FAG one last time

[Benjamin Barrett]

This thread has been very interesting, but I'm really confused. Is it your
contention, Ron, that

1. Gay people do not use fag with a positive sense and that black people do
not use nigger in a positive sense, or

2. These words are used as in 1, but simply not in a sense to be associated
with pride.

I have an Asian friend who considers nigger to be so common as a general
greeting, that he even uses it to non-blacks, though he uses it sparingly.
I've seen male gays also use fag and male blacks use nigger/nig in greetings
where the connotation clearly wasn't negative.

This may have been on an earlier thread, but I've heard the expression,
"He's my nigger" used in a friendly way to imply what I took as meaning a
good friend.

Benjamin Barrett

> -----Original Message-----
> From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU]On
> Behalf Of RonButters at AOL.COM
> Sent: Thursday, March 08, 2001 3:55 PM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: FAG one last time
>
>
> In a message dated 3/8/01 4:11:45 PM, jester at PANIX.COM writes:
>
> << we have
> seen a variety of disparaging terms adopted with pride>>
>
> My quarrel is entirely with this phrase. Gay men do not use FAG
> "with pride."
> Not in my experience. Not in the experience of my friends. Not in
> any written
> citation that I havve ever seen. The citations that Jesse
> circulated in his
> earlier posting are not attempts at appropriating FAG as a
> legitimate term of
> self-reference. They are used exactly the way that black people
> use NIGGER. I
> guess if Jesse wants to read his cites as "proud" I can't convince him
> otherwise. But I know no gay men who would ever agree with Jesse's
> assessment. This is not to say that the utterers of his cites are
> not proud
> of their queer identity, only that the utters of the cites do not
> think that
> FAG is a word to be "adopted with pride." QUEER yes. FAG no.