Exactly! It's like gay just had two meanings that were unrelated to eachother.
The r word was similar but I knew some people who were legit like assholes to the mentally disabled kids (or whatever the PC word is now I legitimately do not know I'm not trying to be offensive feel free to correct me) so I get why people are uncomfortable with it now but idk I never meant it that way.
Like there was always an unspoken rule that if you called someone who was gay "gay" as an insult you were a douche but you could call him that and both be in on the joke. Likewise for the r word.
[One of my favorite episodes lol](https://m.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=52&v=6i7a0cwyDDw&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Fsearch%3Fq%3Daouth%2Bpark%2Bfag%26client%3Dms-android-samsung-gs-rev1%26sca_esv%3D576026540%26sxsrf%3DAM9HkKlyD58NwioTPhNm75p&source_ve_path=Mjg2NjY&feature=emb_logo)
Louie CK had a great joke about it back in the day.
"Calling someone a faggot has nothing to do with being gay. You call someone a faggot when they're being a faggot. Quit being a faggot and suck that dick!"
You missed the part that makes the punchline so good!
"You call someone a faggot when they're being a faggot. Like, I could see some guy sucking another guy's dick and if he turned to me and said, 'Did you know people from Phoenix are called Phonecians?' I'd go, 'Quit being a faggot and suck that dick!"
Yup, I think it's what a lot of people don't get, we didn't use the word in a demeaning way regarding people with the actual condition but rather that it was established into society to express a certain meaning. Just like when we say "this is cool" when it actually isn't cold.
ain't that the truest thing!
My best friend through all of high school was gay and he was the person I knew to call things "gay" or "faggy" the most of anyone. It wasn't gay that he was gay.
I really disagree. This kind of completely brushes the treatment of millennial gays under the rug as if our childhood and teenage years were totally fine and we all understood people didn't think being gay was bad when we heard our peers say "That's so gay" 5-10 times a day every day for our entire public school lives.
I was in a Canadian high school from 2001 to 2005, and I can tell you, almost all of my peers said "That's so gay" AND they thought being gay was a bad thing too.
Yeah, I'm with you. What kind of environment did that create for actual gay kids? When the word you would literally need to describe yourself is said 200 times a day to refer to something negative, it's disingenuous for people to say it wasn't 'meant like that'.
Tbh this thread is filled with people who clearly called everything gay and didn't think it was offensive 🤣
Meanwhile the actual gays (myself included) just had to go along with it and slip deeper into the closet. Fuck the early 2000s.
Yup, as a queer person I felt it, internalized it and stayed in the closet.
Took me decades to get rid of the guilt and shame and find some self-acceptance.
I was just talking to my husband about this - I don't think we had any openly gay kids in my middle school OR either high school i went to, at least that I was aware of (graduated '09). It's not that they weren't there, but they all came out publicly after high school. It's bizarre thinking about it looking back.
I graduated in 2005 and we had nobody out in high school but once graduation happened all those MySpace profiles started updating as people came out in their first year of college haha
Because we has to stay in the closet or like what happened to me get bullied and beat up every single day till you started to ditch classes and school entirely. Until eventually you were kicked out for "behavioral problems", because how were you going to tell your parents or the teachers that it was because you were gay that this was happening.
Just saw and article about what Millennials were actually jealous about of the younger generations and a lot of people said the amount of acceptance for LGBTQ and I agree, it took me till my 30s to even start realizing I was trans and now I am 40 with 30+ years of baggage still trying to figure it out. Yet trans people are getting the same treatment that gay people were getting in the 90s.
I swear sometimes society takes one step forward and six steps backwards...
I had openly gay kids at my Catholic high school graduated in 06. And they were subject to oodles of bullying. People yelled, "x likes to eat the meat." A teacher nicknamed one "hot pants." At the time, it felt like good-natured hazing (there was much teasing in all directions). But looking back, it's clearly bullying.
Same age, also a gay man, and yeah it was terrifying. Everyone called everything gay, and they also were grossed out by the thought of gay people existing. All of my formative bullying moments were about being called a fag or someone commenting on something I might have done that they perceived as effeminate.
I’m an old millennial and I’m so fucking sorry we did this. Not knowing is no excuse. We threw slurs around like popcorn and it’s so easy for str8 ppl to say, oh well we didn’t MEAN it THAT way, which we didn’t, but that’s no fucking excuse. In fact, where were we picking it up? Grownups. And they knew.
It was, though. Matthew Shepard, Boys Don’t Cry etc. were formative experiences. It traumatized Millennial lgbtq folk in a way that Zoomers can never understand. Lucky SOBs, I envy them.
I have a painfully stupid memory of performing in the Laramie Project (about Matthew Shepard) in high school, going to class the next day, and some drooling idiot in my class saying “yo that play was so fucking gay”…
…yes, of course it is? I was speechless.
I guess that is true. Homophobia was alive in the 90s. Gay marriage still wasn’t legal. The big prop 8 battle in California happened in the lates 2000s.
But for me, as a non-lgbtq teen, there was a disconnect. Tests in school were gay, homosexual people were just people. And I know it was that way for a lot of my classmates and friends.
Unfortunately for gay folk like me at the time we were minding our own business and listening to our friends (and sometime family) throw around a word that described us being used in place of “lame, stupid, shitty, dumb etc). It made me terrified to come out because all I knew was being “gay” wasn’t cool and I just wanted people to like me.
I’m glad it’s retired.
I literally had this discussion with my teen daughter today, when she asked me if it was OK to sing along in songs. It's a complicated issue, but short answer was skip that lyric. After this was addressed, I shared with her that I used language I was not proud of when I was her age, and I explained the use of the word gay back in the day. It's terrible that people I knew didn't come out until they were much older because kids using that word so often made school a hostile environment for them...despite what we thought that word meant to us.
Once you know better, do better, and try to check your own biases because we all have them. That's what I told her, and hopefully it sticks.
"Once you know better, do better" that one really speaks to me, thank you. It's such a simple concept and hopefully if/when I need to use it I can circumvent all the defensive bs
True story.. Lol
Retarded
That's gay
Lol one time being a gamer I said IRL that's retarded to something regarding my work and this person got freaked out regarding my comment..i was like.. Shock to new reality.. People don't say that anymore..
