The word “Twink” used to mean something. Now it’s just another term of abuse for queer men, an “easy shorthand for vicious stereotypes.” [The Awl via Metafilter] READ THE REST
Twinkie? Tinkerbell?
Oh Please. Twink is no more a “term of abuse” than calling someone a Bear, Otter, Daddy, Chub, Queen, or any other descriptor.
People are not big grey blobs of mostly water, you know. We are all different and as such, it makes sense to have words to describe ourselves to other people.
Growing up gay, going to bars, clubs, making friends, etc… I never ever heard Twink used as a pejorative for its own sake. In fact, most of the people who fit that description wore it with pride. It meant they still held on to their youth, looks, charm and size 28 jeans.
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A twink is a low-level character that spends extraordinary amounts of money on gear so they can wreck other people in PvP. I don’t see how that’s so bad.
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Wow, I haven’t heard “twink” in forever. The only usage I’ve ever heard was as an early synonym for newbie back in my netrek days.
Really? I have only ever heard this word used by gay people to humorously refer to other gay people, and it never seemed very vicious or downputting. In fact, some gay men I know fully admit to being a “twink”. It’s a descriptive term of a behavior, not an insult.
I can certainly see where it could be used as an insult, but no more so that someone who is relatively superficial or portrays a lack of depth.
Is it possible this is just a case of the conflicting meanings of a relatively new word? In that it means different things to different people based on it’s local usage and we have yet to reach a consensus on it’s meaning.
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I live in the States and, coinciding with it falling out of use the article suggests, I’ve never heard the term.
Society is a strange beast. For all of our progress we still have perceivable levels of racism and sexism. From that I can derive the gay community may have what appear to be good bouts of equality, there will always be those moments of intolerance that remind us that whatever individuality we express that someone just can’t accept it, generally spewing words like this.
What really sucks about this is it’s not just middle-age white males doing the spewing. We’re all equal in every way, including expressing our intolerance. I’ve kind of cut the whole thing down to Xenophobia if not Xenophilia. I personally will never truly understand being a woman, being black or being gay. But hey, that doesn’t matter. I personally understand being human and wanting to be individual and wanting to be yourself openly within Society. I’d imagine a great number of other people want that too…
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I thought it meant a pretty young man with a slender build.
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I’ve never heard it used in a derogatory term. In the opposite, twinks are usually proud to be twinks, too-old-to-be-twinks wish they were still twinks, and a lot of people just crave twinks…
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Having been familiar with the “original” definition before playing WoW, the first several times I saw the term used in chat were… confusing.
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It was used in gaming before WoW, back in the day when trolls were called “snerts”. It implied having a “sugar daddy” character to feed items to a lower-level character, not specifically for PvP but for easier/faster leveling. (In fact, nobody called it “PvP” back then either.)
The photo of young dudes in paw-scarfs and undies with paws drawn in glitter on their butts makes me feel like the article is about to take a sudden left turn into being about furries. Especially as it’s right above a catalog of animal names for different clades of gayness - lots of subtypes of bears, otters, wolves…
Seriously, I was at Anthrocon last weekend and those guys would not have been out of place on the dance floor at all. Except maybe they need a few more glow-sticks or LED toys. GIVE IT UP AND EMBRACE YOUR INNER FURRY, MAINSTREAM GAYS.
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South Park has done a good job redefining “fags” as middle aged fat guys who ride loud Harleys, but I think it needs to also include people who walk around with parrots, boa constrictors, or AR-15s.
doumbek3603 is right. This is a term used by the gay population to describe a type of gay male. There is no scandal here. We use labels every day. People need to look past the word and see the intention of the person using the word.
If a guy calls you a twink he might be paying you a compliment. If someone called me a bear I would take it as a compliment and say, “Thanks!”
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halekon
I’m with the group here. I had always thought twink referred to pretty young gay men of a slender build.
I’m surprised no one has mentioned the Always Sunny episode that explores the issue. Only link I could find: http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/hes-a-bear/17wb624sn?cpkey=07e5f3a4-cbf7-438f-b7dd-ace27f421fa8||||
In New Zealand twink is a brand and colloquial name for correction fluid.
Some of them are.
…this explains some of the looks I’ve gotten when asking foreigners to “pass the twink”. I guess NZ is the only country where that particular brand name got used for corrective fluid.
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