Old terms, New meanings

[Amber-Sue]

When I was growing up in the late 50's in a small midwest town terms like "queer" "faggot" "sissy" "homo" were used to label someone in an offensive way and to try to make fun of a person. Now these same terms are still used to label someone within this gender spectrum. I personally still get offended when I hear the terms but I am comfortable with who I am so I brush off the label and continue my life. I am proud of my confidence to go out in public and along with my wife we are enjoying life as two girls or as husband and wife.

How do you feel about the labels for others ? or the use of the terms that I was talking about?

[Alexa Lynne]

Reminds me of the song by Tim McGraw, Back When.

The term "retarded" was used a lot of when i was growing up, but to me, that's very offensive because I have a mentally handicapped 11 year old daughter, and anytime I hear that word being used, I do speak up.

[pamela7]

Ignorance is an excuse we make for those who fear difference.
I grew up in a small all-white village and local town, and coming back from holiday once I was given the nickname "nigger". I don't think they were racist, certainly many of them were unpleasant to me over the years. In the 90's I played cricket in a team where I was the only white guy (the rest were all West Indian), and when we played a white team I could not believe the level of racist comments by the black players, as if i was not in the room or also was considered to be black somehow. I didn't feel offended, just surprised.
I grew up on Irish jokes, and was surrounded by language now considered politically incorrect. It's a form of disrespect or a tribal "they are not one of us" thing that happens, and probably is worse in teenage years? Humans are tribal and need to form groups, just like we do here. "CIS" or "straight" or "vanilla" could be seen as discriminatory by us on non-TG/CD'ers.
If offense is taken or intended then the taker or the intender ought to look inside themselves. Apart from that, I think its ignorance, and solved by familiarity and education.
xxx

[Alice Torn]

Hi Pamela Sue, from Byron Illinois. Those "names" still hurt when someone fires them.

[Sarah-RT]

My gay friends find the term faggot highly disrespectful, and rightly so, it's only goal as a word is to incite hate. I strongly dislike the phrase sissy when used as a derogatory term, thankfully I've never had it said to me, and the best part of being MTF CDer is that I'm still a 6'4" 250 pound male so I'll start kicking a$$ if someone annoys me.

Pamela I'll forgive you for the Irish jokes if you forgive me for the "800 years" jokes

Sarah x

[Teresa]

Amber-Sue,
I feel comfortable with my CDing now and feel none of those names relate to how I look or feel and would be offended if someone used them !
Also in the UK you often use to hear on TV people act very camp and ask where's your handbag using a very limp wrist action ! When I'm dressed I don't change much from guy to girl in my mannerisms , when I look at like that it's not an act I'm putting on to fool others , it's more satisfying an inner need !

[sometimes_miss]

Ahhh, a rose by any other name. Whenever I hear someone using such slang as a derogitory way of putting someone else down, I like to pipe up and tell the offender something along the lines of, that in this day and educated age, pretty much everyone knows that when you use that type of language, all it's really doing is betraying your own self insecurities and ignorance; so if that's how you want to be seen by others, be aware of just how bad it makes you look. Once in a while I get a profane 'F&ck you too!' response, but often it's just silence.

[flatlander_48]

A-S:

Of the 4 words you list, faggot still has a very strongly negative connotation. The other 3 have been fairly diffused over the years, although there can still be a reaction to them.

The numbers in my username come from my birth year, so that should set the timeframe of my grade school through college years. While those terms were not unknown to my contemporaries, for whatever reason, they were terms that I just didn't use (and still don't).

DeeAnn

[Bridget Ann Gilbert]

Pamela brings up an interesting point about the terms we use for nonTG people. I had the same random thought that these could be construed as making the TG community sound like it is setting itself above others. Think about it, "vanilla" has the connotation of being plain, ordinary. Does that infer TG folks are extraordinary? Or how about the term "muggles"? To fans of J.K. Rowling's books that term is associated with " normal" folk.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying we as a community don't have something special to contribute to society. I just worry about how we come across to others when we use terms to distinguish ourselves from others. I really am coming to agree with Isha's point of view that labels are for soup cans and we should all just consider ourselves human beings. Wouldn't that set a better example?

Bridget

[NicoleScott]

Oh no, not that tired old soup can argument again. Labels are words, words have meanings, and we can't communicate without them.
If we want certain words eliminated from use, quit using them. For example, that word that black people find most offensive is sometimes used by black people, and justified because of context, such as comedy, terms of endearment, or academic, as when Obama recently used it. That word will never be eradicated with the attitude "I can use it but you can't."
Sometimes PC goes too far. Students for a new Utah school chose cougar as their mascot, but the school board disallowed it, claiming the word was offensive to middle-aged women. Recently, some people objected to the use of thug, claiming it was racial. Huh?