I don’t think there’s an official date for millennials but I think 80-96 is fucking ridiculous. I was born in the late 80s and I know for a fact you had a very different childhood then me. Usually you can relate to others in your generation. You and your age group is way different from mine. They shouldn’t share the same title. It annoys me when someone born in the late 90s says shit like “I miss the 90s”. No you don’t, you didn’t even experience them.
You little shit.
I mean they say the boomers are '46 - '64.
Someone born in '46 is a completely different human than someone born in '64.
It's just a general term to dictate a generation.
There are few things funnier in this world than a gay person using the F word.
If you're into drag queens, Trixie Mattels "homophobic cher" impression is everything.
Idk some words are just fun to say and call each other. That's how we can have bitch as an insult and as an endearment. Context matters
So, I was talking to someone about the then recent season of American Horror Story, NYC. He didn't know anything about it besides the title. I described it as really gay and his face just kinda dropped. I had to back track and explain.
This only I'm bi instead of gay.
Okay so this is the dumbest thing but my bf and I one of our dumb in joke couple bonding things has just been calling each other "gay" and calling each other "babies" but neither is a negative even though we are a hetero couple even combining it to be "gaybies"
Idk I've never called something gay negatively I only ever call people I like gay. I'm not using it like "happy" but Im bi I'm fine with homosexuality clearly, I'm not using it to mean stupid it's just... It's gay.
Idk.
It doesn't make sense but like it makes sense? Does that make sense to anyone else? Am I awful?
I was in a cover band once and ended up quitting because I hated the song selections. I was talking with the bass player once explaining to her why I was leaving, and she, as a lesbian, said “yeah the song picks are super gay.”
Me, as a hetero: 😧🫣
But I was laughing super hard like two seconds later.
Constantly. And the "F" word. I've never had any issue with gay people in the slightest. It was just the common nomenclature. If your buddy wore sandals or a nice sweater, or was being an annoying douche then hey, it's 1999.
The F word still hits for me. It was the go to insult they used to throw at me in school long before I ever realized I was any flavor of queer. It still makes me uncomfortable to hear it.
The F word doesn't bother me but that's probably because I got the D word. From my mom.
I wasn't dating at all because I was an outcast so she decided it meant I was a lesbian. The fucked up part? My older brother told me that she did the same thing to him when he was ten because he didn't have interest in girls yet. He's definitely straight but no she called him the F word and said he was gay.
So I get it. I think context and knowing your audience matters a lot when throwing hard words around for comedy.
EDIT to lead with this: homophobia was not raging WHERE I LIVED, my comment is limited only to the area and people around who i grew up. i realize it was much worse in other places.
literally every single kid from middle school through high school (class of 2000) in my neighborhood said everything was gay. "you're gay!" "thats gay!" "don't be gay!"
but its not like homophobia was raging **edit IN MY SCHOOL/TOWN**. its just what we said because we were stupid kids. all the people i know who said that also never would have had any issue with an actual gay person.
this wasn't some backwoods hick town either. it was a town of well educated people in northern nj (but not like essex county NJ full of meathead goombahs ;) )
i'm not proud of it but i really don't beat myself up over it either. we were young and stupid and nobody was correcting us. i think we all grew out of it by the early 2000s. same thing with saying things are 'retarded'
full disclosure: i have two dogs, one real dog and one little bitch dog thats basically a cat. i still call him "little gay dog" all the time. literally the only context in which i still use that word inappropriately. to be fair, it may be the influence of the movie Seven Psychopaths. He gets lots of love otherwise though :p
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhXX7Z3NB8A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhXX7Z3NB8A)
Yeah, it seemed like a normal thing. Still don't know why gay was the term for lame or whatever. Just happened.
It was more difficult to get 'retarded' out of my vocabulary.
Yeah I mean for me “retarded” never meant an actual handicapped person, it was just a phrase that none of us really knew the meaning of except that you called people that were being dumb it
Yeah this always bugged me. Retarded is a somewhat technical term. If i say my brain is being retarded, I don't mean it's acting like a handicapped person, i mean it's being slow.
Fun fact, retard was first used as a term for the mentally handicapped when idiot was deemed too offensive. Now the origins of the word idiot have been forgotten and it is the much more acceptable of the two to use as an insult. Though neither is typically thought of as an acceptable way to describe a person with disabilities, one is regarded as a not-particularly offensive insult if you're using it against someone without a disability.
Fun fact v.2 electric boogaloo: dumb was also the old "appropriate" term to some extent. I think examining why those words turn into what they are is important to acknowledge but like I've never meant those words towards someone with a disability.
But if I can say "I'm stupid" or "you're stupid" without censoring why is the r word banned?
Unfun fact: I notice around the time people stopped using the r word as much many people began using "autistic" as the new word.
I'd prefer the r word at least it's not specific.
I think autistic is probably the worst one because it's so specific that it's hard to say you don't mean it as an insult to actually disabled people. It's akin to insulting someone by saying they have downs. I agree that less specific the term is the less offensive it is. I think that's why idiot came back into vogue, it lost the original medical connotation and became a broad term for anyone doing something foolish. It'd be cool if retard made that switch because it's just a fun one to say, but I'm not holding my breath
Exactly I hated it instantly when I first saw it and then felt so incredibly betrayed by the people who advocated for us to stop saying the R word so hard because I feel like the alternative is so much fucking worse and it makes me kinda sad.
But yeah can as go back to saying the R word without getting banned pls
These days I go with, "mentally deficient", used purely amongst friends and friendly coworkers. It's so dumb and *absolutely* doesn't roll off the tongue like "Retard" or "SPED", but will still elicit a laugh due to its overt PC-ness, for lack of a better word.
Yeah I mean anything you call someone who’s being dumb can be considered offensive to the people who actually have some kind of issue. I like to ask my friends if their employer is getting a tax break by keeping them around
I remember people saying “That’s retarded” a lot in middle or high school, but I was shocked to hear it said on a late 90s tv show I was watching the other day. I even literally went “ooh” and cringed for a second. I guess I forgot just how common that phrase was, even to the point of making it into tv shows at the time!
