P.s.: The paper isn’t entirely about gay panic, but rather needs this snippet to “prove” that the Webis Trigger
Warning Corpus 2022 is at least partially flawed.
i’m not entirely sure what you’re going for here. i can tell you that there was a so called purple scare around 1950 in an attempt to remove any unwanted politician from office in the US. this was largely paired with the “red scare” (notice the similarity in color between red and purple) to remove communists from office. i suspect that the purple scare was often used as a pretense, because they couldn’t find enough evidence of suspected communist activity.
you know, i totally forgot about that definition and it wasn’t even on my mind that this was reclaiming. “Gay panic” is for when a hot person who you’re gay for flirts with you and you get all shy about it. I guess it doesn’t really feel reclaimed, just like another use of the word “panic”
After reading through the replies I had to go read the urban dictionary pages (particularly the “gay panic defense” one) and hoooooly.
Can’t decide. Curious y’all’s thoughts. Are there some things that are just too far gone to ever be reclaimed? Or can anything be taken back given enough time? Like, I would argue that the swastika is probably just gone for good. What’s the metric or litmus test here? For me, “bad bitch” coneys a mental image that nothing else does and I love to see women reclaiming that word in such a cool way (not that I’d use it, since I’m masc. And who’s using it plays a part, right?) But I also know people who feel offended by any form of its use by anybody.
I’m sure that there’s no way to distill it down into the equation that my brain is looking for. But right and wrong being judged mostly by vibes feels kinda fucked up to me. Particularly given some flavors neurodivergence for whom vibes and feels aren’t free.
First of all, it’s the behaviour of a same-sex crush.
Second of all, I’m not sure this is the best point to argue. I’m straight, so take what I say with as much salt as you like, but I checked what gay people are saying and the “reclaimed” usage is pretty controversial. Some say it’s minimising the harm gay people have suffered in living history. Others say it’s fetishising gay romance by focusing on cutesy crushes. Also, most states still have the gay panic defence in law, so it’s not just a past evil.
I’m a bit confused by the premise here. How would “panic” of any sort be reclaimed?
I think there are great examples of panics like the satanic panic that demonstrate how ridiculous and wrong, but I don’t understand what’s being reclaimed here or what you’re trying to cite?
I‘m talking about „gay panic“ as it’s been used by young queers since at least 2020. It’s definition is a bit difficult to pin down, but individual sources point to „the feeling of panic when one notices attraction to a person of the same sex“ which seems to be a trope in gay AO3 stories, as well as „a gay person panicking“, also used in queer AO3 stories, as well as some queer niches of social media.
Urban dictionary and AO3 both point to the use of „Gay Panic“ as a queer slang term from at least 2020 onwards, but citing them is difficult to say the least.
well, I‘ve seen the term be used by queers in a non homophobic fashion. hence i thought that „gay panic“ tags on AO3 probably aren’t homophobic either, and from what i’ve gathered by briefly skimming an AO3 search, that seems to be the case.
However, if i’m right, the automatic tag sorting they did is flawed, because they consider non homophobic texts to be homophobic (or covering homophobia).
Recalimed yes, but I find the term is still linked to homophobia. In this case internalized homophobia that leads to a fright, when realizing you find a person of the same sex attractive.
Depending on your papers topic you might also dig into the effects of trigger or content warnings on the audience. I heard of papers that suggested that the use of trigger warnings can cause a stress reactions in people, which leads to them percieving the offensive content far worse than the control group who was not given a content warning.
From what I‘ve been able to gather, the terms been used for a few years now (at least since 2020), though mostly amongst people under 25. It may very well be that it’s a niche youth slang that will die out eventually. In which case you’d be safe.
haven’t heard of gay panic yet, but bi-panic, which I think means realizing that you also find a same-sex person attractive.
Heck, when hearing gay panic I thought it was about “oh, everyone is suddenly gay, that can’t be right” like people say “Suddenly everyone is autistic. Autism-epidemic!”.
Did not expect this to be a legal strategy. And I guess the heterosexual person who acted in supposed “gay panic” is usually thought to be in a situation where a “No thanks, I’m not into [gender]” would have sufficed? So it leverages the homophobia of judge and jury?
