I find it to be deeply offensive. It doesn't matter who says it - the word is offensive and wins LGBT no allies.

on the gutter level with Eff Aye Gee and the En-word. Not a term polite people would use.

knows it's derogatory. It's existence is only for derogatory use, it's supposed to be the gay version of fag. It's only applicable to heterosexuals, and in particular, heterosexuals who attack LGBTers.

It's supposed to attack a natural act (sex and pregnancy) just as bigots attack our natural act (same-sex sex). It's an absurd act in itself, because there's nothing wrong with two straights having children through sex just like there's nothing wrong with two people of the same sex having sex. Saying "breeder" is in effect saying, "If you're going to call me fag, I'm going to call you breeder!" In that case, it doesn't even apply to straight allies. And it never should.

I'm sure there's people out there (to contradict my first sentence) that use the word as an attack without all the absurdity and irony involved. But they're probably idiots anyway.

never a serious offensive term.

but it's still derogatory, otherwise it stops working.

I have children. When I see the term "breeder" it offends me, and I'm a lesbian.

Gay man here who thinks "breeder" is as offensive as it gets. I could go the rest of my life without hearing it.

...and pwnmom admitted that she hadn't heard gay people call straight people breeders, let alone gays calling gays breeders in the lgbt forum.

She suggests that there are people on the rest of DU and not the lgbt forum, that have used that term.

The person you've been arguing with needs to reread the thread.

Post 24 from that thread:

pwnmom (1000+ posts) Thu Oct-26-06 12:05 AM
Response to Reply #23
24. I never know where to post anything.
Edited on Thu Oct-26-06 12:06 AM by pnwmom

”I posted it here, though I was addressing posts in different threads in GD or Late Breaking News, because I thought a moderator would move it here. But the breeder comments I saw today, (and it wasn't the first time), were not in this forum.

It isn't my "impression" that "gay people go around calling straight people 'breeders.'" I never heard my father, for example, or his partner, use that word.

But it has been my experience that some DU'ers use that word on these boards.”

TYY

” And if it isn't an insult, then why don't you call gays with children "breeders"? They're raising children, too.”

Pwnmom is admitting that gays don't call 'gays with children' breeders.

To be clear, I remember the term from the early 90s and know that the term exists, but not in reference to gay people, even the ones with children. No gay person would ever call another gay person a breeder.

Gays calling straight people breeders? ... That's another story.

TYY

Since the term refers to the act of having children, it doesn't make sense to me that it should only apply to straight people. Plenty of gays and lesbians have and raise their own biological children, while plenty of straight couples opt not to do so.

Regardless of its target, however, I think the term is inappropriate and we should refrain from using it. It only serves to be derogatory.

Kind of like how younger GLBT people use "anti-gay" rather than "homophobic". Vocabulary and language evolve, and breeder is less popular than it once was.

But I have NEVER seen or heard the term used in reference to gay people, parents or not.

The sting springs from taking heterosexual relationships and casting them less as Romeo & Juliet and more as artificial baby-factories.

...when I heard it - a lot, in conversation, mostly before the internet was important (eighties and early nineties) it was used by mostly heterosexual professionals who had chosen to not have kids, or to have kids late in life, for people who had kids in their twenties and - at this time, when it wasn't either the norm or legally required - expected the whole work world to bend over for their priorities.

I tended to be on the breeders' side, and thought that our society needed to be more child-friendly, but the reality is that it was not - corporations that offered child-friendly work environments were rare, and considered to be primo workplaces

If, in that world, a professional LBGT couple had had kids in their twenties or early thirties and started pressing their work environment to accommodate them, they might have been called breeders too, but it didn't happen often enough for me to hear much about it.

And once again, I just don't buy the "words are offensive and we have to quit using them" argument EVER. There just isn't any master authority that gets to decide what everyone means by a word and what emotional context they intend it to have. Personally I've never heard "breeder" used in an unfriendly manner - not saying it hasn't been, especially, say, in the world of right-wing hate speech - but in the real world I just never heard it happen before the word disappeared. And the concept of taboo is too powerful and useful to waste on words like this.

Its offensive

It has only been used to describe heterosexuals in my experience, but it is usually,as others have said, an attack on heteros who are anti-gay. It implies, unlike us, they have sex only to "breed" whereas we have sex for enjoyment and pleasure and don't feel the need to overpopulate the earth.

When the arguments against gay marriage were only people that can have children should be allowed to be married - in effect, the religious right were arguing the sole purpose for marriage was for breeding.

Think that is the only other place ever heard the term used.

It's meant as a pejorative. I don't like the word.

because i never have

I have heard the comment "Why would you want to be like the breeders" or something like that from a gay guy in response to an expressed desire by a gay guy saying that they want to have kids someday.

I don't think it was meant as an attack against the gay person, but it still had the negative connotation that being hetero or a "breeder" (as if the two are even equal) was bad.

I've never heard it used except for that one time and I've never heard it used against an LGBT couple who did have children.

EDIT TO ADD: Thinking about it, the person who said it has a very jaded view of "hetero-normative behaviors" and had been heavily bullied as a child.

I like the word and use it when I care to offend. I would not consider it to use against a gay couple with children/ I don't use it here on du cause I don;t like to be deleted. as long as people feel free to use "that's gay"," fag", and the rest, I will reserve the right to use whichever perjorative I choose. let me leave you with a cry from the 60's, on second though, maybe not. But lioness, you are quite right.