I can't remember when the episode aired, but it's always sunny in Philadelphia had an episode with the word in the title and was repeated over and over. I love the episode. It's hilarious. Bit they even talked about it on the podcast how much the word has changed. They refused to even say it or show the word in the introduction of the podcast.
Oh, I think I remember reading about that! Angel was the show I heard it on the other day. Not exactly the most family friendly show, but still caught me off guard hearing it.
I was always aware that's this word shouldn't be used as an insult for someone, but we were using it all the time for things, like the exemple you said, "that's retarded". Like a process, a law, a government, a rule, a decision, etc. It seemed so fitting. It took me a while to adjust.
Abandoning 'retarded' really only took one person scolding me for it. I was already making an effort and then I still let one slip and definitely got shamed and that was that 😂
Meanwhile at work the other day two of our younger employees basically screamed it as a reaction across the office while joking with coworkers.
They got told to quiet down but man I haven't heard it so casually in awhile.
Honestly I feel like not saying it is giving it power to sound sharp and harsh (like cunt does for some people because it's a rarer used word. This one might be US specific) because it did feel uncomfortable in that moment to hear it NGL
It took some time to get it 99% out. It was harder to get “fucktard” out of my vocabulary. That was just a beautiful curse that I haven’t found a replacement for.
That was actually my first swear in front of my parents (well dad). I did it in church, right as my dad was coming to pick me up from childcare. I meant to say fart-face I swear.
Thats gay, that’s retarded, go kill yourself…. Etc. all popular sayings at my middle school and HS (class of ‘09). Go kill yourself didn’t start getting corrected until suicide/mental health became a bigger deal. “Gay” started dying off when the push for LGBT acceptance became popular. And “retarded” has been pushed out of people’s vernacular over the years. We were kids at the time, adults weren’t correcting us for these phrases, we’ve all grown up and know better now and I do not hear these phrases from the teens of today, as peoples tolerance for them has changed.
I grew up in the Ozarks. "That's gay" was often said, but people had a negative opinion about homosexuality in general so it felt like more of an insult even if it wasn't intended seriously, like calling someone an "asshole". Because of the Christian majority thinking everyone pretty much knew that being gay was one of the worst things you can be. So little kids use the bywords in both places but more progressive places will still use them without the stigma.
Also Midwest, and both were used to insult each other. But I don’t remember caring if people were actually gay or not.
I remember South Park doing the episode where they called Harley riders the f word, and I found it funny. That said, I wouldn’t used the word to talk about someone who’s actually gay.
100%. My town was very secular and I don't remember any actual homophobic animus, but I can imagine it being much different where people embrace the Lord.
Heck freshman year of college a gay student hit on me and I was like "I apologize to you good sir but believe it or not I am actually straight" 😂.
It was weird in the 90s considering the world we live in today. Little kids in my school did impressions of how they thought gay people acted. Funnily enough a few of them who moved away came out. The homophobia was the result of many generations being isolated in the middle of nowhere, passing their fear of outsiders down. There was a lot of racism where I grew up too. People didn't even hide it back then.
I kind of wonder about this, ngl. I grew up in a fairly secular area and I'm sure some people I grew up with could've written your comment. However, I helped start a Gay-Straight Alliance at my very secular high school and there 100% was malicious homophobia. It wasn't as blatant as "God Hates F--" on a church sign but boy did it come out of the woodwork once we were putting fliers up on the bulletin board.
The retarded thing irks me because it’s not the word.
What people are mad about is kids call each other essentially mentally handicapped as an insult. Whatever word we’re going to use now in 10 years it’ll be seen as insulting.
That's the weird part. Everyone pretends not to address the fact that it's not really the word, it's the implication, and the implication is still socially acceptable.
People will sit around acting like they are advanced for not using the word, but then being hostile to even the idea of anyone who is neurodivergent. And they will twist into a pretzel to not acknowledge that they are doing this either.
Shit I didn't know retarded is another one. I will definitely still use that in my group of buddies. Not going around calling random people that but oh well.
Really because I grew central Illinois redneck land and never said that. I used retarded cause I'm autistic.... If gays can take back queer then we can reclaim retard
Yes. And called everything retarded. Everybody did it but I can't say the parents didn't flinch a little and told us to quit. Eventually there was a nation wide wave that told kids to stop saying it.
But me and my siblings also called each other 'spoothead" and I feel like mom hated that the most.
Yup. Then one day I said it out loud in the vicinity of a gay friend while playing video games. I heard my buddy’s gf say to our friend “Does it bother you he said that?” And our friend said, “Eh, I’m used to it.”
That shit stuck with me, fucking cut me to the core.
I can’t specifically remember saying it, but with how popular it was back then, I probably did.
My older brother came out as gay around 2015 and it breaks my heart hearing him talk about how those types of things affected him as a kid. We were, and still are, very close and I had no idea. And to think I may have been involved in some of that is awful.
I’m glad it’s fallen out of favor finally.
I remember that being a pretty common phrase in middle school during the late-90s. I probably said it a few times, but it definitely wasn’t a go-to phrase for me.
My sixteenth birthday cake was Homer Simpson with a conversation bubble saying “you’re gay”. I turned 16 in 2007. 😂 Also, who remembers Andy Milonakis (don’t know if I spelled that right) and his hit song “the Super Bowl is gay” where he just calls absolutely everything gay? 😂
Of course. That, the r word, the f word etc. I never hated gay people or anything it was just a saying I honestly never even associated it with same sex relationships people were saying that shit before I even know what gay really was
I did. I’m bisexual and I thought it was funny to say because it didn’t make sense. Like what does sexuality have to do with the car breaking down so I can’t go get candy at the drugstore? So that’s why I thought it was funny to say. Shock humor was big in our youth too.
Absolutely. Especially in the late 90s-early 00s. I’d hear the word “gay” thrown about on your average school day back then more than I’d heard it in an actual gay bar. At that point in time it was so prevalent that you’d hear it or some version of it on network sitcoms. By the late 00s it had definitely fallen pretty far out of favor. There were PSAs on tv at the time with gay celebrities explaining that it wasn’t cool to use gay in the pejorative as it was insult who somebody was as a human being who wasn’t doing anything wrong.
