Gay

Categories: Cleanup from July 2005 | LGBT | Sexual orientation and identity | Slang | LGBT terms

For other uses, see Gay (disambiguation).

Gay is a word with several meanings in present society. It is most commonly used as a term to describe a man with a homosexual sexual orientation. It can also be used to describe a homosexual woman, although “lesbian” is a more popular term.

History and Word Origin

Sometimes, histories of word origins are less than useful for communicating modern meanings of socioculturally potent words. Furthermore, the usage of any word changes dramatically as the culture in which it is embedded changes.

Gay was a term that once meant “carefree”, “happy”, or “bright and showy” and was once very common in speech and literature. In more recent times, the word “gay” cannot be used in this former context without the reasonable expectation that one will assume a double entendre, or that the person using the term is out of touch with contemporary society. Several people have attempted to retain the original meaning of the word, but with limited success.

The use of the term gay, as it relates to homosexuality, is documented as early as the 1920s. A quote from Gertrude Stein's Miss Furr & Mrs. Skeene (1922) is possibly the first traceable use of the word, though it is not altogether clear whether she uses the word to mean lesbianism or happiness:

They were ...gay, they learned little things that are things in being gay, ... they were quite regularly gay.

The 1929 musical Bitter Sweet by Noel Coward has the first uncontested use of the word: in the song "Green Carnation", four overdressed, 1890s dandies sing:

Pretty boys, witty boys, You may sneer

At our disintegration.

Haughty boys, naughty boys,

Dear, dear, dear!

Swooning with affectation...

And as we are the reason

For the "Nineties" being gay,

We all wear a green carnation.

Coward uses the "gay nineties" as a double entendre. The song title alludes to the gay playwright Oscar Wilde, who famously wore a green carnation himself.

Bringing Up Baby (1938) was the first film to use the word "gay" in reference to homosexuality.

Gay was originally used purely as an adjective ("he is a gay man" or "he is gay"). Gay can be also used as a plural collective-like noun: "Gays are opposed to that policy", but this use is rare and deprecated. It is rarely as a singular noun "he is a gay" and sounds unusual in this context, hence its use by the Little Britain comedy character Daffyd Thomas (a gay man who believes himself "the only gay in the village" despite abundant evidence to the contrary).

In the 1960s, gay became the term predominantly preferred by homosexual men to describe themselves. Gay was the preferred term since homosexual was the name used by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) to denote men affected by the mental illness of same-sex attraction. The illness of homosexuality was removed from the DSM in 1973, but the clinical connotation of the word was already embedded in society.

By 1963, the word was known well enough by the straight community to be used by Albert Ellis in his book The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Man-Hunting.

Folk etymologies

It has been claimed that "gay" was derived as an acronym for "Good As You", but this is a backronym (based on a fake etymology).

Another folk etymology accrues to Gay Street, a small street in the West Village of New York City — a nexus of homosexual culture. The term also seems, from documentary evidence, to have existed in New York as a code word in the 1940s, where the question, "Are you gay?" would denote more than it might have seemed to outsiders.

Usage

Overview article: Terminology of homosexuality

• Gay is used as an adjective to describe sexual orientation (attraction, preference, or inclination) and is usually chosen instead of homosexual as an identity-label
• Gay sex involves acts between or among people of the same sex or gender
• Gay is usually used to describe the "gay community" by both insiders and the mainstream media
• Gay can be used as a derogatory comment towards a person or object
• Gay is sometimes used to describe an object of particular flamboyance
• Other connotations can vary widely based upon speaker and situation

Gay as a Descriptor

The term "gay" can also be used as an adjective to describe things related to gay people or things which are part of gay culture. For example, while a gay bar is not itself a homosexual, using "gay" as an adjective to describe the bar indicates that the bar is either gay oriented, caters primarily to gay men, or is otherwise part of gay culture.

Using it to describe an object, such as an item of clothing, suggests that it is particularly flamboyant, often on the verge of being gaudy and garish. This stems from the notion that such items appeal to gay people (usually to gay men).

Using the term "gay" as an adjective where the meaning is akin to "related to gay people, culture, or homosexuality in general" is a widely accepted use of the word. By contrast, using "gay" in the pejorative sense, to describe something solely as negative, can cause offense.

