Apple Inc. Offends LGBT with iOS 7’s “Gay” Insulting Definition
Apple Inc. offended a 15-year-old student, Becca Gorman, and the LGBT community, with Apple iOS 7 dictionary's definition of the word "gay." Ms Gorman is a daughter to loving lesbian parents.
Apple iOS 7 defines the word "gay" as (informally) stupid or foolish, i.e., That's so gay.
Ms Gorman told LGBT Weekly that with Apple Inc's definition of the word "gay," the company is promoting the pejorative use of the word gay.
She said that she was in disbelief when she first encountered the definition from Apple iOS 7. After careful thought, she decided to act upon her discovery and wrote an appeal addressed to Apple.
"I assume that you are a pro-gay company, and would never intend for any one of your products to be as offensive as this definition was. Even with your addition of the word informal, this definition normalizes the terrible derogatory twist that many people put on the word 'gay," she wrote.
In all fairness due to Apple Inc., the company responded promptly with Ms Gorman's appeal by calling her personally through her home phone.
"They told me it's so hard to track the dictionaries they're getting sources from, and that they were also shocked themselves. They also promised to look into the problem."
However, a recent report from MetroWestDailyNews.com said that Apple Inc. has yet to change the insulting definition of the word "gay".
This was not the first time that Apple Inc. had somewhat sneered at gay-related content.
In March 2013, Apple Inc. had blatantly refuse to include a collection of 200 erotic gay-themed images from the Library of Hollywood costume and set designer Ambrose Dubek as books available for download from its platform. The book, compiled by Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema's Thomas Waugh, and published by Arsenal Pulp Fiction, was aimed to encourage Canadians to enhance their intellectual freedom.
"It appears they have a very odd policy ... about visuals that they are more or less completely opposed to visual nudity or sexuality of any sort in their eBooks, which is a very bizarre kind of model for a bookstore, if you consider what's been published in the last thousands of years," Arsenal Pulp Fiction's associate publisher, Robert Ballantyne, said.
Apple Inc., for its part, explained through a statement its policy on "crude" content.
"Books must not contain prohibited explicit or objectionable content, which includes but is not limited to ...Textual encouragement to commit a crime (e.g. books supporting, encouraging or defending rape, pedophilia, incest, or bestiality or books detailing how to commit a sexual crime) or Excessively objectionable or crude content."
In 2010, Apple Inc. had also been under scrutiny for rejecting Tom Bouden's all-male graphic novel adaptation of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest .
"It's part of the living archive of gay history and of homophobia, that this particular book came out of an archive by a guy ... who collected gay erotica in an era when this stuff was illegal, illegal for reasons that you could be jailed for drawings of gay men having sex, any kind of expression of visual erotica, of gay culture, and they were passed on to secret bookstores.
So it's kind of a history of how we got here as a subculture," explained Mr Ballantyne.