I would urge people who use "Gay Panic" as a silly term to describe someone flustered by and attracted to someone of the same sex to read this article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_panic_defense

Then think very carefully about whether you want to remind people of a time when this was an actual legal defense against assault and murder of homosexuals. It's like using the "N" word. Yeah, you can use it to try and "take the power back" if you think that's what you're doing. But to most people, it's just unnecessary and a reminder of our earlier barbarism.

^ In today's episode of I don't want to learn this, but I need to...

Common Law jury-appeal bullshit. Figures.

The term when being used by the LGBT side has a much different meaning from this nonsensical and biased abuse by judges that it may have been in the past. This has nothing to do with taking power back, the term will simply evolve to mean something entirely else over time, as language always tends to go. Heck, I am sure most people don't even know about this anymore. Let the bullshit fade away as it is systematically eradicated from every court across the civilized world.

Don't be afraid to use words just because of bad history. If it's something as vague as putting together the word gay and panic, then your definition is as good as anyone's. Nobody's gonna scream "I am having a gay panic defense law right now!".

last edited at May 5, 2020 5:49AM

yeup, what they said. ^

I guess it's good that OP found out about this (and here's hoping to it just being a bit of appalling trivia for more folks in the future) but that doesn't magically disqualify words and phrases from having more than one meaning. Gay panic and the "gay panic defense" are two entirely different things, and they're very very easy to understand the difference in conversation.

Yeah, I'm not going to suggest anything other than just be aware that it's a thing. I personally won't be using the phrase in a silly manner ever again, but maybe there will be a time when its former meaning has been eclipsed completely. I thought I should let people know of its existence because I was unaware of it until I decided to look up the term on google image search, expecting some funny pictures. The results I actually got were sobering.

Are we going to give more words power over us? I'd understand if it was still legit legal defense and most countries didn't try to remove it/removed it, but when it's clearly being delegitimize all over the world? The best way to make this phrase stop mean anything and become harmless is to keep using it in such silly manner. I'm honestly tired of people policing language, as if single words had much so much power over us. They have exactly as much power as we give them and by refusing to use them and asking other people to not use them, you're only make them more powerful and legitimize their meaning as a insult.

I'd say there'd be more point to this if it were codified as "gay panic" somewhere, but from what I've seen it's just a descriptive label put on certain defense strategies in court; it's not like anyone says "we invoke gay panic rights!" or somesuch.

And I'm not sure how much that matters, but it seems the strategy had rather mixed success even during times when courts were incredibly homophobic, and also it seems more of an issue for gay men, not so much lesbians.

So, yeah. But in general I'm not a big fan of lingual censorship. Language is so contextual; and it should be primarily judged by the context it's used in, not so much with just a banhammer on anything that's ever been misused by somebody. But of course I can also understand that if for example you were personally a victim of such a thing you wouldn't find it very funny to see it all the time again ...

I love how y'all are talking about a bullshit jury-appeal gambit restricted to Anglosphere Common Law countries (two categories that are heavily interchangeable as Common Law legal systems occur essentially only in present or former British territories) like it was something of wider relevance. (Most of the world lives under different legal traditions, mostly variations of the Roman/Civil Law.) It's a ploy directly deriving from the central role of the jury in those systems and the due primacy of swaying the opinion of the jurors in your favor - thinly disguised appeal to homophobia is hardly even the most morally bankrupt and irresponsible courtroom antic that has been employed to that end, though it's certainly in the running.

Idk. I just knew it existed along with trans defense. How effective it was or how often it was used, I have no idea. I mostly ranted how stupid and counterproductive censorship is in general anyway. Honestly until that topic poped up I totally forgot this defense existed, so thanks for reminding me I guess.

last edited at May 12, 2020 10:15AM