OF A GOLDEN AGE

This weekend I talked with a friend of a friend who’s a teacher about the way her students use hate speech without realizing it. My mom, who’s also a teacher, constantly tells her students not to use slurs and other hate words in class and it’s an uphill battle.

Christine tells her students the classroom is a “No Hate Zone,” and in a classic back and forth, they insist that their slurs aren’t really slurs. Yeah, what else is new: Fairly intelligent kids I used to know would say, sincerely, “The word ‘gay’ doesn’t mean the same thing when I use it.” Oh really? Sorry, I didn’t realize you could singlehandedly change the English language.

Apparently her kids use the phrase “no homo” in this context: “Mike and I went to see the new Harry Potter movie, no homo.” It’s basically a hatey version of the way we joke about bromance or man-dates. Instead of good-humoredly acknowledging their homosocial behavior they have to turn it into a “Gay people, gross!” thing instead.

(See also: Frindle. Not a true analogy since in that book he invents a completely new word and assigns it an existing meaning, instead of trying to, you know, swapsies.)

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