I've written about this before, but I think I should bring it up again. I had a roommate some years ago, shortly after coming out, who was always making little snide remarks about me being gay. Him and his girlfriend would say "oh that's gay" all the time. He would call me fag or homo, but always in a "I'm only joking" sort of way. I was so concerned with people accepting me as a gay man that I went out of my way to make sure they knew they did not have to censor themselves around me and that they could joke freely. Did that build respect? No, it actually brought about just the opposite. The attitude I ended up getting from this guy was "hey, I can make fun of this stupid fag to his face and he don't even get mad". His "meaningless" phrases soon took a much darker tone and I went from being his "faggy friend" to being called cocksucker, faggot and all kinds of other things, which I took with a whole bottle of salt because I wanted to prove to him that it didn't bother me. So even though we started out as getting along pretty well, I finally got really tired of being treated like I wasn't even human or didn't have any feelings at all.

And Patti is right. Calling a man by the term "girl" when you feel he is less than a man means you do not think very highly of women. What does it mean when you call someone "gay" whom you feel is stupid and worthless?