http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJjdFV5ZS7s

Massive double standards to get in a hissy fit over raped and faggot. Go ahead and -frag me, I don't give a shit what the feelings police thinks.

Care to extrapolate? I don't really understand what you mean by 'double standard'. How so?

rape and faggot are such ugly and despicable words i'm not sure why you'd ever want to use them

Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me

I call harbleu a faggot all the time, I personally don't care if people call me a faggot either as long as people use it in a friendly way. Now if someone calls me a faggot in a derogatory non-friendly manner, I'll obviously be upset about it. Sensitivity to words like faggot widely varies depending on who you ask, some people are super sensitive about it, some aren't.

btw harbleu is a faggot

my main issue is that i'm not creative enough to come up with good insults

lol, Are yall like lesser or unequal peoples from the rest of the human race?

IMO, the community is doing a pretty good job at phasing out gay slurs. The people who use them are now in the minority and often illicit condoning remarks from others. The streamers and casters are especially conscious of it. All of them call people morons/idiots/etc instead of faggots. IIRC, when seanbud did the map reviews this season, he'd call hiding spots cheap or dumb instead of gay like what they were called for a while.

I cannot speak to the how the community feels about lgbt rights on the whole but as a bi guy I'm happy with the progress made here thus far.

Because last time I was in a stream with people discussing this I brought up how nobody seemed to get mad at illustrious invite soldier kyle "ghos7ayama" marich's REAL NIGGA GAMING movement. To which people who had been saying that faggot/raped were unacceptable unironically responded, "yeah but there's no hard r." What people get offended by is entirely up to them and there's no magical re-victimization ray emanating from the TF2 community that makes rape less of a serious issue or denies gays their rights. As a whole I'd say that the TF2 community is realistically pretty progressive and liberal when it comes to actual opinions on human rights.

There is a responsibility as an adult to listen to what people are saying and contrast it with what they actually mean. When I call a guy retarded for missing 6 shots on a medic in a pug, I don't mean that he probably has a mental disability and as such I am denouncing him for being less of a person and less deserving of equal treatment in society.

Also as an english major it offends me when people get mad about "the r word" because something that people consider "more appropriate" like the word disabled in reality have a much more derogatory or at least explicit denotation.

Well I definitely understand what you mean by double standard now, but my main issue with the usage of such words is simply what I stated above, that I feel they're holding the game back and have negative connotations, and that there really isn't any good reason to use them. I have the exact same issue with everything ghost7ayama has said. It's not that I believe there's a derogatory intent behind the words when TF2 people use them; in fact, I believe I made it pretty clear in my OP that I understand the 'friendly' intent.

I see it pretty simply. There are very real negative consequences of using those words. Why are we using them? When you consider the immense number of suicides annually that have been attributed to hatred toward homosexuals as well as murder and even bullying as blatant hate-crimes, in addition to the amount of rape that occurs and goes unpunished, ( and, if you want to bring the n-word into this, then the centuries of prejudice and slavery), I'm astounded that anyone would use these words as a joke or whatever when there are very real issues attached to them and there are so many less offensive alternatives. I just don't understand why people use them. That's all.

I feel like we have done a pretty great job getting rid of these slurs online. It's not over yet, but considering how bad it was we have made huge adjustments to our vocabulary.

My biggest cringing moment on mumble is when someone drops the N word. It just makes me shudder a bit each time.

I know I probably shouldn't throw that in with this discussion, just want to add that we still have a long way to go.

Because a large portion of the population uses those words in a humorous fashion to destroy any negativity associated with them. I don't get mad when people throw around cancer in mumble despite having lost my best friend less than three months ago, because even when he couldn't walk anymore even he was making jokes about it.

I've thrown around THE N WORD with plenty of black players of this game in mumble and it's never been anything other than well-spirited. If there's any sort actual negative consequence to usage of words in society, it has been because of intent and not because of vocabulary. I throw around faggot as much if not more than anyone else in this community and I'm dating a bisexual, and marisa has already attested in this thread that it is more so the intent than the word choice that matters.

The reality of humor is that anyone that thinks that certain things are off-limits doesn't understand the purpose of humor.

I'm probably a really good example for this type of thread. Personally I throw out raped and faggot quite frequently. To me there's a fine line between joking or saying it in a spur of the moment response, and then there's a time when you seriously mean it and show hate towards them for being (Lets just use a gay/lesbian male/female for example) But this is also the internet, and words are thrown out because it is the internet. I think like 95% of the tf2 community wouldn't throw out those words in society, or if you met them irl at lets say like a lan. Many people have the social and society standards down and aren't as stupid irl as they might be online (Like me.)

'Faggot' implies disrespect to homosexuals. 'Raped' implies a brutal violation, not disrespect. 'Raped' is fine, 'faggot' is deprecated.

