Sunday, September 9, 2007
Observation Journal #1
I heard the word "fag" thrown around quite a bit today just in talking around school. I hear it and do not really think much of it. I just ignore it because i have been so used to hearing it all the time. In this case it was used to describe a person that someone disliked. When i hear the word it is rarely used to put down someone who is homosexual, but rather just to describe something negative. I actually thought about it today and decided that at this point, words like that have lost a lot of their meaning. This is just like how people used the "n" word. The original purpose of the word is no longer what it means today. I think this is interesting and i'm not really sure why this is. It may have something to do with how popularly it is used and fit into everyday life. I feel like this plays a role in sustaining inequality and opression. I have been guilty of using words like this, but i now feel like i will think before saying these things.
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1 comment:
Hey Kevin, It does seem like a lot of words are slowly losing the original purpose and hurtfulness. Even take ‘dumb’ for example, which once meant muteness, or a speech problem. It is now being in a state of stupidity, which definition has also derived from it’s original purpose of the word. As for homosexual slander, ‘fag’ is also cigarettes in England, or as we all learned when we were 8 a bundle of sticks, now, a nasty slang no one wants to be called.
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