"You straight?" "Wha..?" "You look lost, you straight?" "What?" "You know, are you straight? Are you okay?" "Yeah I'm okay.." This was a conversation between a stranger and myself on my first day of high school. I was a nervous 14 year old short haired girl with a sweatshirt three sizes too big that went down to my knees. I had recently gone from a country school of maybe 200 students, to an intercity school of 1300 students. And I was feverishly searching for my first period geometry class when an older student seemingly started asking me my sexuality. I was taken aback because at the time I had no idea that "straight" was slang for being "good" or "fine" or "okay". When someone explained to me that I was not being asked my sexuality, I was then offended. Because using the word "straight" as slang for being "good", was insulting. I mean isn't it? And everyone used the word "straight" like that... Unintentionally offensive? What do you think?
I think it's just how "gay" is used as an insult. Unintentionally(in most cases) offensive but it depends on the person
No, not really. In this context, straight is used as STRAIGHT as opposed to wobbly, all over the place, not focused, etc. You seem to be over-analyzing the use of the word and relating it to sexuality when it doesn't need to be.
I don't think "straight" in this case had anything to do with sexual orientation but rather direction. "Do you know where you're going?"
this conversation had nothing to do with your sexuality at all and you definitely shouldn't take it that way. "you straight?" is actually a really popular term where i'm from. if someone said, "would you like something to drink?" and you replied with, "i'm straight." that's another way to say, "no, i'm fine."
I here that often where I come from. I don't think they meant to offend you. When they used it, they only meant "Are you okay?" They weren't talking about sexuality at all when they asked you that. I guess I can kind of see where you're coming from though.
I've never honestly heard it used in that sense, but I would say it's to do with the evolution of the word straight. Bear in mind that in between "happy" and "homosexual", gay meant something very negative or immoral, so straight came to mean the opposite of gay in the sense of "on the straight and narrow" i.e. moral, and that just stuck when they both transferred to describing sexuality. So both the slang you're describing and the slang for heterosexual presumably both evolved independently from that old definition of straight rather than from each other.
Like others have said, it was just him asking if you were okay. It more or less sounds like "Are you feeling straight in the head?" or something along those lines.