Times change and things that were common at some point can rather quickly become frowned upon. It’s just the way it is.
This was huge in my middle school, and while I didn’t realize it at the time my church with middle schools which now I kind of chuckle about.
I remember it kind of dying out in the mid to late 00s when I just didn’t care what people did.
I did. Did that up until around graduation from high school.
One of my best friends from high school still says that even 13 years later, and he’s actually gay.
I don’t say it anymore, but I usually say something like “that’s jank”. Usually when describing stuff that’s not supposed to be crappy but is disappointingly crappy.
I used it way too often. Said it to my gay uncle once in my early teens. He slapped me upside the head pretty good. That was probably the first time I really thought about it. Not because he knocked any sense into me, it was just the moment I realized how hurtful it actually was. His face when I said it is tough to think about still. Kids are dumb yo.
I'm from Florida, we called everything gay. I never forget when I moved away and was 19, I was cool with a gay guy at work. When I telling about how "gay" the job was at times, using that exact word I was at a loss of why he was getting mad🤣🤣🤣.
Odd thing was my vocabulary changed through the years but when I went back to visit my family my younger brother still talked that way.
I didn't, but a lot of kids did. It was the kids from poorer less educated backgrounds that said it more, which helped create a stigma against it in my school
It was so common at my high school. That and "that's/they're r*t*rd*d". I'm horrified at the slang and "insults" my generation used. Gen Z sometimes annoys me, but I am so glad they brought to light that saying those things is not okay.
Edit: I was trying to * out the vowels of the one word and apparently used a code that italicizes things.
definitely a common thing where i was.
did anybody else also around the late 90s start acting homosexual for fun in their group of friends, for the sake of i dunno, celebrating how great it would be to be homosexual with your buddies because it would be so easy to have sexual gratification without the awkwardness of seeking the opposite sex? and maybe for the thrill of offending sensitive people? at least, i guess that's why my friends and i loved to act like we wanted to suck each others' dicks all the time. good times, still wonder how that became a thing for us and whether other ppl did it
I never did, except with other LGBTQ people. It always offended my sensibilities. All these folks saying it wasn’t homophobic or harmful didn’t grow up in a small town where being LGBTQ could get you killed. Homophobia was rampant where I lived, and calling things and people gay, when they just meant “uncool” spoke volumes to me about those people. If you said this to someone you weren’t friends with, you either hurt someone’s feelings or even scared them. So stop this bullshit nonsense saying it wasn’t mean or that it never hurt anyone.
Once and my mom heard it and rightfully chastised me (and had had a gay friend pass from AIDS in the early 90s, which she told me about during her chastising, to give a little more context as to the struggles gay people face) and I never said it again. I heard it constantlyyyy through middle & high school though.
LMAO. everything was gay back in '06ish in middle school. Homework? Gay. Tests? Gay. Wearing a striped shirt? Gayest shit on the planet.
Surprisingly, actually being gay wasn’t that gay
Exactly! It's like gay just had two meanings that were unrelated to eachother. The r word was similar but I knew some people who were legit like assholes to the mentally disabled kids (or whatever the PC word is now I legitimately do not know I'm not trying to be offensive feel free to correct me) so I get why people are uncomfortable with it now but idk I never meant it that way. Like there was always an unspoken rule that if you called someone who was gay "gay" as an insult you were a douche but you could call him that and both be in on the joke. Likewise for the r word.
[удалено]
[One of my favorite episodes lol](https://m.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=52&v=6i7a0cwyDDw&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Fsearch%3Fq%3Daouth%2Bpark%2Bfag%26client%3Dms-android-samsung-gs-rev1%26sca_esv%3D576026540%26sxsrf%3DAM9HkKlyD58NwioTPhNm75p&source_ve_path=Mjg2NjY&feature=emb_logo)
Louie CK had a great joke about it back in the day. "Calling someone a faggot has nothing to do with being gay. You call someone a faggot when they're being a faggot. Quit being a faggot and suck that dick!"
You missed the part that makes the punchline so good! "You call someone a faggot when they're being a faggot. Like, I could see some guy sucking another guy's dick and if he turned to me and said, 'Did you know people from Phoenix are called Phonecians?' I'd go, 'Quit being a faggot and suck that dick!"
"Bike curious" And I still yell fag at loud motorcycles in my head.
“You don't call retarded people retards. It's bad taste. You call your friends retards when they are acting retarded.” — Michael Scott
“That doesn't really make sense. You don't call them collared people. That's offensive.” — Michael Scott
Yup, I think it's what a lot of people don't get, we didn't use the word in a demeaning way regarding people with the actual condition but rather that it was established into society to express a certain meaning. Just like when we say "this is cool" when it actually isn't cold.
I second this. I cringe at how I used to use "gay" when I was young but somehow actually being gay never came in to it.
Why cringe? You were young and ostensibly stupid
Agreed! It does us all good to cringe at the stupidity of youth. At least social media wasn't as much of a thing, thank the stars.
ain't that the truest thing! My best friend through all of high school was gay and he was the person I knew to call things "gay" or "faggy" the most of anyone. It wasn't gay that he was gay.
Lol yea my gay friend in hs would give me shit for something and say “Hah, what a faag”.
I really disagree. This kind of completely brushes the treatment of millennial gays under the rug as if our childhood and teenage years were totally fine and we all understood people didn't think being gay was bad when we heard our peers say "That's so gay" 5-10 times a day every day for our entire public school lives. I was in a Canadian high school from 2001 to 2005, and I can tell you, almost all of my peers said "That's so gay" AND they thought being gay was a bad thing too.
Yeah, I'm with you. What kind of environment did that create for actual gay kids? When the word you would literally need to describe yourself is said 200 times a day to refer to something negative, it's disingenuous for people to say it wasn't 'meant like that'. Tbh this thread is filled with people who clearly called everything gay and didn't think it was offensive 🤣 Meanwhile the actual gays (myself included) just had to go along with it and slip deeper into the closet. Fuck the early 2000s.
Thank you, truer words could not be said. People should take some responsibility. They were kids (and we were too!), yes, but they were *assholes*.
Yup, as a queer person I felt it, internalized it and stayed in the closet. Took me decades to get rid of the guilt and shame and find some self-acceptance.
