I'm going to take issue with some gay males on DU

[Floogeldy]

It's about the use of the word "suck" in the American language vernacular. I think I've seen some posts on this board that protest the use of the word to criticize/denigrate someone or something, i.e., "_______ sucks." I don't know how the word came to be used in this manner. Maybe an enlightened social psychologist could explain it to us. And maybe they will prove me wrong.

But I don't see how this can be translated to an offense upon gay males. I really don't want to go into detail because, if I do, this thread will be locked.

Suffice to say that the literal translation, or any specific application thereof, is not exclusive to gay males. Use your imagination, if necessary.

Sincerely and with good intentions,

Floo

[Dookus]

1. umm.....

has somebody made an issue of this?

[The Magistrate]

5. Not To My Knowledge, Mr Dookus

The full-fledged form prefered by Mr. Swearingen is proscribed as offensive here, but not this single syllable....

"I didn't think it was possible, but this both sucks and blows."

[Dookus]

9. I think I get it...

there is certainly a difference between saying something sucks and saying one is a cocksucker.

[The Magistrate]

12. You Understand Me So Well, Mr. Dookus

[Dookus]

14. Heheh

even when you're deliberately obscure, you're clear as a bell :)

[Syrinx]

2. I remember when the expression was considered "dirty"

Bill Maher claims he was the first person to use it on TV.

[camitche]

3. Yeah, I don't know what the issue is here either.

Gay males find the use of the word suck directly insulting?

[arcos]

4. not this gay male... nt

[camitche]

6. well, I guess we can about rap up this thread, then

[Floogeldy]

7. It was about a week ago

I don't remember who or exactly when. I hardly ever remember posters' names or single them out for anything.

But somebody started a thread stating that something "sucks" and an apparently gay male protested strongly about the use of the word, because it denigrated male homosexuals.

I promise I am not making this up.

[camitche]

10. I guess I don't see why either.

Doesn't seem it should be any more offensive to gay males then to anyone else that engages in that form of oral sex. Who knows? We need someone to post why they think it is offensive.

[ISUGRADIA]

17. As a gay male I can say I have never, ever heard the term

"sucks" deemed as an anti-gay slur. Now I did find this below via a google search showing there is probably a sexual origin. But I don't think that "sucks" is really linked with the term "cocksucker" by 99% of the people that use it. It lost its connection. "vandal" originally from the Vandals who sacked Rome, so "vandal" could be considered an ethnic slur (I believe the statue of limitations has run out on that one). Same with "welch" on a promise or you "gyped" me from gypsie.

http://www.yaelf.com/aueFAQ/mifsckbvrynstsfyng.shtml

"It is pretty clear that "suck" started out as a sexual insult,
e.g., "Charlie sucks", what he sucks being unnecessary to spell out.
As a term of general disapproval it did not take long to be applied
to all sorts of things, animate and inanimate, to the point where it
is now used by all manner of people, small children included,
without any consciousness whatsoever of the sexual origin of the
term. Some of them seem to find it very hard to accept that it ever
had a sexual connotation. It has crossed the Atlantic, but would be
regarded both by those who use it and those accustomed to hearing it
as a conscious Americanism."

[Nothing Without Hope]

21. Thank you for the link to that seriously nifty web site, ISUGRADIA!

I love tracking the history and evolution of words and learning about particularly quirky terms and phrases, and this site (http://www.yaelf.com/aueFAQ) looks to be a gold mine for it.

[ISUGRADIA]

37. I am glad you like it, it's very useful and entertaining too.

You might also like the "a word a day website"

You can get them sent via e-mail or check the site out periodically. It's another great way to see what a rich language we have in English.

http://www.wordsmith.org/awad/

[Nothing Without Hope]

41. yes, you're right - I get my AWAD in my email every day!

I love the history and the way they give examples and have the summary posts where users comment. Some of my favorite quotes have come from AWAD too. English is so full of history, but much of it requires detective work and knowledge of very old, esoteric things to trace. I'm very glad there have been and are people who are dedicated to doing this out of the sheer love of words. Thank you for your suggestion - if I hadn't already stumbled over it I would certainly have subscribed instantly.

