Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Legend of GayBlade

blog.archive.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 135 posts

Re: The Legend of GayBlade

#41

Post by hnick »

everdumb wrote: post #12

When I was a child, Smear the Queer was a game all the boys played. Fag was a commonly used slur. When I was in high school the state of California told gay couples to go fuck themselves. Societal progress is a wonderful thing to see.

I play games with people in their mid-20s and a few have let out "that's gay" as a synonym for something being bad.

I don't think any of them would qualify as homophobic, it's just more a case of hearing something so much that it creeps into your lexicon and comes out by mistake sometimes in a moment of distraction or emotion. It took me a while to unlearn it myself because it was extremely common in the 90s at my school (even among guys who later came out as gay, I guess you have to fit in).

Re: The Legend of GayBlade

#42

Post by bhfasdhjgdgsuyv »

parsimo2010 wrote: post #40
0xcde4c3db wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those who aren't familiar, Smear the Queer is a playground game in which one person has to keep a ball away from the rest of the group, who tries to tackle them. It's sort of like a cross between "reverse tag" and gridiron/rugby football. (The gay-bashing element is just a metaphor, you see.)

The "queer" in the game's name probably means odd, not homosexual. As in the person holding the ball is the odd one, and everyone should try to hit them. That doesn't stop people from misinterpreting it, since queer mostly means homosexual or some other sexual minority. It's slightly more pessimistic to think that the game is teaching our kids to kill homosexuals vs. some undefined oddness.

Lol so when I was getting my ass beat in middle school for sounding a bit effeminate during a game of "smear the queer" it was just because I was "odd". That must be why the called me a faggot too.

Re: The Legend of GayBlade

#43

Post by monadic2 »

parsimo2010 wrote: post #40
0xcde4c3db wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those who aren't familiar, Smear the Queer is a playground game in which one person has to keep a ball away from the rest of the group, who tries to tackle them. It's sort of like a cross between "reverse tag" and gridiron/rugby football. (The gay-bashing element is just a metaphor, you see.)

The "queer" in the game's name probably means odd, not homosexual. As in the person holding the ball is the odd one, and everyone should try to hit them. That doesn't stop people from misinterpreting it, since queer mostly means homosexual or some other sexual minority. It's slightly more pessimistic to think that the game is teaching our kids to kill homosexuals vs. some undefined oddness.

I don't think it much matters how the term originated based on my memories as a child—it was certainly internalized as homophobia and caused me a lot of pain growing up.

Re: The Legend of GayBlade

#44

Post by klyrs »

bhfasdhjgdgsuyv wrote: post #42
parsimo2010 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "queer" in the game's name probably means odd, not homosexual. As in the person holding the ball is the odd one, and everyone should try to hit them. That doesn't stop people from misinterpreting it, since queer mostly means homosexual or some other sexual minority. It's slightly more pessimistic to think that the game is teaching our kids to kill homosexuals vs. some undefined oddness.

Lol so when I was getting my ass beat in middle school for sounding a bit effeminate during a game of "smear the queer" it was just because I was "odd". That must be why the called me a faggot too.

Same. In my experience, this "game" was only "played" targeting femme boys (or in my case, "boys"), and never with their consent. But if we'd hide behind a teacher the mob would be all "oh it's just a game" and more often than not the teacher would try to goad the victim into playing. Fuck that

Re: The Legend of GayBlade

#45

Post by [deleted] »

hnick wrote: post #41
everdumb wrote: post #12

When I was a child, Smear the Queer was a game all the boys played. Fag was a commonly used slur. When I was in high school the state of California told gay couples to go fuck themselves. Societal progress is a wonderful thing to see.

I play games with people in their mid-20s and a few have let out "that's gay" as a synonym for something being bad. I don't think any of them would qualify as homophobic, it's just more a case of hearing something so much that it creeps into your lexicon and comes out by mistake sometimes in a moment of distraction or emotion. It took me a while to unlearn it myself because it was extremely common in the 90s at my sc…

[deleted]

Re: The Legend of GayBlade

#46

Post by bhfasdhjgdgsuyv »

klyrs wrote: post #44
bhfasdhjgdgsuyv wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol so when I was getting my ass beat in middle school for sounding a bit effeminate during a game of "smear the queer" it was just because I was "odd". That must be why the called me a faggot too.

