And What Are Words?

Today in my art class, while we were all simultaneously finishing up our projects and talking smack about celebrities, one guy explained that the reason Edward Cullen does such-and-such is because he's a faggot. The teacher, one of your run-of-the-mill stereotypical-looking San Francisco lesbians, happened to come out of the back room at that unfortunate moment and lit into him. It was one of those moments you always dread as a little kid: not the quick, hot anger with yelling and cursing, but the cold, quiet kind that comes up from behind and sinks in worse than anything. She made him apologize to the class, which he did with a faint air of one who does not feel he's entirely in the wrong. Another woman said "thank you," though whether to him or the teacher, I'm not sure. For his part, he was nearly silent the rest of the class, while the conversation resumed around him. The teacher reiterated toward the end of the period that she would not tolerate such offensive language as faggot, queer, homo, etc.

I admit, I was glad to see this guy put in his place. Right before class, he came up with the brilliant revelation in front of some of our other classmates that he had only just noticed the HUGE gap in my teeth. He seemed to think everyone would find this hilarious. In fact, he often seems to think that when shit comes out of his mouth.

However, I was also surprised at the teacher's and the other student's reactions. They are of the previous generation, and I wonder if that is something to do with the strength of their anger. Certainly I've heard plenty of young and pretty gay men refer to themselves as fags in the most lighthearted and careless of ways. I know I've heard the word often enough in various contexts (though not directed at me) that it doesn't seem that bad anymore. And maybe my generation just thinks itself far above all that inequality bullshit, despite ample evidence to the contrary.

Think of this: Black people started referring to each other as nigga to distance themselves from the painful history of the word. They couldn't fully take away its original meanings, though, because white people are most definitely not allowed to use it, according to the unwritten books of slang law. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jEBh1VtdT0 And this: It's not too uncommon for people to throw the word Nazi around. You disagree with someone, particularly an authority figure, you call them a Nazi. Nevermind the war crimes the Nazis committed back in the day (granted, under Hitler's orders, of course), people now find the term easy enough to use semi-casually. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4lJ9vsZjMU And even after all those feminist movements, women like to call each other bitches, as though the word were some genuine token of affection. Yet, to listen to a man call you that, as a woman, you can't help but feel offended, even outraged. The word retard? They don't even call actual retarded kids that anymore, do they? It's become such a blase term for anything slow or stupid that retarded kids, to keep off the stigma, are now properly called "mentally challenged."

It seems to me that most things become less painful once the meaning is taken away. They say time heals all wounds because with time, the things that wounded you in the past lose importance and come to mean little in the face of the present. It takes a while for a word to lose the vicious intent of its original meaning, and even then, it depends who's saying what. People will take words and try to bleed them dry of meaning by overusing them to each other, but they can't escape the pain when someone else does the same.

There's a history behind words of course. You can hardly get away from that. But everyone tries. I'm part of a generation that is trying very hard not to care anymore. We want to strip these terrible words of their terrible meanings and make them our own, exclusively. In doing so, however we segregate ourselves. We estrange each other by trying to lay down laws about who is allowed to say what, and to whom. We make each other too uncomfortable by drawing these lines in the dirt, distance ourselves from others by the exclusivity of our clubs, our races, our genders.

All of a sudden I am incredibly fascinated by modern language and I wish I had a language historian to talk to, instead of just rattling the same thoughts around in my head. Actually thinking about all this makes me wonder. On the one hand, I'm all for making certain words devoid of their original offensive meanings, but on the other hand, won't there always be those who are too close to the truth of it? Who will always take offense? It's easy for me not to be particularly offended by most words, because I'm not often the target of them. But what about other people?