Up until some time in the 80s “straights” referred on anyone who did not participate in some form of reviled counterculture.
“straight edge” or “straight laced”
WASPS in suits and ties who went to church every Sunday and only had good missionary sex with the opposite sex for the means of procreation.
People who didn’t do drugs, or have gay sex, or listen to rock and roll.
Peoplew who weren’t hippies.
People who weren’t beatniks.
You know, man, the straights. (Imagine I am a beatnik in a beret snapping my fingers while I say this.)
I’ll pull up some examples of this usage later!
But yeah once upon a time if you referred dismissively to “the straights” people assumed you took drugs at weird parties and had sex with strangers. Not that you were explicitly homosexual.
You can see how it arrived at meaning ‘not gay people’ though. Especially in the 80s when all the straights started doing cocaine at business meetings, and the AIDS crisis etc.
I think my advice would be to remind them that even if they don’t feel the language is harmful, they are not excused from kindness and respect to others even due to their neurodivergence.
You can remind them that they can go on using whatever language that they want, and people who feel hurt or disrespected by those words are equally free stop interacting with them because they keep saying hurtful things.
So I was looking up a word, when I came across a term that’s apparently around in the Japanese internet, and if this definition is accurate then I think we need to borrow it into English.
[Image description: Japanese dictionary entry. It gives the three kanji that make up the phrase, then its reading – “setteichuu” – then the definition: “would-be creator (esp. writer) who is overly preoccupied with the background setting of their story. Derogatory, internet slang”. End description.]
Because, I mean… this definitely applies to me, and a lot of people I know, and probably a lot of people in general.
@pomrania It’s a portmanteau of ‘setting’ and ‘chuuninbyo’.
