Language musings: “gay” vs “homosexual”

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snakey

2010-02-13 02:20 pm (UTC)

The stupidity of people never ceased to amaze me.

The point where I start groping for a word is referring to, say, my own feelings for/attraction to another man. Is it gay? Because that word tends to be used to mean "exclusively homosexual", and I'm not..but it would be ridiculous to call it a "bisexual" relationship/attraction or similar.... How do we refer to relationships between people of the same sex who aren't gay? Or do we just say "a same-sex relationship"?

Gahh, English r hard. *has been asleep for the last couple of hours and may not be making sense*
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sparkindarkness

2010-02-13 03:21 pm (UTC)

I would assume bisexual - someone who is attracted to both men and women. If you say you're attracted to another man because you are bisexual, I'd say that works quite well. It's certainly a bisexual attraction methinks.
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snakey

2010-02-13 04:10 pm (UTC)

To me, identifying a relationship by the sexuality rather than the sex of the participants is fraught with problems. What if my partner is gay? Doesn't calling the relationship bisexual erase his identity/render if invisible? I'm queer and my fiancee is straight - to call it a queer relationship risks misgendering me and misidentifying her, as well as appropriating the term to apply to a heterosexual relationship.

Which leads on to another problem: for those of us with a history of being coercively misgendered, it's often very important that our lovers affirm our sex in the way they identify our relationship with them. If I was in a romantic or sexual relationship with a man and he insisted on saying, "This isn't a homosexual/gay relationship," I would instantly be *very* suspicious of his belief in my maleness - baggage that a cis queer/bi/pan man wouldn't have. Likewise, it's crucial to my trans woman friends that their relationships with other women are identified as lesbian relationships, whether they're exclusively lesbian-identified themselves or not, because the reality that this is a relationship between two women has been systematically denied. Or for trans male friends in relationships with women to have it acknowledged that that is a heterosexual/straight relationship and is heterosexual/straight sex, even if they or their partner identify as something other than straight/heterosexual.

There's also the problem of how to refer to former relationships for those of us who have previously lived (through choice or coercion) as a different sex or gender. For example, when my previous partner and I were first together, we were both dyke/lesbian-identified. But to say that it was therefore a dyke or lesbian relationship is to undergender me.

So it makes more sense to me, and is more affirming of trans identities, to identify the relationship between people by the sexes/genders of the participants, rather than by the sexual orientation....
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(Anonymous)

2010-02-13 05:26 pm (UTC)

I agree with that. I also really love this essay about bisexuality/gender/sexual identity

http://www.makezine.enoughenough.org/events.html

because it goes beyond a kind of "non-labeling" (I get really frustrated, personally, with the "why do we need labels!" mentality) rhetoric into an understanding of how there are label systems that are policing and label systems that breed fluid and layered ways of thinking about sex and gender that are accomodating rather than policing.

-Leah
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sparkindarkness

2010-02-13 05:56 pm (UTC)

In general I don't use the term "queer" anyway, except to refer to people who self-reference as "queer."

Actually, I'm turning over in my mind on whether it's necessary to define a relationship in any terms - and to me? I don't - I've never really felt the need to define a relationship so much as I have felt the need to define the PEOPLE within said relationship. So if talking about couple I wouldn't think to say "they're in a gay relationship".

However, I can see how it is vital Ultimately I think it comes down to the people in question and what they feel the need to define.

I, as a cisgendered gay man, feel my relationship needs no further definition than relationship because any qualifiers are redundant to me. I can say I'm married without feeling the need to say "I am gay married" because it would be odd. I do feel the need to define myself as gay because it's an identity and an important one

But I can see where trans people may wish to adopt a greater definition on the relationship to emphasise the nature of the relationship - and to debunk any erroneous assumptions there may be of said relationship

Ultimately, we need to accept the tools and words people use within their own frame of reference for their own self-reference and self-definition because they include the terms they consider important or unimportant


So it makes more sense to me, and is more affirming of trans identities, to identify the relationship between people by the sexes/genders of the participants, rather than by the sexual orientation....