Same. In my experience, this "game" was only "played" targeting femme boys (or in my case, "boys"), and never with their consent. But if we'd hide behind a teacher the mob would be all "oh it's just a game" and more often than not the teacher would try to goad the victim into playing. Fuck that

Yup. I learned pretty early on that telling the teacher would only make the beatings worse.

For all of those reading that think this is ancient history; I'm 27 and went to school in a city more progressive and accepting than any in America.

Re: The Legend of GayBlade

#47

Post by parsimo2010 »

bhfasdhjgdgsuyv wrote: post #42
parsimo2010 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "queer" in the game's name probably means odd, not homosexual. As in the person holding the ball is the odd one, and everyone should try to hit them. That doesn't stop people from misinterpreting it, since queer mostly means homosexual or some other sexual minority. It's slightly more pessimistic to think that the game is teaching our kids to kill homosexuals vs. some undefined oddness.

Lol so when I was getting my ass beat in middle school for sounding a bit effeminate during a game of "smear the queer" it was just because I was "odd". That must be why the called me a faggot too.

If you were getting beat up for the way you sound, that was regular homophobia, not the game. In smear the queer, you only get chased and tackled if you have the ball; if you get tackled you throw the ball away and someone else gets it and everyone chases the new person. What you described does not sound like a game of smear the queer.

Re: The Legend of GayBlade

#48

Post by textfiles »

prvc wrote: post #39
textfiles wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, as you saw, someone brought up "Death of The Author" (i.e. I may not even know I'm posting an ad) so there's that. But. The blog post is 100% posted because of the Netflix documentary. It's causing literally hundreds of people to go 'Now I hope they found GayBlade! How do we find it!' and also a screenshot of my twitter account (which I had nothing to do with and became aware of after people starting pinging me…

Thanks for responding with that clarification. I'd like to clarify, in turn, that my original post was intended more as observation than accusation. No malicious intent imputed! One thing I would like to add, that I think we would both agree on, is that regardless of everyone's exact motivations and the actual causal chain of events, the post is still, de facto, part of the miasma of publicity for the series. Anyway,…

I think there's been a discussed theory that if something gets public attention, and people respond to it, even if they're not intending to, that they're contributing to the promotion of that item. That goes back many decades.

I don't mind that discussion but I definitely don't want people thinking in any way we got money to write the entry; we simply put into a formal entry that we've had this for a while. A popular awareness of something we do helps a non-profit, so we'll clarify the context of it. I think we're both in agreement the more people know of our work, the better.

Re: The Legend of GayBlade

#49

Post by bhfasdhjgdgsuyv »

parsimo2010 wrote: post #47
bhfasdhjgdgsuyv wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol so when I was getting my ass beat in middle school for sounding a bit effeminate during a game of "smear the queer" it was just because I was "odd". That must be why the called me a faggot too.

If you were getting beat up for the way you sound, that was regular homophobia, not the game. In smear the queer, you only get chased and tackled if you have the ball; if you get tackled you throw the ball away and someone else gets it and everyone chases the new person. What you described does not sound like a game of smear the queer.

So when the other kids got chased and everyone called them faggots and queers it wasn't the game either? Or it was the game and 'faggot' isn't homophobic?

No, the game itself it homophobic, and everyone who played it knew or was learning exactly what everyone meant by queer, and it certainly wasn't 'odd'.

Re: The Legend of GayBlade

#50

Post by textfiles »

parsimo2010 wrote: post #40
0xcde4c3db wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those who aren't familiar, Smear the Queer is a playground game in which one person has to keep a ball away from the rest of the group, who tries to tackle them. It's sort of like a cross between "reverse tag" and gridiron/rugby football. (The gay-bashing element is just a metaphor, you see.)

The "queer" in the game's name probably means odd, not homosexual. As in the person holding the ball is the odd one, and everyone should try to hit them. That doesn't stop people from misinterpreting it, since queer mostly means homosexual or some other sexual minority. It's slightly more pessimistic to think that the game is teaching our kids to kill homosexuals vs. some undefined oddness.

Here is a citation in 1981 describing the game and absolutely not related to the term "odd".

https://archive.org/details/BAR_19810115?q=%22Smear+the+Quee...

Post reply on HN