On my way into the office this morning, I was listening to a radio station’s morning show. It was a “best of” clips since the normal hosts are vacationing. One of the segments was about one of the radio hosts getting married, and how the rest of the team was trying to get him “primped up” a week prior to the wedding. As one of the DJ’s introduced the clip, the other said, “wait, wasn’t the official term, to ‘gay him up'?”
I changed the station to my other morning show and two of the cast members were talking about their friendship and how long they have known each other, etc., and a third member of the morning show said “you all just go be gay together!”
I didn’t know what to think about it at first. At least the term gay is being used on airwaves and is not forbidden. However at the same time, treating the word that way can lead to the same syndrome as the phrase “hot tranny mess” that Eddy has blogged about before. It can still be offensive, just like the “n-word” for African-Americans. Not too long ago, I also read an article on how popular the term “gay” is among teenagers which explained that teens don’t mean any harm by it. I get that. My siblings use it all the time, “That is SO gay, Oh my God!”
A lot of my Latino gay activist and artist friends use words such as “joto” and “maricón” which to me, are as offensive as the f-word that we have blogged about before. But, still, their explanation for using the words is “we have to regain ownership of the word so that it’s not something that can be used against us.”
So back to the radio DJs—I often see it as a double standard to say that we can use such language and phrases because we ARE the gay community, but you can’t because you are not. It’s similar to the n-word that white rappers and other have used when they are not black. I don’t know that we will ever reach a consensus on whether or not you can use a phrase such as “let’s gay him up before his wedding.” I can see both complimentary and offensive sides of it.
Communication is key, it is the open forum to discuss how we as a society and community feel about phrases, and be on the same page about the evolution of phrases and words. We can do it through outlets such as online journaling, blogging, news reporting, etc. But, as you can already tell, we all have different opinions about it, and because of that phrases, words, and the context of them are very sensitive areas. If you are considering connecting with the LGBT community then advice what is common sense to most: stay away from using these in any advertising or communications plan if you are a company trying to establish a reputation with the LGBT community. Even though it could be funny to some, more than likely you will make someone angry. And if you’re in doubt, just ask us!
Interesting timing as Towleroad posted about two separate incidences last week where the word gay was used as hate speech.
http://www.towleroad.com/2008/07/south-florida-h.html
http://www.towleroad.com/2008/07/gay-tulsa-coupl.html
Posted by: Ad Insider | July 21, 2008 at 12:13 PM