[aldo_14]

*smacks rictor for using "fag" as a derogatory*

Free speech.

Besides, you use fundy and neocon as derogatory words.

Fundy and neocon are effectively criticisms of (political) opinion, though.  'Fag' is somewhat closer to a racial or religious epiphet, i.e. something less 'voluntary' than a simple viewpoint.

[Mars]

The average I.Q. might have dropped, but it's fairly obvious that there are some actuall intellectual debates taking place, in between all the bull****.

[BlackDove]

No... they're pretty much bull**** too.

[Mars]

Well, the fag thing is kind of bull**** I'm not sure if the capitalism one is or not, if it is somone tell me, cause I don't like bull**** in my mouth.

[Scuddie]

The word fag wouldn't be derogitory if people actually knew what it meant .

Now shut up and get back to bashing steve jobs.

By the way, fag implies a type of lifestyle, not sexual orientation.  Retards.

[Rictor]

*smacks rictor for using "fag" as a derogatory*

You know, when I really want to be insulting, I call someone an atheist.

[aldo_14]

The word fag wouldn't be derogitory if people actually knew what it meant .

Now shut up and get back to bashing steve jobs.

By the way, fag implies a type of lifestyle, not sexual orientation.  Retards.

If you consider the basic cultural use and context, it's extremely rare to hear the word 'fag' used to refer in lifestyle terms to any type of thing beyond the sexual orientation.

[ZylonBane]

You know, when I really want to be insulting, I call someone an atheist.

Why?

[Turambar]

he probably thinks that godless means no morals or something silly like that

[Mars]

The word fag wouldn't be derogitory if people actually knew what it meant .

Now shut up and get back to bashing steve jobs.

By the way, fag implies a type of lifestyle, not sexual orientation.  Retards.

Faggot (epithet) or fag, a generally pejorative term for a gay man, or for men who are judged to be "unmanly", weak or effeminate

The term faggot or fagot, meaning bundle of sticks, shows up around 1300 in English. It almost certainly came from Old French, possibly going back to Greek phakelos. Since those bundles of sticks were mainly used for fires, it's not surprising that the term came to mean burning sticks. Then there was that nasty business in medieval times where heretics were burned at the stake. Some later cites indicate heretics who repented and were spared a fiery death had to wear a picture of a faggot on their sleeve to show what might have been their fate. But no print evidence exists that homosexuals were referred to as faggots before the twentieth century, with the origin definitely in the U.S., not Britain.

The British continued to use the words fag and faggot as nouns, verbs and adjectives right through the early 20th century, never applying it to homosexuals at any time. To fag or to be a fag was a common term in British schools from the late 1700s and referred to a lower classman who performed chores for upperclassmen. While this term was also in vogue at Harvard in the first half of the 19th century, it died out by the mid-1800s in the U.S., leaving it in use only in England. Nineteenth century Britons also heard "faggot" used in reference to an ill-tempered woman, i.e., a ball-buster, a battleaxe, a shrew. That meaning of the term continued into the early 20th century, and the usage was gradually applied to children as well as women. The relationship, if any, between faggot-as-bundle-of-sticks and faggot-as-shrewish-woman is unknown.

The first known published use of the word faggot or fag to refer to a male homosexual appeared in 1914 in the U.S. It referred to a homosexual ball where the men were dressed in drag and called them "fagots (sissies)." Ernest Hemingway, in The Sun Also Rises (1926), included the line, "You're a hell of a good guy, and I'm fonder of you than anybody on earth. I couldn't tell you that in New York. It'd mean I was a faggot." A 1921 cite says, "Androgynes [are] known as 'fairies,' 'fags,' or 'brownies.'"

George Chauncey, in his excellent 1994 work Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940, says that the terms fairy, faggot, and queen were used by homosexuals to refer to men who were ostentatiously effeminate. Homosexuals who were not as showy referred to themselves as "queer" in the first decades of the 20th century. But the general public mainly called homosexuals "fairies." If you were in London in the 1920s through the 1940s and used the term "fag," the man in the street might have offered you a cigarette, and quite possibly that would have been the case with many Americans at the time.

