Breeder (slang)

"Breeder" is a denigrating term for heterosexuals used in LGBT slang. It is often used pejoratively.

The use in homosexual groups is drawn from the fact that their sexual activity cannot lead to reproduction, whereas heterosexual sexual intercourse can, with implicit mocking by connotation of animal husbandry, the original usage of the word.

"Breeder" can be used as a derogatory term by childless people of any sexual orientation to refer to parents who focus on their children and abandon their previous friends and lifestyle, or to women who give birth to many children. The phrases "breeder, not parent" (BNP) or "parent, not breeder" (PNB) are used by some childfree communities to differentiate between what they regard as positive and negative parenting.

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 cannibalism. Some parents resent being referred to as "breeders", and feel that the word unduly reduces the process of child-raising to animal husbandry.

The term was part of a 2006 controversy in the heavily gay resort town of Provincetown, Massachusetts, when petitioners against same-sex marriage whose identity was published complained of having been called "breeders".

Similarly, the term "welfare breeder" is colloquially and pejoratively used to refer to a person who is suspected of having children in order to obtain government resources, similar to the term welfare queen.