Cenk Uyger and the Young Turks had a discussion on using the word "homosexual" versus using the word "gay" to talk about people attracted exclusively to other members of the same sex. The discussion itself has caused a stir as Cenk has been called "privileged" and "arrogant" (I'd definitely agree with the latter, but I doubt he'd disagree either). Take a look:
It's more complicated than what Ana Kasparian described. Yes, there's the negative connotation and the polling (that I hardly think is as conclusive as she described it, but that's another diary for another day). But there's more.
The word "homosexual" is one of those weird issues that we have strong opinions about yet don't talk about all that much. That's because it's generally been resolved among gay people even though straight people are slow to pick up on. I get it - the language is complicated (and we're talking about just the first letter of LGBTQ here). Instead of scolding people for not getting it, it makes more sense to explain.
I've found that not everyone who's gay dislikes the word "homosexual," but the vast majority do. The people who dislike it generally don't agree on why it's bad, just that it's bad. Here are a few reasons people give for disliking it:
- It stresses the "sexual" part of being gay and effectively presents heterosexuals (always referred to as "straight" in mainstream media while straight journalists fumble between "homosexual" and "gay") as the normal people whose sexuality isn't in question. The argument that "everyone has a sexual orientation" was popular in the 80's and 90's among gay people because the right's usual attack on us was that we were super sexual, defined ourselves by sexuality, only thought about sex, while they were clean and pure and perfect and when they thought about sex it was only for procreation purposes.
Gay people generally don't see sexual orientation as only being about the sex act itself; it's a different way of loving, interacting with others, organizing one's life, and seeing the world. It's just not how we see ourselves.
Saying that it's only about sex itself is now an argument that closet cases on the right make - they convince themselves that if they avoid the sex act (or limit themselves to several times a year) then they aren't really "homosexual." Non-closet cases on the right like that argument - it puts the blame for "performing homosexual acts" on the gay person himself instead of making them question why they're homophobic.
It should be mentioned that some gay people are uncomfortable with their sexuality being discussed at all. We come from all walks of life, even conservative sex-haters. That's why it's gaypatriot.org, not homosexualpatriot.org.
- "Homosexual" was developed as a medical term. A homosexual isn't a person to be respected, but a patient to be treated. It's why you'll read histories of the "Medicalization of Homosexuality" but never the "Medicalization of Gayness."
Here's a brief summary of the etymology that all us professional gays learn when we take our queer theory classes at our liberal, America-hating colleges:
Psychopathia Sexualis (and essays written at the time by Krafft-Ebing and others) introduced to our vocabulary such words as heterosexual, homosexual, sadism, masochism and fetishism. Psychopathia Sexualis quite literally defined sex.
But by gathering all forms of sexual abnormality under the umbrealla of psychopathology, Krafft-Ebing cast a shadow of insanity upon all forms of sexual behavior that deviated from the heterosexual norm. In spite of his efforts at objectivity and absolute honesty, Krafft-Ebing's Victorian mindset is evidenced in Psychopathia Sexualis after all.
"This was in fact a science made up of evasions," wrote Michel Foucault in his book The History of Sexuality, "given its inability or refusal to speak of sex itself, it concerned itself primarily with aberrations, perversions, exceptional oddities, pathological abatements, and morbid aggravations. Claiming to speak the truth, it stirred up people's fears...Involuntarily naïve in the best of cases, more often intentionally mendacious, in complicity with what it denounced, haughty and coquettish, it established an entire pornography of the morbid, which was characteristic of the fin de siecle society."
Of course, Foucault didn't mind the term "homosexual" all that much (more on that below). But that's the history of the word and history is still relevant to the term. While a few fringe-of-the-fringe people will refer to themselves as "ex-gay," most right-wingers prefer to talk about people who "overcame homosexuality" or "their homosexual attractions." The term is medical, and we don't want people thinking this status is a disease.
