Monitor site counts more than a million uses of Gay slurs on Twitter

by Shaun Knittel - SGN Editor

NoHomophobes.com, a website calling itself a 'social mirror,' reported this week that it found 2.5 million uses of the word 'faggot' on Twitter since it started counting in early July.

Evidenced by a daily counter on the home page of NoHomophones.com, the use of Gay slurs on the social media platform is rampant. Since July 5, the site found nearly 900,000 tweets with the phrase 'So Gay' and another 800,000 instances of 'No Homo.' 'Dyke' wasn't far behind with about 350,000.

The website is run by the University of Alberta's Institute for Sexual Minority Studies and Services.

'We never imagined the scale of casual homophobia that actually exists on social media,' Kristopher Wells, associate director for the institute, told the Advocate. 'The use of homophobic language remains one of the few socially acceptable forms of discrimination in our society - and, make no mistake, leads to isolation, bullying, beatings, and tragically, youth suicide.'

The site breaks down statistics by week. From Sept. 20 through Sept. 26, the word 'faggot' was included in 218,946 tweets.

Here are some examples the Advocate found on Sept. 27 alone: Someone re-tweeted, 'My math teachers a faggot.' Then there was an insult, 'hope u get lice faggot.' Another appeared to try to reclaim the word: 'I'm a faggot. Lol.'