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Rivera is a first-year pre-political science student.  

By Jacinta Diaz de Rivera

While walking back to my dorm room late one Saturday night, I heard three visiting students yell at the top of their lungs, “UCLA is gay!” They were complaining of the silence pervading the campus on a weekend night. They continued, proclaiming their allegiances to other top-notch UCs and Ivies more alive on a typical weekend night.

On a separate evening, I walked into Westwood to watch “Spider-man” with a group of my friends, one of whom was decked out in a Spider-man costume. While most delighted in his outfit, others yelled that he was “gay” and a “fag,” as we trekked into Westwood from the dorms.

Unfortunately, it seems that everywhere I go at UCLA, I hear the words “gay,” “fag,” “fruit,” “queer” and other derivatives thrown around, implying stupidity and weakness. I used to speak up and question people who used such words around me, politely asking them why they used the word they did. But after hearing the words used so often, I ended up keeping mum and attributing the comment to ignorance and the more negative influences of pop culture.

I was never comfortable interrupting the flow of a conversation or a night out partying by lecturing my friends on their word usage while carefully ensuring that by questioning them I was not implying they were bigots or idiots. I do not blame them or other users of these words as the sole perpetrators of homophobia or discrimination.

Most often, people I meet who throw around the words “gay” and “fag” do so because everybody else does and they’ve never encountered problems with it. Students at UCLA who use these words are obviously educated, intelligent people. So why do we accept using words that prolong discrimination and hurt others?

The word “gay” is defined as happy, merry, lively, and in the form of a noun, a homosexual person. Somewhere along the line, it was twisted to colloquially infer stupidity or weakness.

“Fag” is rooted in the word faggot, referring to a bundle of sticks commonly used for fires. In earlier, less progressive times, the bundles of sticks were used to burn sinners at the stake. In the United Kingdom, a “fag” is slang for a cigarette. Stateside, “fag” is either a derogatory term for a homosexual or as is commonly used in slang, somebody (often a male) who is being too “fruity,” too effeminate or too stupid. Thus the connection between homosexuality and stupidity is beyond me. Why is it bad to be gay? Why do terms of homosexuality incite fear and embarrassment in people?

My challenge is to question accepted beliefs and vocabulary. I do not see the rationale in using sexual slurs when it is definitely a taboo to use racial slurs. Slurs are slurs. They are all derogatory. All infer that a certain group different from the majority is inherently weaker. All promote some misinformed idea that being a minority or being different is a negative.

Even if you rationally believe usage of these slurs is harmless or if you believe homosexuality is wrong, I should hope that you do not believe, with the opportunity of education within your reach, that discrimination and hatred are OK. These words do nothing for the greater good of society and certainly detract from a discrimination-free, learning-conducive environment.

Yes, we have freedom of speech. But with every freedom comes the responsibility to own your choices made with this freedom. When treading in the water of racially and sexually derogatory language, we must think about what we are saying and whom we are talking about. When you say your idiotic friend is a fag, though you may not mean it, you are inferring that individuals, people just like you and me, who happen to be homosexual, are idiotic and a thing to be laughed at.

I stopped questioning the people around me who used these words because I always felt it too uncomfortable. But I later thought of friends who have had difficult times with homophobia. I later think of how I would feel if I heard people using such words as “chink” and equating parts of my individuality, my existence and background with being wrong, stupid or laughable.

It may be easier to not speak up, but silence and accepting things as the way they are will only prolong such hateful speech and discrimination. There is something amiss when university-educated students use such hurtful and ignorant words that attack people for being who they are.

We have the opportunity of education. We have the opportunity to speak up, question and end our own ignorance. With all these opportunities we possess, we must take and own the responsibilities that accompany them. Ignorant speech, hurtful language and prolonged hate are inexcusable when we have the luxury to educate ourselves.

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