You're such a queer

Here's a realisation. One that I've come to after 5 and a bit years of going to a C of E comprehensive school in north Kent. Homophobia is commonly used in insults and is deemed nowhere near as offensive as a remark that is 'racist'. The same goes for other prejudiced insults. I wonder why this is.

Certainly, there are more people in the school from ethnic minorities than people who are gay, so this may have an effect.

What makes the whole situation even worse though is the fact that this school is a Church of England school. They're supposed to be peaceful and loving and endorse pretty much everything, yet there appears to be more prejudice there than at any other school I've visited. It's rather ironic really.

I think mainly, insulting someone with a homophobic remark isn't a clear sign of prejudice, more an attempt to degrade the victim because gay people are commonly more feminine than heterosexual men. However, there is still a lot of prejudice around - there probably always will be - and I think it is unfair that certain forms of it are treated far more seriously than others.

Sure, there is a history of racism and slavery worldwide, but if we are trying to achieve equality here, all prejudiced remarks need to be treated with the same attitude.

Eventually, I would like to see any insult - whether it is based on physical appearance, mental state or lifestyle choice - treated exactly the same. With light heartedness. Slowly, we are banishing viewpoints that see other people are inferior to the majority, and eventually I think there will be very little prejudice, but it would be great if the whole thing was taken a little less seriously.

For example, if somebody with a particular hair colour is insulted based on that particular trait, not much fuss is kicked up, but if somebody is insulted based upon their race or ethnicity a huge fuss is kicked up. But there's no difference. It's an insult based on appearance, that's all.

There are regular stories of primary school children being supposedly racist because they insult people in their classes who are from a different race than the majority in the class are - but they're not racist. They're simply acting as humans do. They exclude the one who is different, that they do not understand. There's nothing deeper than that, it's simply physical difference, the same as hair colour, eye colour, foot size, whatever.

So to conclude then, I think that we should treat all prejudiced remarks the same now - seriously - to banish prejudiced viewpoints, then we should work to ensure that insults are all just taken light heartedly. I don't see why it's such a big shock to people who immigrate here that they meet prejudiced remarks - it would be the same anywhere. As long as we all stay human, we will always be insulting each other, using character traits in these insults, so we should attempt to treat them less seriously and attempt to treat all insults, based on anything, the same way.

Anyway, just a thought. Thanks for reading.