Children of parents not inclined to ship their progeny off to learn the art of boxing in a futile attempt to fend off playground attackers may well be familiar with the phrase ‘gay actually means happy, so all they’re really doing is calling you happy’. And while this is by all means true, it seems to have little effect on the apparent hilarity of calling somebody or something gay. What do your new shoes, the way you sneeze, and the car you drive all have in common? They are, of course, all homosexual.
It turns out that the only thing that’s not being called gay nowadays is the queer community themselves, for whom a far more sinister repository of words is reserved. Statistics show that in the last decade the number of hate crimes based on sexual orientation has quadrupled, rising in parallel with the UK governments’ increasingly hostile stance towards queerness.
But how can there be so many recorded hate crimes in a country that prides itself on tolerance and acceptance? There are several theories on the matter, yet perhaps the one we hear the most is that we, as a society, have become ‘too soft’, that we can’t take ‘a joke’. Well, perhaps it is all just a joke, and perhaps the fun and levity of calling things gay also extends to burning flags and violence. I won’t claim to know, but it certainly doesn’t feel that way.
Seeing that for every pride march there’s a protest and for every rainbow flag, a St. George’s Cross, the theory which best explains the grim statistics is that we, as a country, have become divided -and not that we have ‘gone soft’. It was always wrong to bully or attack someone and it was always hateful to tear down a flag, but what’s changed is that society has now evolved enough to recognise these behaviours as acts of hate.
So, for those of us who as children were never sent to train under the eponymous coach of Bill’s Bully Busting Boxing Bootcamp, we can grit our teeth and smile in peace, knowing that society does in fact evolve, and that maybe in fifty years’ time ‘gay’ might actually once again mean ‘happy’.
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Jot & Scribble 