One of my kids came out as gay. I grew up in a very homophobic environment in the 70s. I would quite often called timid people puffs etc. Sometimes around my kids, because that was how I grew up. You discouraged timid behaviour to stop them getting bullied. Realising one of your kids is gay was a real eye opener for me as to how bad these phrases are.
I would never treat a gay person differently. I just saw it as an expression that was common when I was young, and also in the environment I worked in. For context, I used to play squash with a guy from work, who everyone was convinced was gay. He actually got married in a heterosexual relationship a few years later, but whether he was or wasn’t never bothered me. This ofc doesn’t excuse the practise, it just shows how warped I was.
General Sherman early in life was quite alright with slavery and a casual racist against Black people, and later became an ardent anti-racist (at least, anti-racist with regards to anti-Black racism). He noted, some years after the US CIvil War, when asked by younger folk how so many people could have blithely accepted slavery, that man is more a creature of habit than originality.
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I have to agree here from experience.
One of my kids came out as gay. I grew up in a very homophobic environment in the 70s. I would quite often called timid people puffs etc. Sometimes around my kids, because that was how I grew up. You discouraged timid behaviour to stop them getting bullied. Realising one of your kids is gay was a real eye opener for me as to how bad these phrases are.
I would never treat a gay person differently. I just saw it as an expression that was common when I was young, and also in the environment I worked in. For context, I used to play squash with a guy from work, who everyone was convinced was gay. He actually got married in a heterosexual relationship a few years later, but whether he was or wasn’t never bothered me. This ofc doesn’t excuse the practise, it just shows how warped I was.
General Sherman early in life was quite alright with slavery and a casual racist against Black people, and later became an ardent anti-racist (at least, anti-racist with regards to anti-Black racism). He noted, some years after the US CIvil War, when asked by younger folk how so many people could have blithely accepted slavery, that man is more a creature of habit than originality.