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Is ‘Wimp’ the New ‘Sissy’?
An Inside Higher Ed Quick Take:
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education has written to Yale University to protest pressure on a student group to change a T-shirt designed to mock Harvard University by quoting F. Scott Fitzgerald’s analysis that “I think of all Harvard men as sissies.” Concern that forms of “sissy” are insulting to gay people and others led the student group to change plans, although FIRE maintains that university officials strongly encouraged the move, in ways that may have squelched free speech. FIRE maintains that the term “sissy” long ago stopped being strictly an anti-gay slur, and now is just another way to say “wimp.”
9 Responses to “Is ‘Wimp’ the New ‘Sissy’?”
sissy |?sis?| informal
noun ( pl. -sies)
a person regarded as effeminate or cowardly.
• chiefly offensive an effeminate homosexual.
That's the definition. And heterosexuals use it to insult each other by insinuating that the person being insulted is homosexual. And we all know how the majority of heteros deal with THAT one.
Question: Why can't heterosexuals come up with A DIFFERENT way to insult each other? Why do you have to demean and degrade your gay children (all 100% heterosexually created) to do so?
Morality indeed, heteros.
Morality. Indeed.
FIRE maintains that the term “sissy” long ago stopped being strictly an anti-gay slur, and now is just another way to say “wimp.”
As I read the FIRE quotes this is incorrect – they aren't saying it stopped being an anti-gay slur, they're saying it never was strictly an anti-gay slur. I would agree – as a child it never entered my mind the term sissy meant a homosexual, it was the equivalent of the term “wimp”.
No, no, no…..
“Liberal” is the new “sissy”.
LOL
Ok….
Why don't homosexuals pick another term instead of stealing the word “GAY”,
which USED to mean “happy”. Now it means “homosexual.
Maybe then we'll stop with the “sissy” remarks.
(which have nothing to do with being homosexual and everything to do with being a spineless wimp)
Now that's interesting. I read a very similar comment over at the Huffington Post where a commenter has the exact same definition of sissy as you've given, calling it “the Webster's definition of sissy”. Then someone actually checked it out and it turns out the “chiefly offensive an effeminate homosexual” statement is not there. That's NOT the definition. Here are the links:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/greg-lukianoff/fo…
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sissy
hi there Jim S:
This is straight out of my dictionary, as Jill noted. It does say, 'chieflly offensive…” etc. Curious differences, these dicitonaries, apparently. Mine is ©2005, opening in Rosetta.
“sissy |?sis?| informal
noun ( pl. -sies)
a person regarded as effeminate or cowardly.
• chiefly offensive an effeminate homosexual.
adjective ( -sier, -siest)
feeble and cowardly.
DERIVATIVES
sissified |?sis??f?d| adjective
sissiness noun
sissyish adjective
ORIGIN mid 19th cent.(in the sense [sister] ): from sis + -y 2 .
Thesaurus
sissy informal
noun
he's a real sissy coward, weakling, milksop, namby-pamby, baby, wimp; informal softie, chicken, milquetoast; mama's boy, pantywaist, twinkie, crybaby, powder puff.
adjective
sissy manners effeminate, effete, unmanly.
Jeff Davis, are gays supposed to use ugly words to describe themselves?
dictionary.com:
1. an effeminate boy or man.
2. a timid or cowardly person.
3. a little girl.
Merriam Webster Online:
an effeminate man or boy; also : a timid or cowardly person
thefreedictionary:
1. A boy or man regarded as effeminate.
2. A person regarded as timid or cowardly.
3. Informal Sister.
babylon.com:
adj. effeminate, lacking stereotypically masculine qualities; cowardly, timid
n. effeminate boy or man, male who lacks stereotypically masculine qualities; coward, timid person
Did you guys get together and all buy the “Dictionary for the Chronically Offended”?
That's Oppressed, DaGoat. Chronically Oppressed. Perpetual Victims, Incorporated.