Faggot use to mean a bundle of sticks

I woke up this morning to 3 interesting stories on CBC Radio Edmonton. This post if about the first story.

Last week ISMSS (Institute for Sexual Minority Studies and Services: http://www.ismss.ualberta.ca/index.htm  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/iSMSS) with the University of Alberta posted a video as part of their NoHomophobes campaign to end the use of homophobic language.

In that week the video (below) has gone viral and been mentioned in places as far as the UK and New Zealand. Please watch and share.




Links to associated news articles I found in just googling for the video:

• Edmonton Global News: http://www.globaltvedmonton.com/video/no+homophobes+psa/video.html?v=2324284347&p=1&s=dd#stories
• Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/09/no-homophobes-commercial-anti-gay-language_n_2441597.html
• San Diego LGBT Weekly: http://lgbtweekly.com/2013/01/09/new-tv-commercial-confronts-use-of-casual-homophobia-video/
• Pink News (UK): http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2013/01/09/video-canadian-tv-ad-campaign-asks-why-faggot-is-considered-an-acceptable-word/
• Saskatoon Global News: http://www.globalsaskatoon.com/video/homophobic+online+slurs/video.html?v=2324179541&p=1&s=dd#video

ISMSS's NoHomophobes campaign also uses a website: http://www.nohomophobes.com to illustrate the prevalence of the use of the words Faggot, No Homo, So Gay, and Dyke in twitter posts. As of me writing this, the numbers for today are:
Faggot 8230. No Homo 2772, So Gay 2441, Dyke 900 - from just before I wrote "As of me writing this...."
I will now write the numbers as I see them when I get to adding them to the post: Faggot 8287, No Homo 2808, So Gay 2470, Dyke 917. (Note that was about 4 minutes from when I wrote the first numbers on a piece of paper and the last number just now.)



Personally I have been lucky and only had homophobic words thrown in my face once (that I recall). In the moment it hurt, and was a shock, but I ignored it in the moment because I had to.

It was when I was student teaching in a school for students with behavioural problems. I was escorting a student from the gym, where he'd got into an argument with another student and was told to leave before it got too violent. I was about 1-2 m behind the student - keeping a distance so he would not lash out at me, but close enough to show authority. When he stopped midway down the hall, and I didn't (slowed down though), he yelled a few obscenities at me, including the word faggot. Before he had finished saying all he had to say, and it wasn't all that long, 3 other adults had appeared from nearby classrooms to help with the situation.
I took what he said to me as not something directed specifically at me, but more at 'someone' - me being the someone.
He was informed, a day or two later, to apologize to me. As I recall, there wasn't much (if any) of an apology. Mind you I left the school about 2 weeks later due to other circumstances (namely that what the University wanted to see me do I couldn't do in that school .... proper unit planning and assessment techniques).