All of this does little to answer your original question: How did a bundle of sticks come to mean a homosexual male?  Most likely it didn't. Here we'll have to go to theory. Since I'm writing this, mine will have to do.

We notice with some words a progression of usage that morphs along the lines of "woman/girl" > "woman/girl/child" > "effeminate male" > "homosexual male." The word fairy is a good example. "Faggot" in the sense of an ill-tempered woman is another. I independently came to that conclusion while answering a general question on the SDMB. But, in a post to the American Dialect Society mailing list, Dr. Laurence Horn, professor of linguistics at Yale University, posted the progression that I just used (he did it much more succinctly than I could).  Still unexplained is how a Britishism jumped the ocean in a short period of time to acquire a new meaning in the U.S. Perhaps it was an independent formation. Words happen.

As a last thought, a current notion holds that the Yiddish word faygeleh, "little bird," might have been the source, but lacks evidence other than the claim that the word was commonly used in Yiddish prior to WWII to indicate a homosexual. With the digitizing of publications allowing searching never before possible, perhaps some further scholarship will be forthcoming to help solve the mystery.

Resources: Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang, edited by J. E. Lighter, New York, 1994-1997.

[aldo_14]

he probably thinks that godless means no morals or something silly like that

No, he's just winding up Kazan.

[Nuke]

it turns out there is zero corelation between atheism and morality and likewise, religion and morality. i read somewhere that comparisional studies between populations of prision imates and law abiding citezens showed little differences in the percentage of atheists, christians, muslims, ect. the ratios were the same across the board. as the chistians say so well every time they fail at converting me (and before i threaten to burn down their church), "were all sinners". if a person is prone to evil, they will be evil, regaurdless of their religious choice.

[aceofspades]

Actually, considering that the term fag for homosexuals probably has to do with the earlier meaning of fag as in "firewood", I object to ayone using it to mean gay, whether derogatory or not.

[Drew]

Considering that every major company does this, this doesn't suprise me. It's why democracy and "free markets" suck. Unless there's some sort of international labor law, or global market restriction, the rich countries are going to be unemployed, the poor countries are going to be slaves, and the evil souless corperations will rule the world.

they could just choose to not work and not be paid ****ty wages. but in many cases in countrys such as china a ****ty job is the only alterative to unemployment and possibly malnourishment. its china what else are they supposed to do for money. so in a sense free markets do suck for providing an opportunity to work even though the pay is pretty bad.  from over here it may look like exploitation, but over there its generally more interpreted as hey cool i get to eat this week.

[Mars]

But why is there a lack of jobs to begin with: because there's a lack of jobs, because they're importing half their goods.

[Flipside]

The word fag wouldn't be derogitory if people actually knew what it meant .

Now shut up and get back to bashing steve jobs.

By the way, fag implies a type of lifestyle, not sexual orientation.  Retards.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCdT9dfrb-Q

<-------- In a country where 'Fag' still means something you set light to.

[Drew]

But why is there a lack of jobs to begin with: because there's a lack of jobs, because they're importing half their goods.

in china's view, importing half their goods is a damn good idea, because people outside of china can usually pay better for stuff than the people in china. that dosnt cause unemployment or lack of jobs at all, in fact it just promotes manufactuers to manufacture more.  i dont understand; are you saying there is a lack of jobs in china because there are a lack of chinese consumers?  there is actually a growing amount of jobs and a growing amount of middle class citizens, which at the very least correlates with the chinese government loosening its controls on the economy and allowing the free market to work in china for the first time in decades.

[Colonol Dekker]

I'll be honest i dont use the word fag to pick o people of te male persuasion, i dont pick on people of the male persuasion full stop. I didnt make te original comment.

I smoke FAGS not vice versa 

[Kosh]

But why is there a lack of jobs to begin with: because there's a lack of jobs, because they're importing half their goods.

The lack of jobs is because there are simply too many people.

And to say that the lack of jobs is because they are importing all of these goods is rediculous. China has a fairly substantial trade SURPLUS with many countries, especially the US.

[Drew]

which is exactly why those apple factories should be viewed as a general improvement to the quality of life in the region not a total capitalist vice.  they provide some sort of opportunity in a place where there previously was none.