Breeder (slang)

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Breeder is a slang term (either joking or derogatory) used to describe heterosexuals, primarily by homosexuals. It is drawn from the fact that while homosexual sexual activity does not lead to reproduction, heterosexual sex can, with implicit mocking by connotation of animal husbandry.

Breeder can also be used as a derogatory term by childfree people (not merely by homosexuals) to refer to parents who focus on their children and abandon their previous friends and lifestyle, or to women who give birth to what they believe to be an ungodly number of children.

The use of breeder in this way is not new. It appears, for example, in Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal, in which Swift repeatedly uses breeder to refer to human breeding:

The number of souls in this kingdom being usually reckoned one million and a half, of these I calculate there may be about two hundred thousand couple whose wives are breeders; from which number I subtract thirty thousand couples who are able to maintain their own children, although I apprehend there cannot be so many, under the present distresses of the kingdom; but this being granted, there will remain an hundred and seventy thousand breeders.

Swift's piece was meant as black humor, and refers to the breeding of children for the table. Some parents resent being referred to as breeders, and feel that the word reduces the process of raising their progeny to mere animal husbandry. ^{[citation needed]}

The offensiveness of the term is in some dispute -- while some heterosexuals find it inoffensive, others have found it to be a slur of a type which those who use it have often complained about. The term was part of a 2006 controversy in the heavily gay resort town of Provincetown, Massachusetts [1].