Changes

:::And in response I'll go through the usual rigmarole that if this deserves the essay namespace then several other mainspace articles deserve it, too, and I'm pretty sure they're going to stay where they are. :-) As for those words you mentioned, yes they have a history of negative use, but they've also been "reclaimed" as badges of pride. They should be neither. They should be able to return to their original, innocent meanings of "dam" and "slightly strange", respectively, but unfortunately hardly anyone uses (or can use) them that way anymore. Note that I didn't include certain other words (both I can think of begin with F and one has an innocent meaning to boot) which only have a negative context. I'm not here to slur homosexuals with offensive words, but I'm also not going to stand silently as our language gets manipulated. -[[User:Foxtrot|Foxtrot]] 20:02, 4 October 2008 (EDT)

:::And in response I'll go through the usual rigmarole that if this deserves the essay namespace then several other mainspace articles deserve it, too, and I'm pretty sure they're going to stay where they are. :-) As for those words you mentioned, yes they have a history of negative use, but they've also been "reclaimed" as badges of pride. They should be neither. They should be able to return to their original, innocent meanings of "dam" and "slightly strange", respectively, but unfortunately hardly anyone uses (or can use) them that way anymore. Note that I didn't include certain other words (both I can think of begin with F and one has an innocent meaning to boot) which only have a negative context. I'm not here to slur homosexuals with offensive words, but I'm also not going to stand silently as our language gets manipulated. -[[User:Foxtrot|Foxtrot]] 20:02, 4 October 2008 (EDT)

::::I guess I'm confused then.  If homosexuals didn't assign them the negative use, then they didn't really "claim" them at all, right?  They just attempted to redefine the already bastardized definition used to make the words slurs in the first place.  So gays didn't really "appropriate" these words, they just "reappropriated" the slurs used against them.  I know you don't mean it to sound this way, but because the definition was changed by someone else in the first place, the argument that the word should return to the definition it had before homosexuals changed it makes it seem like the words should go back to being slurs, instead of the innocent meanings they originally had.  Though you might be right about the other words, and even the concept in general, I think the inclusion of "queer" and "dyke" hurts your argument.  [[User:LiamG|LiamG]] 21:16, 4 October 2008 (EDT)

::::I guess I'm confused then.  If homosexuals didn't assign them the negative use, then they didn't really "claim" them at all, right?  They just attempted to redefine the already bastardized definition used to make the words slurs in the first place.  So gays didn't really "appropriate" these words, they just "reappropriated" the slurs used against them.  I know you don't mean it to sound this way, but because the definition was changed by someone else in the first place, the argument that the word should return to the definition it had before homosexuals changed it makes it seem like the words should go back to being slurs, instead of the innocent meanings they originally had.  Though you might be right about the other words, and even the concept in general, I think the inclusion of "queer" and "dyke" hurts your argument.  [[User:LiamG|LiamG]] 21:16, 4 October 2008 (EDT)

==Anti-Homosexual words==

==Anti-Homosexual words==