des tailles
like many gay men in this country, i received my copy of this month's details in the mail this week. and, while flipping through the flippant articles (is there ever an article that lasts more than 5 columns of text?), i pondered like always why i even bother with this magazine.
normally, it's just little annoyances, like the style column. every month it can be boiled down to this: "don't wear X, you'll look like a wannabe/immature frat boy." be it cuff links, untucked shirts, hoodies with jackets, you can't wear it because we're all supposed to look like brooks brothers clones.
but this month, i was surprised to read a feature article (and by article, i mean about 6 paragraphs with some lovely typesetting to take up more space) on why using gay in the pejorative is okay. i don't want to project a personality onto the author, so i can't really say what his life experiences have been with minority discrimination and the politics of language (and since the author ostensibly wrote under pseudonym, i can't even do any research). but the author acted as if it were instictive to call things tacky and socially awkward gay and to in any way attack that usage was attacking nature. he (or she) didn't even bother to really address the issue of using the name of a historically oppressed minority as an adjective for this you don't like. most of the supporting data comes from asking a few friends of things that are gay in the lame sense.
now, i could be convinced by a good argument that such usage is okay generally, and certainly within context. but it is less the gist of the argument than the manner of its delivery--it was so slap-dash and matter-of-fact that i doubt that the author even cares to discover whether it's offensive or not.
normally, it's just little annoyances, like the style column. every month it can be boiled down to this: "don't wear X, you'll look like a wannabe/immature frat boy." be it cuff links, untucked shirts, hoodies with jackets, you can't wear it because we're all supposed to look like brooks brothers clones.
but this month, i was surprised to read a feature article (and by article, i mean about 6 paragraphs with some lovely typesetting to take up more space) on why using gay in the pejorative is okay. i don't want to project a personality onto the author, so i can't really say what his life experiences have been with minority discrimination and the politics of language (and since the author ostensibly wrote under pseudonym, i can't even do any research). but the author acted as if it were instictive to call things tacky and socially awkward gay and to in any way attack that usage was attacking nature. he (or she) didn't even bother to really address the issue of using the name of a historically oppressed minority as an adjective for this you don't like. most of the supporting data comes from asking a few friends of things that are gay in the lame sense.
now, i could be convinced by a good argument that such usage is okay generally, and certainly within context. but it is less the gist of the argument than the manner of its delivery--it was so slap-dash and matter-of-fact that i doubt that the author even cares to discover whether it's offensive or not.
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