Posted on 03/23/2014 7:31:00 PM PDT by reaganaut1
To most ears, it probably sounds inoffensive. A little outdated and clinical, perhaps, but innocuous enough: homosexual.
But that five-syllable word has never been more loaded, more deliberately used and, to the ears of many gays and lesbians, more pejorative.
“ ‘Homosexual’ has the ring of ‘colored’ now, in the way your grandmother might have used that term, except that it hasn’t been recuperated in the same way,” said George Chauncey, a Yale professor of history and an author who studies gay and lesbian culture.
Consider the following phrases: homosexual community, homosexual activist, homosexual marriage. Substitute the word “gay” in any of those cases, and the terms suddenly become far less loaded, so that the ring of disapproval and judgment evaporates.
Some gay rights advocates have declared the term off limits. The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, or Glaad, has put “homosexual” on its list of offensive terms and in 2006 persuaded The Associated Press, whose stylebook is the widely used by many news organizations, to restrict use of the word.
George P. Lakoff, a professor of cognitive science and linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, has looked at the way the term is used by those who try to portray gays and lesbians as deviant. What is most telling about substituting it for gay or lesbian are the images that homosexual tends to activate in the brain, he said.
“Gay doesn’t use the word sex,” he said. “Lesbian doesn’t use the word sex. Homosexual does.”
“It also contains ‘homo,’ which is an old derogatory,” he added. “They want to have that idea there. They want to say this is not normal sex, this is not normal family, it’s going against God.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I guess we better all stop drinking homogenized milk. It contains ‘homo,’ which is old and derogatory.
The biggest problem is that it is incorrectly formed, since ‘homo’ is Greek and ‘sexual’ is Latin. Ugh!
They are not happy and they are not normal. I won't pretend they are.
to the ears of many gays and lesbians, more pejorative.
Why, there are so many other more colorful perjorative terms to use:
Like, faggot, queer, rump-ranger, butt-pirate, fairy, bull-dyke, packer/muncher...we could go on for hours...
And we might.
You sound like a homo sapiens.
I have not used the word “gay” in years. If they’re so damn proud of their sexual perversion, then they shouldn’t flinch at being called homosexuals. It is totally descriptive . . . “gay” means happy, and if they were happy, they wouldn’t be “gay.”
It is extremely seldom that I hear even “conservative” talk show hosts call them what they are . . . homosexuals. Truth hurts, don’t it?
I use the same word that I used for nill clintoon ... degenerate.
Not very accurate; made up by journalist/activist Karl-Maria Kertbeny less than two centuries ago. He coined “heterosexual” at the same time too, in an attempt to make the two behaviors sound equivalent.
But if it irks the community in question, no sense in not using it.
As long as it keeps working for them, the left will keep doing it.
I either prefer homo or queer, both we used 50 yrs ago when I was a young-un.
The homosexuals ruined the word "gay." It used to be my favorite word, before I knew about homosexuals.
Deviant:
de·vi·ant adjective \-ənt\
: different from what is considered to be normal or morally correct
Yup.
I say “homosexual” in polite society. Other times I say “queer”. If what they do to each other isn’t queer, then nothing is.
I will never ever call them “gay”.
"Pillow-biter?"
How about "sodomite?" Is "sodomite" good?
I always use homosexual instead of gay.
Gay can also mean ‘happy’ or ‘lame/uncool.’ Furthermore, the homosexual lobby is trying to define teenagers’ propensity to call things they think are stupid as ‘gay’ as hate speech.
I find the whole issue gay.
Mixing internal feces with external body parts is disgusting no matter what you call it.
The prefix homo is both Latin and Greek. Homo Latin means “man”. Greek homo is “same”.
Lesbians are homosexual too.
okay then, we’re back to either “pervert” or “degenerate” or “sodomite”. works for me.
Homosexual= attraction between members of the same sex
so what's their problem again?
I personally want the use of the word "gay" to return to its rightful use....as in we'll have a gay ol' time! as Fred Flintstone use to say!
or don we now our gay apparel...falalalalalala.
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