by Paul Challinor
One word I cannot abide being used is “gay”. Of course I mean when the word is used to denote crap, shit or bollocks. I am gay, and I am gay because I am a man who likes men. I am not gay because I am shit. I have no idea where along the line this has become acceptable, no idea whatsoever. But it has. And it really pisses me off.
The most significant time I have faced the wrath of heteronormativity was when a very good heterosexual male friend of mine referred to a situation as “gay”. He did not mean the same-sex loving kind. Granted, I was slightly intoxicated at the time, but I basically went, for lack of a better word, ape shit. I immediately began barraging him with how offensive and stupid it was to use that word in that way. He was stunned. Of course he was one of my best friends, he should have known better. He also did not want to offend me or hurt my feelings and I knew that. But a lesson needed to be learnt. I used the aged old example of “you wouldn’t refer to something as Jewish in a negative way would you?!”. My friend was Jewish, that example seemed to hit home.
He immediately began apologising profusely and saying how sorry he was. I obviously accepted his apology and told him that I just wanted him to understand how offensive it can be to use gay in that context. Everything was fine. But then another dickhead piped up and everything turned quite sour. Another heterosexual male (surprise, surprise) who I was not as close to turned round and said “I don’t understand why you’re so bothered, he wasn’t being homophobic”. Quickly the tides turned. Bear in mind I was at my friend’s for drinks and I was the only homosexual there. Suddenly everyone began to look at me awkwardly. I quickly told him that referring to something as gay is fundamentally homophobic. He didn’t understand why. And then everyone else began to not understand why.
It was normal for them to say “gay” and none of them were homophobic or saw themselves as homophobic or agreed with homophobia at all. So how could it be homophobic? I immediately looked like I was being over-sensitive. That was made pretty obvious. They understood where I was coming from, but they didn’t necessarily agree. I began to look around the room, waiting for someone to defend me and explain how it was, of course, homophobic. No one did. At that moment I became different. I felt like I had transformed from Paul to “Paul, the homosexual”. It was the first time I had ever felt different to my friends. I knew they could never understand why I took it so personally, because how could it be personal to them? They didn’t have the word shouted at them in school, intending to be offensive. They had made the word okay to use and they weren’t going to understand why I had made such a fuss/defended myself.
Don’t let them make it okay. The language we use is reflective of the culture we live in. If we allow for homophobic language to become normative then we allow homophobia to become normative. And then heteronormativity won’t be our biggest problem.