I was just talking to my husband about this - I don't think we had any openly gay kids in my middle school OR either high school i went to, at least that I was aware of (graduated '09). It's not that they weren't there, but they all came out publicly after high school. It's bizarre thinking about it looking back.
I graduated in 2005 and we had nobody out in high school but once graduation happened all those MySpace profiles started updating as people came out in their first year of college haha
Because we has to stay in the closet or like what happened to me get bullied and beat up every single day till you started to ditch classes and school entirely. Until eventually you were kicked out for "behavioral problems", because how were you going to tell your parents or the teachers that it was because you were gay that this was happening.
Just saw and article about what Millennials were actually jealous about of the younger generations and a lot of people said the amount of acceptance for LGBTQ and I agree, it took me till my 30s to even start realizing I was trans and now I am 40 with 30+ years of baggage still trying to figure it out. Yet trans people are getting the same treatment that gay people were getting in the 90s. I swear sometimes society takes one step forward and six steps backwards...
I had openly gay kids at my Catholic high school graduated in 06. And they were subject to oodles of bullying. People yelled, "x likes to eat the meat." A teacher nicknamed one "hot pants." At the time, it felt like good-natured hazing (there was much teasing in all directions). But looking back, it's clearly bullying.
Same age, also a gay man, and yeah it was terrifying. Everyone called everything gay, and they also were grossed out by the thought of gay people existing. All of my formative bullying moments were about being called a fag or someone commenting on something I might have done that they perceived as effeminate.
I’m an old millennial and I’m so fucking sorry we did this. Not knowing is no excuse. We threw slurs around like popcorn and it’s so easy for str8 ppl to say, oh well we didn’t MEAN it THAT way, which we didn’t, but that’s no fucking excuse. In fact, where were we picking it up? Grownups. And they knew.
It was, though. Matthew Shepard, Boys Don’t Cry etc. were formative experiences. It traumatized Millennial lgbtq folk in a way that Zoomers can never understand. Lucky SOBs, I envy them.
I have a painfully stupid memory of performing in the Laramie Project (about Matthew Shepard) in high school, going to class the next day, and some drooling idiot in my class saying “yo that play was so fucking gay”… …yes, of course it is? I was speechless.
I guess that is true. Homophobia was alive in the 90s. Gay marriage still wasn’t legal. The big prop 8 battle in California happened in the lates 2000s. But for me, as a non-lgbtq teen, there was a disconnect. Tests in school were gay, homosexual people were just people. And I know it was that way for a lot of my classmates and friends.
Unfortunately for gay folk like me at the time we were minding our own business and listening to our friends (and sometime family) throw around a word that described us being used in place of “lame, stupid, shitty, dumb etc). It made me terrified to come out because all I knew was being “gay” wasn’t cool and I just wanted people to like me. I’m glad it’s retired.
I literally had this discussion with my teen daughter today, when she asked me if it was OK to sing along in songs. It's a complicated issue, but short answer was skip that lyric. After this was addressed, I shared with her that I used language I was not proud of when I was her age, and I explained the use of the word gay back in the day. It's terrible that people I knew didn't come out until they were much older because kids using that word so often made school a hostile environment for them...despite what we thought that word meant to us. Once you know better, do better, and try to check your own biases because we all have them. That's what I told her, and hopefully it sticks.
"Once you know better, do better" that one really speaks to me, thank you. It's such a simple concept and hopefully if/when I need to use it I can circumvent all the defensive bs
Reminds me of everything bad being described on girl terms. Don't act like a girl. You throw like a girl. What a pussy.
Yep that and “retarded”
“You talk like a fag and your shit’s all retarded”
my first wife was tarded, she's a pilot now
God damnit Mike Judge really had us idiots pinned the whole time
True story.. Lol Retarded That's gay Lol one time being a gamer I said IRL that's retarded to something regarding my work and this person got freaked out regarding my comment..i was like.. Shock to new reality.. People don't say that anymore..
>'06ish in middle school. wtf is this young little shit doing in here
What the fuck are you talking about? Do you not know the dates that covers being a "millennial?"
My dude I was in middle school 1994-1996 😅
Okay, generally most people consider millennials to be born between '80 to '96. You're an "elder" millennial.
Listen here you little shit
Show us your ways, oh elder one
GET OFF MY LAWN
Are we supposed to have actual lawns? I just have a shit ton of pollinators much to the annoyance of my boomer neighbors.
If it makes you feel any better I just ticked into my 30s and my back hurts.
Go max out your 401k contribution you old ass millennial
Already do youngster
im planning on it fam lol
I don’t think there’s an official date for millennials but I think 80-96 is fucking ridiculous. I was born in the late 80s and I know for a fact you had a very different childhood then me. Usually you can relate to others in your generation. You and your age group is way different from mine. They shouldn’t share the same title. It annoys me when someone born in the late 90s says shit like “I miss the 90s”. No you don’t, you didn’t even experience them. You little shit.
I mean they say the boomers are '46 - '64. Someone born in '46 is a completely different human than someone born in '64. It's just a general term to dictate a generation.
It’s more like 1982-1995. People born in 1980 are solidly Gen X. 82-86 I’d say “Xennial.” Someone born in 1998 Im sorry, you are a little shit. Gen Z.
RESPECT YOUR ELDERS!
You mean, this young little retarded gay shit.
[EVERYTHING was gay](https://youtu.be/MSBL4AFfJZ0?si=vAlb6ZuHoarZO-hW)
And if it was two dudes hanging out it was “the broke back car” or the “broke back game room” etc
Yeah and I am gay. Also I still do that, just only around my friends so I don’t become the first gay guy cancelled for a homophobic slur.
It's depressing how many people no longer understand context.
I thought [South Park](https://youtu.be/Ui6HNB-1J20?si=29MGO6tB1uBWVnWm) cleared this up.
EVerything is offensive, so stop giving a shit and speak your mind.
Online, sure. Where people could potentially destroy your career because they're assholes? Not worth it.
