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 A little outdated and clinical, perhaps, but innocuous enough: homosexual.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 hasnt 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 doesnt use the word sex, he said. Lesbian doesnt 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, its going against God.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Hey brother G!!! Good to see ya! How do!!
And “gay” mean always meant carefree, lighthearted, and happy in the dictionary - not perverse.
I won’t use that term in regards to them.
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