Gay in the Pejorative

When used with a derisive attitude (e.g. "that film was so gay"), the term "gay" is purely pejorative and can be deeply offensive. The derogatory implication is that the object (or person) in question is inferior, worthless, effeminate, or stupid.

This usage has its origins in the 1980s, when homosexuality was widely known about but still taboo. Today, the usage is common among young people, who may or may not link the term to homosexuality, much as some people may not intentionally link the term "jew down" (to talk down in price) to Jewish people, or "I was gypped" (I was cheated) to Gypsies. The perjorative "gay" has often been used interchangably with words like fag and queer, which can have similar connotations and were until recently unmistakably perjorative.

Other spellings, such as "ghey" and "ghei", are sometimes found on the Internet and are supposedly used either to insult without reference to homosexuality or to bypass chat room censors. See also: fag.

Self-identification

Self-identification of one's sexual orientation is becoming far more commonplace in areas of more social acceptance, but many are either reluctant to self-identify publicly or even privately to themselves. The process is fairly complex, and many groups related to gays cite inadvertent heterosexism as a leading problem for those that would otherwise self-identify.

Terminology

Many people consider "gay" and "homosexual" to be synonyms. Other people, however, consider "gay" to be a matter of self-identification and "homosexual" to refer to sexual activity. By using these definitions, a person could be gay but not homosexual, or homosexual but not gay. See sex for a discussion of the complexities surrounding the concepts of sex and gender.

Sexual orientation, behavior, and self-identification are not necessarily aligned in a clear-cut fashion for a given individual. If a person has had same-sex sexual encounters but does not self-identify as gay, terms such as closeted, on the down low, discreet, or bi-curious may apply. Similarly, a person may identify as gay even in absence of sexual activity. This is the case for some celibate individuals, such as monks and priests, or for young people who have come out of the closet as gay for political or emotional reasons but are not yet ready to form a sexual relationship. This may also apply to bisexuals, who may consider themselves to be gay due to their same-sex attractions even if they are in a monogamous relationship with a member of the opposite sex. This too involves certain complexities, however, as some people consider "gay" and "bisexual" mutually exclude one another, though this is of great debate between the respective parties.

However, some same-sex oriented persons actually prefer the term homosexual to gay, seeing the former as describing a sexual orientation and the latter as describing a cultural or socio-political group with which they do not identify.

Selecting the Appropriate Term

Some people reject the term "homosexual" as an identity-label because they find it too clinical-sounding. They believe it is too focused on physical acts rather than romance or attraction, or too reminicent of the era when homosexuality was considered a mental illness. Conversely, some people find the term "gay" to be offensive or reject it as an identity-label because they perceive the cultural connotations to be undesirable or because of the negative connotations of the slang usage of the word (almost all of which are negative).

According to the Safe Schools Coalition of Washington's Glossary for School Employees:

"Homosexual: Avoid this term; it is clinical, distancing and archaic. Sometimes appropriate in referring to behavior (although same-sex is the preferred adj.). When referring to people, as opposed to behavior, homosexual is considered derogatory and the terms "gay and lesbian are preferred, at least in the Northwest [of the United States]."

Sometimes the term "gay" is used to describe both same-sex male and same-sex female relations. More rarely, it is used as a shorthand for terms "queer" or "gay, lesbian, bisexual, etc.". The term also sometimes includes transgendered, transsexual, and intersexual. Some trans and intersexed individuals find their inclusion in this larger grouping to be offensive. It is very commonly used to refer specifically to gay men; the precise meaning may need to be made clear from context. The term lesbian, however, is exclusively female.

Gay Community

The emotional, cultural, social and erotic lives of Gay people are represented by the Gay community. Although there is wide ethnic, socioeconomic and cultural variation within the community, social cohesion exists for several reasons. For example, many GLBT people have been through similar experiences. The community also serves as a refuge from homophobia, though this role is decreasing in many parts of the world as society becomes more comfortable with GLBTs. More on this topic is available in the article on Gay community.

See also

• Bisexuality
• Civil rights
• Coming out
• Dyke
• Ex-gay
• Gay rights
• Homosexuality
• Lesbian
• List of LGBT-related organizations
• List of gay-related topics
• List of gay, lesbian or bisexual people
• Queer
• Sexual orientation
• Self-hating gay

External links

• Scientific Gay Scientific Eye for the Queer Guy
• Androphile.org The World History of Male Love
• Gay Rights Watchast:Gai

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