Quite different but also an invigorating mind-stretch that can be experienced every day is the Astronomy Picture Of the Day site at
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
The photos - often clickable for larger images or panning wide vistas - are often truly spectacular and the link-filled explanatory paragraph never fails to deliver something I enjoy finding out. Sometimes language usage and history are involved as well. I have had my web browser set to APOD for its home page for several years now and enjoy finding what each new day surprises me with there. It's a calming moment before facing the day's new issues.

Again, thanks!

[Floogeldy]

11. One of the reasons I remember it is because . . .

. . . other supposedly gay males came to the defense of the poster attacking the use of the word.

?????

Nobody remembers?

[arcos]

15. I don't...

No idea if someone else does, though :P

[Nothing Without Hope]

8. News to me

I'm neither a man nor gay, but I would have thought I'd have heard something. My favorite use of the word clearly does not come into contention, since it is along the lines of "Do not attempt to teach your grandmama to suck eggs."

There are sayings that clearly ARE derogatory to gay men that I avoid, like "so-and-so bent over for someone else," meaning they allowed themselves to be used or abused, or simply using terms like "fag" as a general derogatory signifying lack of courage or general manly manliness. Lots of terms. Good riddance to them, the language is better off without them and so are we.

So I'll be interested to see if "suck," as in "that movie sucked big-time" is indeed on the derogatory list. For the life of me, I don't see why it would be.

[Joyce78]

13. Sucks?

Tom Cru defined sucks when he informed Ray that Kmart sucks ... now many of us know that WalMart sucks and Bush also.

[Floogeldy]

16. I don't know what else to say, except . . .

. . . either I am psychotic, or none of you were here at the time it happened.

Either way, I appreciate your responses and agree with all of you.

Thanks,

Floo

[zalinda]

18. I believe the origin is from parasites

as, blood suckers.

zalinda

[Nothing Without Hope]

19. I did a search for threads with "sucks" in the title and ...

didn't see one that looked like what you are describing - maybe you could try it and see if any of the thread titles/dates look familiar. I did see several times it was used with no objection, most notably this gem from January 23, posted by underpants:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=215&topic_id=5681

WOW ! it sucks how much the Steelers suck at sucking

I think I picked this suck a* mule to win but I didn't realize that it was possible to reach the level of suck that they have sucked to realize. Isn't it amazing that any single person could suck that bad and then reach a further level of suck that even the suckiest have not been able to suck at.

Even Jim Nantz is near stating how much they suck. First there was the "Peyton incident" and now this. Wow! it must really suck to be him.

Can they suck any more in the second half?

[Floogeldy]

20. Perhaps the thread was deleted?

It wasn't a pretty thread. I didn't post in it.

Maybe an admin who remembers could jump in here.

B-)

[Nothing Without Hope]

22. Yes, good point. It was probably deleted. But judging from what has

been said in this thread, I'm going to conclude that "suck" as it is generally used is NOT generally perceived as derogatory to gay men. If someone I am talking to feels insulted, I'll just not use it again with them. If this happens with a second person, at that point I'll reassess.

It was fun finding this out.

[Floogeldy]

24. Me too!

B-)

[imenja]

23. Men aren't the only ones who know how to suck

[BikeWriter]

25. Aiiiieeee!

[imenja]

27. just sayin

it's not right to make gendered assumptions

[BikeWriter]

30. Oh, yes'm, I agree...

I'm a 59-year old veteran, red-neck, outlaw biker, cowboy, radical feminist. Anyone making assumptions about me would probably be wrong!

[imenja]

32. a male feminist

Please explain to me what this means? I have some doubts as to whether such a best truly exists. (Of course I recognize the possibility that I simply might be wrong about that).

[BikeWriter]

33. I am a male feminist in that...

I strongly support women's rights in every way shape and form, from equality in the work place to freedom of choice over methods of birth control.

[imenja]

34. that's fantastic

and what counts politically. The rest is a personal matter between you and the women in your life. I have known some men for whom there is a great disconnect between political views and personal behavior. I think the latter is more difficult for most. You may very well have it mastered though.

[BikeWriter]

35. I have always thought women should be...

empowered to be whatever they wanted to be. I prefered a Partner beside me rather than a follower behind me.

