.peachparts.com/shopforum/831799-post13.html
http://www.peachparts.com/shopforum/831807-post14.html