Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Controlling the Language Equals Controlling Thought
I visited several Colonial mansions recently and noticed that the term “slave” has been replaced by “enslaved people.” I’m not sure when it occurred, but it appears to be the new approved term. We all know that “illegal aliens” has been replaced by “migrants.” “Illegal aliens” is more descriptive, but our betters have decided that it creates opposition to open borders. One person in the UK was told to remove the term “illegal alien” from an online post lest it cause offense.
As in so many areas, the Republicans appear to be asleep at the switch. We are required to use a person’s current pronoun and our language is being restricted. We will all be enslaved people if this continues unchecked.
I have never heard anyone say that the word homosexual is a slur, when the person in question is an actual homosexual.
The longer this type of crap is prolonged, the more people who exist on the planet who no longer care one single bit.
Somehow or other, the political landscape is being dealt with in the same way that the computer landscape is dealt with.
Yes the first 2 or 3 decades of learning new terminologies every time a computer company engineer or a political consultant gets a bug up their butts can be fun. “See how smart I am! I was the first one on my block to go all in on Windows 95!”
But then eventually the several weeks it takes to learn a new system every 3 years is simply annoying.
It is the same with the terminology for various classes of special people. As others have stated, “How is ‘people of color’ different and better than ‘colored people’?”
In any event, if anyone here wishes to refer to me as POEWW, feel free to do so. (Pissed Off Elderly White Woman… I am still waiting for an “Elderly Pride” month. It would be nice to celebrate that month before all my Social Security is eaten up by Medicare Plan B and Supplemental charges.)
:-)
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the H word (either of the H words).
You were talking about attraction – ie sexuality – so homo/heterosexual is on point.
But your friends had come out, and accepted themselves, and made a constructive adult life that accommodated their sexuality – and that’s the difference betweeen homosexual and gay.
But language is protean, and now the young people use gay to mean (in a non-homophobic manner I must add) twee, daggy, silly. Which might be a reaction to how politically correct gay discourse has become. I think they’re still okay with Queer, but….who knows how long that will last?
I never knew about this distinction. I think most people just think of the words as interchangeable.
Most people don’t really need to think about it. And the meaning of words change with usage, so….maybe they’re the same now?
I’ll go one further: I don’t care about the distinction.
The homosexual community has its jargon. I’ve heard gay friends call each other “girls,” use the word “queer,” etc.
I don’t care. I’ll use homosexual, same-sex attracted, and gay/lesbian without concern about how the offense of the terms is re-invented.
Similarly, I’ll refer to black people as black people or black Americans. I almost never use African Americans because I don’t care for the term, since it seems to convey more significance about the identity, as if there’s a shared African cultural component that I don’t believe exists. Sometimes I just refer to highly pigmented people.
Yes, the words change all the time, and there’s a fresh batch of hypersensitive crybullies ready to take offense whenever you use last year’s moniker, “deadname” someone, or use their correct pronouns when they’d rather you used something else. But whether or not we comply with that is up to us, and I choose not to.
Maybe it’s just that I’ve reached the age at which men stop caring very much what others think of their opinions, and feel free to speak them more freely. But I really don’t care.
I don’t think any of these terms are offensive Henry. But different words mean different things. Otherwise why bother? And fair enough if you don’t want to bother, but ignoring how other people use language sort of makes communication with them a little bit harder.
I think that, for most people, homosexual and gay mean the same thing — with the exception that gay implies male, though doesn’t demand it.
All these terms can have an ideological implication – admittedly depending on who uses them and in which context.
Conflating gay and homosexual tells us something about the speaker’s assumptions. About what they believe to be true. About what they care and don’t care. About whose opinions they find valid and whose opinions they don’t.
Differentiating these terms does the same thing.
Similarly differentiating Gay and Same-Sex Attracted.
None of this is completely neutral communication.
Is it a “power move” to not care about what other people are saying? Maybe.
Is it a “tantrum”? In other circumstances maybe.
Says who?
I mean, really, who gets to decide what the words mean? Gay guys?
Again, I think the vast majority of people consider either “homosexual” and “gay” to be synonymous, and “queer” to be a rude synonym for both.
Do I get to define what White American means? What JudaeoChristian Culture is?
Perhaps to the point:
You made a point about the value of using words as other people use them. I’m just telling you how most other people use them.
Thank you. But you also said:
So I thought I was on point. But whatever.
That was specifically about the evolving acceptability of various phrases, and my suggestion that we not play along with that.
You’re talking about something else, the jargon of an in-group. Eskimos, we’re told, have [some large N] words for snow; most of us have at most a couple. And most normal people generally aren’t familiar with heterosexual jargon.
Yes, but why not? According to Humpty Dumpty it’s a contest for cultural power. Is it?
er….?? (Share it! Tell me! I want to know!)
But wrt the many many words for snow, if we lived where there was so much snow we might find them relevant.
And imo as long as people keep having gay children, the ways gay people have of thinking about themselves and perceiving the world are going to be relevant. jmho.
Zaf, I like words a lot, and I appreciate you taking time to talk to me about them.
So after you posted your last comment I called a friend of mine, a bisexual woman who is pretty well connected in the local gay/lesbian community. I told her about your assertion that “gay” and “homosexual” mean different things. She was completely unfamiliar with the idea.
I went online and looked up definitions for “gay,” and have thus far found nothing that conveys the nuance of outness, acceptance, reconciliation with, whatever, that you suggest distinguishes “gay” from “homosexual.”
So I’m skeptical. Maybe it’s an Oz thing (though I consulted Australian gay resources as well); maybe it’s something you’ve picked up locally. Or maybe it’s real, but hasn’t caught on yet.
