Is "tea bagger" an offensive term?
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M$3 Answers
There are also political meanings to the word and a recent usage of it on the news that you can read at Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teabagging
In general, if someone calls you a teabagger, or you call someone else that, it is being used in an insulting or derogatory manner.
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M$
I think if you use the word tea-bagger the younger generation may see it as a sexual fetish and the older generation may see it otherwise. I'm only 31 so I'll have to wait till I'm a lot older to see what other terms change their meaning.
me
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M$
I'm neither very young nor very old, but I do remember when "gay" meant happy. And I confess that I was not aware of the sexual connotations of teabagging. I simply assumed that teabagging was a way of characterizing the protesters, as they model themselves after the revolutionaries who participated in the Boston Tea Party. I think that some terms may simply be more regional than not. I'll have to ask my sibs if they've ever heard this term as it denotes a sexual act. If anyone of them is likely to have heard the term, it would be my brother, who's a cop.
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M$
That's really not true. Even before the sexual term was coined, teabagger was used to mean someone who has a lowly job or someone who is clueless and doesn't even know they are clueless.
As with many euphemisms, the exact original of the phrase being used for that meaning is muddy, but it's there, and it's meant as an insult. Therefore, I'd say it's offensive to call someone an idiot, so calling someone a teabagger, referring to the same thing as calling them an idiot, is offensive.
As for the sexual act, no, it's not offensive, per se, any more than calling "Doggy Style" offensive. It's a sexual act.
However, it is a sexual act that some have said is more common amongst gay men, and it has sometimes been used to call someone 'gay' by saying they participate in thsi activity with men. While I don't think there's anything offensive about gays, some people do, and use the term as an insult.
I think being insulting for the sake of insult is offensive, regardless of the terminology used.
Thus my answer stands: the term can be offensive when it's used offensively.
I think you are confusing "insult" with "offensive term" which are two different concepts. For example, consider a Jewish person. If someone calls him an "idiot" that is an insult. If someone calls him a "kyke" that is an "offensive term". If someone calls him a "Jew" in a hostile and nasty tone of voice, then insult is intended and offense will be taken yet you can't call it either an insult or an offensive term. It is the proper term being used in an offensive way. I think "tea bagger" is most similar to this third situation.
Also note that if "tea bagger" really were an offensive term, some officious person or software would be making us type "t** b*gger".
I agree with this answer, primarily because I believe that the issue of offense is relative to the listener: What may be offensive to you is not necessarily offensive to me. Culturally based names offer a classic example. A person's name in one language can have beautiful connotations, while its phonetic equivalent in English can have offensive connotations.
Another saying that attests to the issue of relativity: "He doesn't even know when he's being insulted."
"Common knowledge" isn't necessarily common. Until now, I had never heard of a "teabagger" as it pertains to a person engaging in a sexual act. And, no, I haven't lived a sheltered life. I've lived in metro-Detroit for most of my life and in Salt Lake City for twenty years. Believe it or not, Salt Lake has a huge openly gay population; the Gay Pride parade is a road-closing event. However, I know more gay women than gay men, there. Even still, as a straight person, I traveled in different circles than my gay friends/acquaintances did. "Teabagger" is just not a word that I would have encountered in casual conversation.
So, to answer the question, I don't find the word "teabagger" offensive. I have no reason to.
I'm glad you answered this with tact. I might not have been so nice. I have wondered before, as I will offer respect to the intelligence of the members of all political parties, didn't they see that this nickname would be a probable outcome? It seems to me the Tea Party did not think this name selection through.
The Tea Party folks are not the sort that anyone would expect to think anything through. For example, the original Tea Party was against taxation without representation. Today's taxes are levied by elected representatives. I guess the Pretentious Sore Loser Party just didn't have a good ring to it.