15-year-old Becca Gorman was writing a high school history paper on gay rights and wanted to start with the basics.
But when the Sudbury sophomore looked up the word "gay" on her 2011 MacBook Pro's built-in dictionary, she saw that it was defined as "foolish; stupid."
As the daughter of two moms, she found the dictionary's example sentence just as insulting.
"Making students wait for the light is kind of a gay rule," the sentence read.
"I was really shocked," Gormon told The News. "So many kids use Apple products. And people who are actually gay may feel like there is something wrong with them."
It's a commonly used sense of the word, one Gorman has often heard bandied about in the halls of Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School.
She's become used to hearing her classmates using the word gay to talk about silly things or to make fun of others.
But this time, the definition was coming from a large, national company with many young customers.
Just last week, CEO Tim Cook published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal claiming Apple was a "safe and welcoming" workplace for LGBT people and encouraging Congress to support a bill that would extend employment protections to all of America's LGBT workers.
So Gorman decided to speak up.
She sent Cook a letter, asking for an apology and demanding that the company to change its definition.
"This definition normalizes the terrible derogatory twist that many people put on the word 'gay,'" she wrote in the letter published by the MetroWest Daily News.
She was surprised to get a call from an Apple representative an hour later. The rep told her the company would look into the matter, but Gorman said she has yet to hear back from Apple about any changes or updates.
Apple licenses its dictionaries from third parties.
In America, the Dictionary application in OS X and iOS uses the New Oxford American Dictionary, NBC reports.
That version acknowledges the disrespectful usages of many common derogatory terms. But it adds a caveat at the beginning, warning readers that the word is "informal, often offensive."
Newer Apple products use this updated definition. But Gorman said her laptop and at the computers at her school don't clarify that the third usage may be considered offensive.
"In my ideal world, people wouldn't use gay in that way to begin with," Gorman said.
But Gorman doesn't want younger users to think that it is acceptable to use the term to ridicule others.
As of 2010, the average age that people "come out" to their friends and families is 16, according to Science Daily.
If these people are MacBook users, Gorman is afraid that they will look up the definition of gay, wondering if it describes them.
The negative definition may "make them feel bad about themselves or even commit self-harm," Gorman said. "And I doubt Apple would ever want to unintentional be the cause of that.
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