- This is the reason Ana started to describe in the discussion when she brought up the polling data: "Homosexual" is the preferred word of homophobes for talking about gay people; "gay" is the preferred word of actual, real-live gay people. Dr. Laura summed it up best:
When we have the word homosexual, we are clarifying the dysfunction, the deviancy, the reality. We change it to the word gay, it makes it more difficult to pinpoint the truth. So one of the things that the homosexual agenda did was to change the name. Just like somebody complained to me yesterday about ethnic cleansing, that it sounds like washing machine as opposed to murder. They were right. Ethnic cleansing sounds nice. Murder is the truth, homosexuality is the truth. Gay isn’t.
Homophobes and the entire Christian Right Industry use the word homosexual so much that they can't bring themselves to use the word gay without scarequotes around it. Or they just change AP articles to use the word "homosexual" instead of the word "gay," they're so attached to the word itself. We're working to advance the interests and rights of the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender community; they're fighting the homosexual agenda. One can "draw the line" all they want about the validity of the word "homosexual," but they should at least understand that 95% of everyone else has already crossed the line and won't go back.
Y'all might read this as tribalism (they like it so we can't), but it's more than that. They know that the word is troublesome, that it leads people to oppose LGBTQ rights and that it has a lot of negative baggage on it dating back to the 19th century, while they know people usually think Ellen and Nate Berkus when they think of "gay." Heck, it's reflexive for them because they love that baggage. And it's reflexive for us because we don't like that baggage all that much. That's what Ana's polling data was getting at, although I think that particular poll was an outlier.
- Gay is good. Frank Kameny, one of the earlier and more effective gay rights activists,coined the phrase in 1968:
In the 1940s, he fought Nazis. In the 1950s, he fought the U.S. Civil Service. He's battled the Pentagon, the FBI, the medical establishment, the police, and so on. Generally, he wins. And when he's won, so has the entire gay community. As one of the first gay Americans to refuse -- very publicly -- to be ashamed of his sexual orientation, Kameny has played a monumental role in changing the playing field in favor of gay people. Years before Stonewall, he was picketing in front of the White House. In 1971, he ran as an openly gay candidate for D.C.'s non-voting seat in Congress. He may not have won the election, but he raised the visibility of gay people immeasurably. He coined the phrase ''Gay is Good'' in 1968, when the distance between homosexuality and shame was a very short trip.
So straight people who are concerned that the term will be changed in ten years' time should at least consider the fact that "gay" referring to same-sex attracted people has been around for over 40 years and doesn't appear to be going anywhere. It will probably change again, but not every ten years. It current still has its "Gay is good" ring to it.
That covers the main reason why gay people generally don't like the term "homosexual." I didn't get into what I thought about it; I'd lean more on reasons 2 and 3.
Personally, I don't care much if he wants to use that word; I'd just consider it ignorant. I used to be more offended, but now that I've been living in France for going on five years where the word "homosexuel" is the accepted, commonly-used term, it gets on my nerves less. Also, I'm just generally a lot less prone to getting upset about things like that after covering the LGBTQ movement for a few years. It's just really not that important in the grand scheme, to me.
What is annoying is that Cenk and Ana's initial reactions were anger towards gay people, the sort of "How dare you question what a good, pro-gay homosexual, liberal, magnanimous person I am!" whining that has been tiring me more and more lately. You're not perfect, you're sometimes wrong, and be willing to argue instead of making it 100% about ego.
But the worst moment in that video for me is the producer at the end ditto-ing Cenk, as if the discussion that completely excluded any actual, real-live gay people was thorough and fair and balanced and had convinced him that Cenk was reasonable. I'm loathe to cordon off issues as only to be discussed by certain people, but I do think it's important that when the discussion is 100% focused on how a group of people reacts to people calling them certain names that they should at least be included.
OK, now you all are ready for the more fun discussions of the meanings and appropriate usages of the terms "queer" and "LGBTQ." Those are a lot more fun since there's far less consensus.