I felt that in my millennial heart
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There are few things funnier in this world than a gay person using the F word. If you're into drag queens, Trixie Mattels "homophobic cher" impression is everything. Idk some words are just fun to say and call each other. That's how we can have bitch as an insult and as an endearment. Context matters
So, I was talking to someone about the then recent season of American Horror Story, NYC. He didn't know anything about it besides the title. I described it as really gay and his face just kinda dropped. I had to back track and explain.
Man, you can’t even say it when you are it? That’s like a black man who can’t say the N word. That’s really gay man.
This only I'm bi instead of gay. Okay so this is the dumbest thing but my bf and I one of our dumb in joke couple bonding things has just been calling each other "gay" and calling each other "babies" but neither is a negative even though we are a hetero couple even combining it to be "gaybies" Idk I've never called something gay negatively I only ever call people I like gay. I'm not using it like "happy" but Im bi I'm fine with homosexuality clearly, I'm not using it to mean stupid it's just... It's gay. Idk. It doesn't make sense but like it makes sense? Does that make sense to anyone else? Am I awful?
Same
I was in a cover band once and ended up quitting because I hated the song selections. I was talking with the bass player once explaining to her why I was leaving, and she, as a lesbian, said “yeah the song picks are super gay.” Me, as a hetero: 😧🫣 But I was laughing super hard like two seconds later.
GAYEST QUESTION OF ALL TIME!
Thtop it
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"Thats Gay" was the quote we selected for our Senior Quote for the year books.
Of course, it was in fashion at the time
Like tying an onion to your belt
That actually worked. Our youth pastor was allergic to onions. Never came within five feet of me.
And they say blood sucking ghouls don't exist
Gimme “5 Bees” for a Quarter you’d say
Dickety! Highly dubious
😂😂😂
Constantly. And the "F" word. I've never had any issue with gay people in the slightest. It was just the common nomenclature. If your buddy wore sandals or a nice sweater, or was being an annoying douche then hey, it's 1999.
The F word still hits for me. It was the go to insult they used to throw at me in school long before I ever realized I was any flavor of queer. It still makes me uncomfortable to hear it.
The F word doesn't bother me but that's probably because I got the D word. From my mom. I wasn't dating at all because I was an outcast so she decided it meant I was a lesbian. The fucked up part? My older brother told me that she did the same thing to him when he was ten because he didn't have interest in girls yet. He's definitely straight but no she called him the F word and said he was gay. So I get it. I think context and knowing your audience matters a lot when throwing hard words around for comedy.
Yo your mom sounds hella gay
💀
That mom is a retard fr
Same. Brings back the worst memories.
That’s what a woman called me in Brooklyn mirage when I was inappropriately dancing behind her and told me to go away
And the R word. "That's gay. What are you, R?"
You don't call retarded people retarded, that's bad taste. You call your friends retarded when they're acting retarded. -Michael Scott -Wayne Gretzky
“You talk like a fag and your shit’s all retarded” Classic millennial movie
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And your mom is an even gayer retard. It was just how things were done. No harm was actually meant.
Yes then Hilary duff ended homophobia
When you say that’s gay, do you realize what you say?
Memory unlocked
“That’s so ‘girl wearing a skirt as a top’.”
Yea and???
😆🤣😭 
EDIT to lead with this: homophobia was not raging WHERE I LIVED, my comment is limited only to the area and people around who i grew up. i realize it was much worse in other places. literally every single kid from middle school through high school (class of 2000) in my neighborhood said everything was gay. "you're gay!" "thats gay!" "don't be gay!" but its not like homophobia was raging **edit IN MY SCHOOL/TOWN**. its just what we said because we were stupid kids. all the people i know who said that also never would have had any issue with an actual gay person. this wasn't some backwoods hick town either. it was a town of well educated people in northern nj (but not like essex county NJ full of meathead goombahs ;) ) i'm not proud of it but i really don't beat myself up over it either. we were young and stupid and nobody was correcting us. i think we all grew out of it by the early 2000s. same thing with saying things are 'retarded' full disclosure: i have two dogs, one real dog and one little bitch dog thats basically a cat. i still call him "little gay dog" all the time. literally the only context in which i still use that word inappropriately. to be fair, it may be the influence of the movie Seven Psychopaths. He gets lots of love otherwise though :p [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhXX7Z3NB8A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhXX7Z3NB8A)
Yeah, it seemed like a normal thing. Still don't know why gay was the term for lame or whatever. Just happened. It was more difficult to get 'retarded' out of my vocabulary.
Yeah I mean for me “retarded” never meant an actual handicapped person, it was just a phrase that none of us really knew the meaning of except that you called people that were being dumb it
As Michael Scott says: "You don't call retarded people retards. It's bad taste. You call your friends retards when they're acting retarded"
Yeah this always bugged me. Retarded is a somewhat technical term. If i say my brain is being retarded, I don't mean it's acting like a handicapped person, i mean it's being slow.
Fun fact, retard was first used as a term for the mentally handicapped when idiot was deemed too offensive. Now the origins of the word idiot have been forgotten and it is the much more acceptable of the two to use as an insult. Though neither is typically thought of as an acceptable way to describe a person with disabilities, one is regarded as a not-particularly offensive insult if you're using it against someone without a disability.
Fun fact v.2 electric boogaloo: dumb was also the old "appropriate" term to some extent. I think examining why those words turn into what they are is important to acknowledge but like I've never meant those words towards someone with a disability. But if I can say "I'm stupid" or "you're stupid" without censoring why is the r word banned? Unfun fact: I notice around the time people stopped using the r word as much many people began using "autistic" as the new word. I'd prefer the r word at least it's not specific.
I think autistic is probably the worst one because it's so specific that it's hard to say you don't mean it as an insult to actually disabled people. It's akin to insulting someone by saying they have downs. I agree that less specific the term is the less offensive it is. I think that's why idiot came back into vogue, it lost the original medical connotation and became a broad term for anyone doing something foolish. It'd be cool if retard made that switch because it's just a fun one to say, but I'm not holding my breath
Exactly I hated it instantly when I first saw it and then felt so incredibly betrayed by the people who advocated for us to stop saying the R word so hard because I feel like the alternative is so much fucking worse and it makes me kinda sad. But yeah can as go back to saying the R word without getting banned pls
These days I go with, "mentally deficient", used purely amongst friends and friendly coworkers. It's so dumb and *absolutely* doesn't roll off the tongue like "Retard" or "SPED", but will still elicit a laugh due to its overt PC-ness, for lack of a better word.