[imenja]

36. I'll give you an example of what bugs me

Last year I dated for a while a guy who I agreed with politically on most issues. Only when he came to my house, he left his clothes all over the floor and never picked them up. After a shower, he'd leave my bathroom littered with towels. When I cooked him dinner he wouldn't even bring his dishes to the sink let alone clean up. He was also incredibly selfish in other areas I can't discuss on DU. So despite his relatively young age and stated political views, he was the biggest chauvinist I've ever encountered in my life. My grandfather, who died in his mid 90s and raised in a completely traditional view of the world would never have dreamed of treating a woman that way. So how a 35 year old can act that way is beyond me.

[BikeWriter]

38. I have no use for chauvinist...

except perhaps for crab bait. ;)

[Floogeldy]

39. He was an idiot

[Nothing Without Hope]

44. I'm guessing he was overcoddled by his mother

Women used to be trained to treat their sons as little lords and masters and to do all the "women's work" themselves unless they had daughters or other womenfolk to share the load. The payoff for the women was supposed to be that they would feel "needed" and be "the queens of the house." All lies, of course, but the cultural propaganda was -- and to an extent still is -- extremely pervasive and persuasive.

The things your ex-BF didn't think to do for himself I'd be willing to bet were always done FOR him by his mother so that he never learned to consider them at all. It's a blind spot. It's also a very common situation that I have observed many times, one in which absolutely everybody involved loses. Something similar also can happen in very wealthy famlies in which servants do all the work.

What makes him unusually jerky is that he is so self-centered that he has never caught on that he's doing anything wrong. I imagine that to this day he doesn't understand why you "got upset" and that you would be quite surprised by his theories on the subject.

[imenja]

45. I have no doubt that's true

I tried to talk to him about it to no avail. I'd ask him: Do you expect me to be your maid? Is that your view of what a woman's purpose is? No, of course not. Then how do you expect that stuff to get put away? He'd just say, well "I'm messy." I told him it was about respect, not cleaning habits. We were talking about the time he spent as a guest in MY house, not his own. He disrespected my furniture, left glasses all over my good wooden coffee table, despite my repeated requests for him to be careful. He wouldn't change in the slightest. It manifested itself in all kinds of other ways too. But you're absolutely right. If his mother had raised him properly, he wouldn't have dreamed of behaving that way.

[Swamp Rat]

47. He "sucked."

Porra! Que burro esse jumento!

abraço :hug:

[Lone_Star_Dem]

29. That was my first thought, too.

:shrug:

[JVS]

26. I've never seen this become an issue. It would suck if that happened.

[Nothing Without Hope]

28. Thank you all for a good laugh and an unexpected bit of education!

Have a good night. Setting the clocks ahead an hour will give us less sleep, but oh, having all that extra sunlight in the afternoon again is going to be lovely!
:woohoo:

Good dreams, all!
O8) :boring: O8)

[MrScorpio]

31. I feel ya, man

This is the wrong place to get paranoid about that crap

[orleans]

40. Did someone say "cocksucker" on post number 9?

gee. i didn't know we could say that!

[Floogeldy]

42. It is not what you say . . .

. . ., or more accurately, type.

It is the context in which a word is used.

Sincerely,

Dick Munch

[orleans]

43. thanks "dick"

:*

[tjwmason]

46. We gays have real battles to fight

Getting side-tracked over a pathetic little phrase like 'sucks' is so mindless I find it difficult to believe.

When men are physically assaulted because they are gay, saying 'goodness that T.V. show last night sucked' is such a height of irrelevance that I believe it actually to be detrimental.

[Cannikin]

51. Amen

[njdemocrat106]

48. I usually use "stinks" instead of "sucks"

"Stinks" sounds funnier in my book. Same with "butt" over "ass". (And I'm no prude, damn you! :P )

[Behind the Aegis]

49. You are not crazy!

I was the one who protested that word!


KIDDING!! But, I do remember the thread and I told my partner about it. We got a good laugh!

Honestly, some people can find offense with ANYTHING! My understanding was that something that "sucks" was meant to imply that the offending thing "sucked the life or breath" out of something. I.E. The play sucked. The play was "sucked dry of life." I could be wrong; it wouldn't be the first time (that you know of!). :)

[Floogeldy]

52. Ha ha!

And thank you for confirming my sanity. :)

B-)

[ChoralScholar]

50. if 'suck' is demeaning

also would be these rather tame phrases:

'blows'
'up yours'
'bite me'
'bite my ass'
'rip him a new asshole'

etc, etc...

I could go on, but