But the truth is that for many young people who are LGBT, the use of terms like ‘gay’ with such casual incessancy can come to cause serious insecurities. As a society we accept words like this being hurled around either because we don’t want to cause a fuss, or because we don’t think it really matters. The problem was that no adult had told them to stop using it. They felt it fully acceptable and ordinary playground language. And yet they made no effort to dispel using it. The proud child may have thought they’d got one over on me, but what this really gave away was that the child knew, truthfully, what the term meant. The child replied with a gleeful twinkle that their use of the term ‘gay’ was not offensive, for it in fact means ‘happy’.
![you mum gay definition you mum gay definition](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/bZMFgfZLFFc/mqdefault.jpg)
I recall being on work placement in a Cheshire primary school during my GCSEs, and informing a child there that they were not to scream ‘gay!’ across the playground. The term in question was, of course, once an expression of merriment. Undercurrents which by their very nature do not surface in any fist-in-mouth, obtuse way, we can easily dismiss not to be problems at all. It has been well established in the past decade or so, and though laws and regulations around sexual orientation have changed a great deal in that time, small indicators like children’s language can give away considerable social undercurrents. The problem of children using the term ‘gay’ as an insult is a big problem, but not a new problem. Attitudes which do not propose to be nearly as tolerant or open-minded as we might want to think. They are regular kids illustrating, in their own murky and trifled ways, much wider held attitudes within our society. And I don’t think they are contemplating an emerging redefinition of the family to acknowledge that one’s mother could, in fact, be a homosexual. And your mum is DEFINITELY gay.īut these are not a newly enlightened generation of children eager to contemplate sexual and gender labeling in a post-liberal age. It is a word used with such propensity that it can hardly fathom definition by the end of a school day. Kids from New York to Newport will squeal with childhood innocence how ‘gay’ an error is how because another kid got something wrong or didn’t know the answer to a question, they are now thoroughly ‘gay’.
![you mum gay definition you mum gay definition](https://anotherimg-dazedgroup.netdna-ssl.com/900/azure/another-prod/410/7/417233.jpeg)
And up and down many other Western nations. This is the call heard in school playgrounds up and down the country.
![you mum gay definition you mum gay definition](https://cdn.theatlantic.com/thumbor/RXvJc_cFQGwP83CTQ4KwVbjuWSM=/1044x1059:5449x3537/1600x900/media/img/mt/2019/05/my_12yo_is_gay_final_high_resolution-3/original.jpg)
This article has been published collaboratively by LSE Equality and Diversity and LSE Engenderings blog to mark LGBT History Month. Benjamin Butterworth speaks out against the callous use of the phrase ‘That’s gay!” He argues that language reflects and forms attitudes, so should be carefully used.