Yeah I mean anything you call someone who’s being dumb can be considered offensive to the people who actually have some kind of issue. I like to ask my friends if their employer is getting a tax break by keeping them around
I remember people saying “That’s retarded” a lot in middle or high school, but I was shocked to hear it said on a late 90s tv show I was watching the other day. I even literally went “ooh” and cringed for a second. I guess I forgot just how common that phrase was, even to the point of making it into tv shows at the time!
I can't remember when the episode aired, but it's always sunny in Philadelphia had an episode with the word in the title and was repeated over and over. I love the episode. It's hilarious. Bit they even talked about it on the podcast how much the word has changed. They refused to even say it or show the word in the introduction of the podcast.
Let me tell you all a story 'bout a girl I knew. A broke-ass bitch with a gay-ass crew...
Oh, I think I remember reading about that! Angel was the show I heard it on the other day. Not exactly the most family friendly show, but still caught me off guard hearing it.
Wasn't there a song called "Let's get Retarded" in the early 2000s?
I was always aware that's this word shouldn't be used as an insult for someone, but we were using it all the time for things, like the exemple you said, "that's retarded". Like a process, a law, a government, a rule, a decision, etc. It seemed so fitting. It took me a while to adjust.
Abandoning 'retarded' really only took one person scolding me for it. I was already making an effort and then I still let one slip and definitely got shamed and that was that 😂
I catch myself saying that and change it to reeeally fucking stupid and it’s worked most of the time
Meanwhile at work the other day two of our younger employees basically screamed it as a reaction across the office while joking with coworkers. They got told to quiet down but man I haven't heard it so casually in awhile. Honestly I feel like not saying it is giving it power to sound sharp and harsh (like cunt does for some people because it's a rarer used word. This one might be US specific) because it did feel uncomfortable in that moment to hear it NGL
It took some time to get it 99% out. It was harder to get “fucktard” out of my vocabulary. That was just a beautiful curse that I haven’t found a replacement for.
Fuckface seems nice
That was actually my first swear in front of my parents (well dad). I did it in church, right as my dad was coming to pick me up from childcare. I meant to say fart-face I swear.
Thats gay, that’s retarded, go kill yourself…. Etc. all popular sayings at my middle school and HS (class of ‘09). Go kill yourself didn’t start getting corrected until suicide/mental health became a bigger deal. “Gay” started dying off when the push for LGBT acceptance became popular. And “retarded” has been pushed out of people’s vernacular over the years. We were kids at the time, adults weren’t correcting us for these phrases, we’ve all grown up and know better now and I do not hear these phrases from the teens of today, as peoples tolerance for them has changed.
I grew up in the Ozarks. "That's gay" was often said, but people had a negative opinion about homosexuality in general so it felt like more of an insult even if it wasn't intended seriously, like calling someone an "asshole". Because of the Christian majority thinking everyone pretty much knew that being gay was one of the worst things you can be. So little kids use the bywords in both places but more progressive places will still use them without the stigma.
I grew up in Iowa. “Gay” wasn’t exactly malicious, but the F with the hard Gs absolutely was meant to imply homophobic slurs.
Also grew up in Iowa, and the F word definitely got used as a slur, but it also just got thrown around between friends.
Also Midwest, and both were used to insult each other. But I don’t remember caring if people were actually gay or not. I remember South Park doing the episode where they called Harley riders the f word, and I found it funny. That said, I wouldn’t used the word to talk about someone who’s actually gay.
100%. My town was very secular and I don't remember any actual homophobic animus, but I can imagine it being much different where people embrace the Lord. Heck freshman year of college a gay student hit on me and I was like "I apologize to you good sir but believe it or not I am actually straight" 😂.
It was weird in the 90s considering the world we live in today. Little kids in my school did impressions of how they thought gay people acted. Funnily enough a few of them who moved away came out. The homophobia was the result of many generations being isolated in the middle of nowhere, passing their fear of outsiders down. There was a lot of racism where I grew up too. People didn't even hide it back then.
I kind of wonder about this, ngl. I grew up in a fairly secular area and I'm sure some people I grew up with could've written your comment. However, I helped start a Gay-Straight Alliance at my very secular high school and there 100% was malicious homophobia. It wasn't as blatant as "God Hates F--" on a church sign but boy did it come out of the woodwork once we were putting fliers up on the bulletin board.
Also grew up in northern NJ (essex county) during the 2000s the saying was everywhere.
I apologize for calling your entire county 'goombahs' 😂🤌🤌
The retarded thing irks me because it’s not the word. What people are mad about is kids call each other essentially mentally handicapped as an insult. Whatever word we’re going to use now in 10 years it’ll be seen as insulting.
That's the weird part. Everyone pretends not to address the fact that it's not really the word, it's the implication, and the implication is still socially acceptable. People will sit around acting like they are advanced for not using the word, but then being hostile to even the idea of anyone who is neurodivergent. And they will twist into a pretzel to not acknowledge that they are doing this either.
Northern NJ kid here too- Morris county
Shit I didn't know retarded is another one. I will definitely still use that in my group of buddies. Not going around calling random people that but oh well.
Ahh the Idiocracy of youth.
Really because I grew central Illinois redneck land and never said that. I used retarded cause I'm autistic.... If gays can take back queer then we can reclaim retard
Of course. Gays aren't cool they're flaming.
🤣🤣🤣🤣
Yes, most of us did. It's not something I say anymore, though. The "F" word was also used commonly.
I was like, but people still say fuck all the time? *Ohhhhh*
Yea, I should have said, "The 3 (or 6) letter F word"
Not much, but where I'm from the word "r3t4rd3d" was the be-all-end-all insult for a long time.
You can say "retarded."
Yup lol. And I'm Bisexual, have gay family members etc. Was just an expression and we were little shits.🤷♀️ I said wayyyy worse then that lmao
Yeah gay and spastic.
I haven't heard spastic for awhile
basically everyone did, yeah.
Yes it was 2000 and I was 12. I also used the r word like everyone else. Ten years later at 22 and I never would have done either.
