http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7289390.stm
i like:
Gay in relation to lame= not actually related to homosexuality/ sexual connotations. It is usual said casually without malice: so it’s hard to make students stop saying it.
“The word has what we call multiple coinage and that’s the problem,” says Mr Thorne. “While teenagers are generally using it to mean ‘lame’ it can separately be used as a homophobic term of abuse.”
It’s this ambiguity that prevents some teachers from tackling pupils who use it in a negative sense, says ATL. They are afraid of “blowing trivial matters out of proportion”.
however, it is the most highly used term in bullying in schools today.
*There is speculation that once gay is labeled an offensive term, another term in relation to homosexuality will emerge.
This usage is similar to the term “special” and special needs children. Are the use of these terms as harsh as racial slurs? Both come from what was supposed to be a positive, pollitically correct term, and have turned into derrogatory statements.
http://www.experiencefestival.com/a/Gay_-_Etymology/id/1419120#.UIWR7sVWyuI
I like:
“The word started to acquire sexual connotations in the late 17th century, being used with meaning “addicted to pleasures and dissipations”. This was by extension from the primary meaning of “carefree”: implying “uninhibited by moral constraints”. By the late nineteenth century the term “gay life” was a well-established euphemism for prostitution and other forms of sexual behaviour that were perceived as immoral.”
The 1890s was referred to as the gay 90s because it was such a happy time.
This would include prostitutes and womanizers. Many a time would a flirty guy be called gay for the lawls. In fact, the only relation of the term and sexuality was in a heterosexual context until around the 1920s. Here, Gertrude Stein writes”They were …gay, they learned little things that are things in being gay, … they were quite regularly gay.” about two women in a homosexual relationship. Many speculate on whether she is referring to them as lesbian or just being happy in general (as was the trend in the lost generation in Paris). Due to many cases of this ambiguity, for a few more decades it continued to simply mean carefree. This is evident in movie titles of the era such as “The Gay Divorcee”, a 1934 movie about a heterosexual couple. On the other hand, slowly over time gays began to use the term as a form of identity in an underground way such that the heterosexual community was unaware of its connotation. For example, in West Village, NYC there’s a street that was known as “Gay Street” by many homosexuals. It was a center of homosexual culture in the 1940’s, and the phrase “Are you gay?” was code for asking if someone was homosexual. Eventually, the term in relation to homosexuality was embraced by the heterosexual community as well, since you can’t really keep things of this nature quiet.
“Gay was the preferred term since other terms, such as “queer” were felt to be derogatory. “Homosexual” was perceived as excessively clinical: especially since homosexuality was at that time designated as a mental illness, and “homosexual” was used by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) to denote men affected by this “mental illness”. The illness of homosexuality was removed from the DSM in 1973, but the clinical connotation of the word was already embedded in society.”