But I’ll say it again: most people don’t make the distinction you’re making, so I think you’re a gay dog’s tail wagging the meaning here. And the onus is on the little hypothetical minority you represent to use words the way people understand them, if your goal is to be understood.
Not that it matters, but I’m one of those who think there’s no moral component to homosexuality and who think gays should have equal rights (though I wouldn’t have redefined the word “marriage,” favoring robust civil unions). I’m not anti-gay. Shoot, some of my best friends… have friends who are gay. (That’s a joke most people don’t get.)
Anyway, calling you out here, lexically. Find me some reference that makes the distinction you do. I’m willing to change my mind.
Could be the tail wagging the dog. But of possible interest:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/05/22/are-gay-and-homosexual-the-same-heres-what-we-found/
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2017/12/08/gay-or-homosexual-the-words-we-use-can-divide-public-opinion-on-civil-rights/
Not what I was saying, but intriguing.
I caught the tail/dog transposition and fixed it, but not before you saw it. ;)
Agreed, it’s not what you were saying. It’s more to do with the idea that “homosexual” is seen as a rude way of saying “gay” or “lesbian,” something alluded to earlier in this thread. But most of us kind of knew that, I think.
Presumably “same-sex attracted,” though wordy, is perceived as a neutral descriptor.
Been in San Fran for almost 50 years now. Saw them in the Navy and lot of gay friends, including lawyers I work with. They, obviously older guys, not getting the new trans stuff. WTF? They figured out where they wanted to go in college, some earlier, but have no idea why the trannies want to recruit 5 year olds. Give them some time to figure it out. Not trendy I guess.
I’m active on Twitter, still hoping Musk will buy it. Because the trans issue interests me and strikes me as something worth fighting against, most of my contacts are people pushing back against trans overreach. Overwhelmingly they are left-leaning women, many (maybe most) of them lesbians.
The trans extremists are making enemies fast. I’ve been saying for two years that this is going to be the first big progressive cultural retreat. I believe it now more than ever.
I really did mean it might just be me. (Though from my youth in America I really don’t think so.)
This is making me ponder, Henry.
It wouldn’t occur to me to tell someone I was “homosexual”, while telling someone I was “gay” (if they needed to know, ha! as if they needed to ask!) is natural.
I can think of any number of Gay organisations (with gay in the name) but I can’t think of any that have homosexual in the name.
It wasn’t always the case, certainly, but it’s become overwhelmingly the case now. So what’s going on with this?
My guess: homosexual focuses on the sex part, while gay is a bit broader. Should it be? There’s gay slang, gay jargon, gay identity, gay subculture, gay sensibility, gay humour….the point is, there’s more to it than just sex. Or to put it another way, gay people are different from straight people in more ways than just how they bump uglies (though that’s pretty significant, and may lead on to those other differences). If it was just the sex then we’d be the same in every other way, and we just aren’t.
I don’t think homosexual is rude, it’s just limited, it ignores a lot about me that is not about sex but about culture and community. Does it dismiss this as irrelevant?
Not really. It’s used almost exclusively by Churches that work with people “struggling with same sex attraction”. It’s as limited as homosexual, but perhaps that’s the point? If it’s just the sex then there’s no reason for the rest of your life not to conform?
Hope you are right. My demo friends in S.F. agree. This is absurd. But Gov. French Laundry thinks this will get him to the White House.
Zaf, it’s late here so this will be brief. You mention the “gay subculture,” and I wonder about that. Most of the gay men I know are pretty obviously gay; most of the lesbians I know are not at all obviously homosexual.
I haven’t given this a lot of thought, but I’m going to suggest that “gay subculture” has more to do with men given abnormal license to behave in a sexual way, and less to do with any intrinsically homosexual component of it.
In other words, if there were a community of both men and women in which every individual had the same attitude about sex, and if that attitude were typically masculine, then I suspect we’d see a “subculture,” and that it would tend toward the risqué, flamboyant, and overtly sexual.
On the other hand, if there were a similar community of men and women who had typically female attitudes about sex, then we wouldn’t see a “gay subculture.” We’d actually see something pretty mainstream, and perhaps even conservative.
This is consistent with observations made by Louise Perry in her book The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, which I thought was quite interesting and recommend — to women, particularly. Gay men are at one extreme of the sociosexual scale, notoriously promiscuous as a class, often expressing essentially unchecked male sex drive. In contrast, lesbians are at the other extreme, strongly tending toward monogamy and long-term relationships. Heterosexual couples are actually somewhere in between the two.
I am skeptical that the cultural distinction you are trying to make, if it applies to homosexual men, applies also to homosexual women. Gay men are outliers.
To you, and maybe to me. To each other? Are you sure?
No, there’s more to it than glitter and drag queens.
How does that fit in with the feminisation of America?I am not sure you’re right here.
In some ways certainly, but let me give you an example.
I don’t know if you’ve heard of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. Anyway, there’s a fair day, and a parade and finally a dance party. Numbers are down these days, but in its heyday the party attracted something like 27,000 attendees.
I remember going back then, and there were a huge number of drunk (and otherwise out of it) men and women there.
What made it stand out from non-gay dance parties? There was no aggression. There was no violence. No fights. It was safe.
Similarly – how are rowdy gay bars different from rowdy straight bars? No aggression. No violence. That’s one reason why hen’s parties often go to gay bars. (Hen’s party is the bride’s before marriage event with her friends.)
That’s one thing that’s different about gay culture, and it has nothing
about[to do with] being flamboyant or not.