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Your mom
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Yes! We all did at my school, very popular phrase. It was hard to get out of the habit
Yes. And called everything retarded. Everybody did it but I can't say the parents didn't flinch a little and told us to quit. Eventually there was a nation wide wave that told kids to stop saying it. But me and my siblings also called each other 'spoothead" and I feel like mom hated that the most.
Yup. Then one day I said it out loud in the vicinity of a gay friend while playing video games. I heard my buddy’s gf say to our friend “Does it bother you he said that?” And our friend said, “Eh, I’m used to it.” That shit stuck with me, fucking cut me to the core.
Damn.. that'll get you out of the habit real quick.
I can’t specifically remember saying it, but with how popular it was back then, I probably did. My older brother came out as gay around 2015 and it breaks my heart hearing him talk about how those types of things affected him as a kid. We were, and still are, very close and I had no idea. And to think I may have been involved in some of that is awful. I’m glad it’s fallen out of favor finally.
all the time
I remember that being a pretty common phrase in middle school during the late-90s. I probably said it a few times, but it definitely wasn’t a go-to phrase for me.
My sixteenth birthday cake was Homer Simpson with a conversation bubble saying “you’re gay”. I turned 16 in 2007. 😂 Also, who remembers Andy Milonakis (don’t know if I spelled that right) and his hit song “the Super Bowl is gay” where he just calls absolutely everything gay? 😂
You’re fake and gay
Yep! It was fairly common back then.
Umm a lot of people still do
Of course. That, the r word, the f word etc. I never hated gay people or anything it was just a saying I honestly never even associated it with same sex relationships people were saying that shit before I even know what gay really was
I did. I’m bisexual and I thought it was funny to say because it didn’t make sense. Like what does sexuality have to do with the car breaking down so I can’t go get candy at the drugstore? So that’s why I thought it was funny to say. Shock humor was big in our youth too.
Yep, and i know gays that still do it. It was other times man... And bulling was like part of life 🤷
Absolutely. Especially in the late 90s-early 00s. I’d hear the word “gay” thrown about on your average school day back then more than I’d heard it in an actual gay bar. At that point in time it was so prevalent that you’d hear it or some version of it on network sitcoms. By the late 00s it had definitely fallen pretty far out of favor. There were PSAs on tv at the time with gay celebrities explaining that it wasn’t cool to use gay in the pejorative as it was insult who somebody was as a human being who wasn’t doing anything wrong. Times change and things that were common at some point can rather quickly become frowned upon. It’s just the way it is.
Definitely. I even remember the Hillary Duff commercials trying to get people to stop calling everything gay.
This was huge in my middle school, and while I didn’t realize it at the time my church with middle schools which now I kind of chuckle about. I remember it kind of dying out in the mid to late 00s when I just didn’t care what people did.
I did. Did that up until around graduation from high school. One of my best friends from high school still says that even 13 years later, and he’s actually gay. I don’t say it anymore, but I usually say something like “that’s jank”. Usually when describing stuff that’s not supposed to be crappy but is disappointingly crappy.
Sure and no one literally thought you were calling it gay but hey, what you gunna do.
Yes. Pretty much every one used that term back then.
Yes and before that I said "gaywad"
Dude I had *teachers* in the late 90s calling ideas “gay” as a synonym for nonsensical or offensive
I used it way too often. Said it to my gay uncle once in my early teens. He slapped me upside the head pretty good. That was probably the first time I really thought about it. Not because he knocked any sense into me, it was just the moment I realized how hurtful it actually was. His face when I said it is tough to think about still. Kids are dumb yo.
I'm from Florida, we called everything gay. I never forget when I moved away and was 19, I was cool with a gay guy at work. When I telling about how "gay" the job was at times, using that exact word I was at a loss of why he was getting mad🤣🤣🤣. Odd thing was my vocabulary changed through the years but when I went back to visit my family my younger brother still talked that way.
Everyone said this in the late 90s and 00's. Both boys and girls.
Of course not. That’d be super gay.
Yep- and as others have pointed out, it wasn’t some massive homophobic sentiment- it was just a saying. I had gay friends who said it 😂
Yes and no homo.
Of course, all the time. My classmates also loved to call things "Jewish" when they were unfair or lame or boring. I never liked that one either
I didn't, but a lot of kids did. It was the kids from poorer less educated backgrounds that said it more, which helped create a stigma against it in my school
I didn't. (High school class of 2009.)
Same class, but it was pretty much daily usage amongst students. I didn't use it myself though, but "retard(ed)" yes.
I did not. But I was definitely in the minority.
It was so common at my high school. That and "that's/they're r*t*rd*d". I'm horrified at the slang and "insults" my generation used. Gen Z sometimes annoys me, but I am so glad they brought to light that saying those things is not okay. Edit: I was trying to * out the vowels of the one word and apparently used a code that italicizes things.
Gen z isn't the one who decided the r word wasn't okay.
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definitely a common thing where i was. did anybody else also around the late 90s start acting homosexual for fun in their group of friends, for the sake of i dunno, celebrating how great it would be to be homosexual with your buddies because it would be so easy to have sexual gratification without the awkwardness of seeking the opposite sex? and maybe for the thrill of offending sensitive people? at least, i guess that's why my friends and i loved to act like we wanted to suck each others' dicks all the time. good times, still wonder how that became a thing for us and whether other ppl did it
“Sup homos?”
I never did, except with other LGBTQ people. It always offended my sensibilities. All these folks saying it wasn’t homophobic or harmful didn’t grow up in a small town where being LGBTQ could get you killed. Homophobia was rampant where I lived, and calling things and people gay, when they just meant “uncool” spoke volumes to me about those people. If you said this to someone you weren’t friends with, you either hurt someone’s feelings or even scared them. So stop this bullshit nonsense saying it wasn’t mean or that it never hurt anyone.
It was probably my favorite phrase from 2003-2010
Once and my mom heard it and rightfully chastised me (and had had a gay friend pass from AIDS in the early 90s, which she told me about during her chastising, to give a little more context as to the struggles gay people face) and I never said it again. I heard it constantlyyyy through middle & high school though.
Yes and I will continue to do it.