I got called a faggot in a dota game because of the rainbow in my avatar :(

I think you're one of the wittiest posters on this forum, but finally you've thrown something up that I just can't agree with you on. Faggot and Nigger are just completely unacceptable around me and in my mumble. Regardless of your justifications. There are some things that just cannot be 'destroyed.'
To each his own I suppose.

I guess we're going to have to agree to disagree because personally I find the potential negative consequence of making someone feel terrible about their sexuality, or bringing up something from their past they'd rather avoid, or bringing skin color back into discussion with someone who'd prefer that society stopped making an issue of it, is not as important as the potential for a few cheap laughs.

And I do want to address rr's point too, I feel like a lot of those words are thrown out simply because it's the internet, but to me that's exactly why they shouldn't be thrown out. It's a lot harder to understand someone's intent from text or from speech when you don't know the person at all, and again, I personally prefer to air on the side of caution.

"I’m not homophobic. I just think 'faggot' hits and hurts people. It hits. And 'gay' just means you’re stupid. I don't know, we don’t think about it, we're just kids. We don’t think about that shit. But I don't hate gay people. I don't want anyone to think I’m homophobic. Well, I have gay fans and they don't really take it offensive, so I don't know. If it offends you, it offends you...If you call me a n---a, I really don't care, but that's just me, personally. Some people might take it the other way; I personally don't give a sh--."

Tyler, The Creator about his usage of the word 'faggot' in his songs.

<3 stay strong deer frend <3

#16 wait so brutal violence is totally ok but disrespect is worse than the holocaust?
I fucking love the internet

being offended is an active choice that each person has the opportunity to make every time they hear a word. if the word faggot hurts your feelings it is because you choose to have them hurt as such a reaction supports your identity which is apparently based on not being called a faggot (which is silly as hell).

grow up.

"Faggot" and "raped" are words and nothing more. They are neither inherently good nor evil, and have no value other than what we assign to them. Getting upset over their usage is silly.

Honestly the problem is that the gaming community as a whole is based around the internet, so most people will say stuff that they would never dare say in public. As great as it would be for everyone to get along and for no derogatory terms to be thrown around, that is simply unrealistic. Whether it be homophobic, racist, or just crude you can't avoid this type of language especially on the internet. It would be nice though if people who used this language realized the implications it could have on people who take offence to it. For example #16 doesn't find the word rape offensive, that's fine, but there are a number of people you can encounter in your day to day life who have had their lives devastated by rape and you just casually throwing that word out around them probably isn't the most respectful thing to do.

I guess I am trying to say use whatever language you want as long as you know the company you are around won't be hurt by it, if not maybe you should be a little reserved.

This is essentially how I feel about it, but I'd like to add that on the internet people beyond your intended audience have access to the words you speak and type, and I wish we'd consider their impact as being on more people than just those in your mumble, or just hose on tf.tv.

I'm having trouble understanding what you mean, since words have no value. /s

Value has ALREADY been assigned to those words. Meanings of words can change, but the word "faggot" hasn't gotten there yet, and straight people using it as a general insult isn't really helping. The word doesn't personally offend me, but I don't see how that's even relevant. You don't get to decide how people should react to the things you say.

I'm not saying that the words should never be used, just that people shouldn't try to justify it by saying it has nothing to do with homosexuals or black people or whoever.

I don't think people are really even thinking about homosexuality (most of the time) when they call someone/something a faggot/gay angrily. "Faggot" is slang now and it really means whatever you think it does.

If somebody really hates homosexuality then they can insult you in an unlimited number of ways without having to say the word "faggot". If you feel someone's insulting your sexuality then speak up about that person's hate. Its better to put effort into diminishing actual hate than stopping the use of some arbitrary slang. If it were magically impossible for anyone to say the words "faggot" or "nigger", the amount of racists or homophobes wouldn't suddenly change. 10 years from now "faggot" will probably end up meaning something else to most people and hopefully everyone has more equality by then too.

I'm gay myself and the word "faggot" doesn't bother me at all, and I use it myself fairly often. Maybe it's because it has never been said to me in a derogatory way, but even if it was, I don't think it'd bother me that much. People have become much more accepting than even just a few years ago and anyone who would call me a "faggot" in a derogatory way would most likely be someone that I wouldn't care to associate with anyways.

Like June said before, I think it's mostly about context.

I don't know, maybe it's because of rampant homophobia and the lack of marriage rights.
Personally, "faggot" doesn't bother me much unless it's actually used with intent of being malicious towards my sexuality. It's still a slur, and while I don't get on my gay preaching soapbox cbear style, it can still be offensive regardless of intent.

MOTHERFUCKER