[Maru]

Originally Posted by letmein

No, fag is not used in a non-homophobic way in the US. It’s a big no-no, period. It doesn’t matter the intent. It’s homophobic, period and has a horrendous history in the US.

That's not true. It's still used in the other non-homophobic definition even today and it's an acceptable use of it as another type of insult. Kind of like how (the n-word) is used outside of being a direct racial slur, it has a friendly, fluid use-case. Re-appropriating language for amusing effect is very American. Though how appropriate a re-appropriated interpretation can be determined by the listener, I suppose.

It's possible Mickey thought that playing around with Jojo would be more appropriate since she would know that we use fluid language. The language suddenly is less fluid in popular media in recent years, but common American English used among normal people is not treated that strictly... I've never seen anyone chewed out for using fag in the looser variant. It's usually a word that's tossed around in a joking manner among friends... though Mickey was using it in a way that was not casual like that and using the slur variant to press buttons...