Very much to me - because it feels false anyway. It feels false to refer to a a gay relationship or lesbian relationship. It's a relationship. There is nothing unqiuely gay about a relationship that sets it apart from a straight relationship, imo - the defining factor is the people within it, not the relationship itself
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onebrightroad

2010-02-15 02:34 am (UTC)

I see your point, but I disagree with your preferences in this matter. I avoid referring to relationships as gay, straight, or bisexual, or in any other terms that identify sexuality. I'm a bi trans man (I also identify as queer) currently in a committed relationship with a bi cis woman. When our relationship is labeled as straight because of our gender identities, our sexuality is erased. I would be offended if someone described our relationship or the sex we have together as straight. I'm not straight just because my partner is female, nor would I be gay if I had a male lover. Nor do I wish to be forced to choose to erase either my gender identity or my sexuality by accepting a limiting descriptor for my relationships. It makes me happy when my partner refers to me as her boyfriend because it affirms both our relationship and my gender identity. In my opinion, labeling our relationship beyond that is both unnecessary and risks erasing important parts of the relationship and our individual identities.

I have been coercively misgendered often over the course of my life. My sexuality is also often erased or mis-identified by others. Both my gender identity and my sexual identity are more complicated than they appear from the outside, and both have changed more than once over the course of my life. While I understand the reasoning behind your language choices and resonate with it to some degree, I prefer to use different language to describe my relationships. I wish we all had more and better words to describe our realities and complexities.
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virginia_fell

2010-02-13 02:44 pm (UTC)

The difference between "gay" and "homosexual" as far as a term for LGBT people is one that I don't fully grok. However, because I'm in a hetero relationship, I guess it's not really important whether I get it.

Thanks for letting me know that a lot of people prefer the words gay or lesbian, and that for some reason straight people seem to respond better to them as well. I'll try and use those more just... y'know. To be safe.
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sparkindarkness

2010-02-13 03:22 pm (UTC)

I think it's the origin of the word. Homosexual was once a DIAGNOSIS. Of mental illness. And, of course, it contains the word "sex" which instantly sets many of the radars off and it emphasises sex over identity.
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virginia_fell

2010-02-13 09:27 pm (UTC)

Right. I mean, I can see the reasoning. To me, it's not hugely compelling on its own, but the fact that there are people who strongly prefer it is really enough reason on its own for hetero folk to adjust.
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(Anonymous)

2010-02-13 05:12 pm (UTC)

Leah from WomanistMusings here -

Re: the term "men who have sex with men." It's been years since I've worked in the field and too long since I've read up on recent trends, so what I'm saying now could be antiquated, but I used to work in harm reduction/hiv prevention and "men who have sex with men" was the preferred and, in my post, insisted upon term. (This threw me off guard because when I got into the field I had the same objections - it over-emphasized sex, etc. - I was quite the marriage activist back then!). Especially when working with lower income communities in harm reduction - where the goal is actually to reduce harm instead of moralistically impose values, even liberal middle class"progressive" values - "men who have sex with men" was a way to acknowledge that not all people who fit this description identified as "gay" and, in fact, some were very turned off by this identity descriptor. Is it the case that this distancing from the identity marker resulted from homophobia? Yes and no.

As for "homosexual," weirdly enough I too type that rarely and say it even more rarely.
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sparkindarkness

2010-02-13 06:00 pm (UTC)

Every now and then "msm" comes up - I think part of the reason it raises my hackles is because the times I've heard it most are from men saying "oh no, I'm not gay! I don't mince or aren't effeiminate or anything" and it makes me cringe because that's a descriptor of some people who are gear, not an inherent part of being gay. It tells of a lot of absorbed and deeply held stereotpes that stifles our diversity and encourages disconnect

Of course the other branch is the wonderful denial - loves sex with men. But is totally straight. Honest.


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suryaofvulcan

2010-02-13 06:07 pm (UTC)

I haven't seen all the arguments, but to me it just feels wrong to refer to someone as 'homosexual' (nor would I refer to myself as 'heterosexual'). I think this is partly because I don't hear it used much within the gay community (or the small number of gay couples I have regular contact with), partly because when I do hear it, it's most often in a clinical or perjorative sense, and partly because it seems to reduce people to the type of sex they have (or are having in their current relationship(s)).

I'd be more inclinded to describe a particualar sexual act as 'homosexual' (as in taking place between 2 people of the same sex, regardless of the orientation of the people involved). But using it to describe a person, or even a relationship seems to force them into a binary state - they must be either homo- or heterosexual, and nothing in between - whereas the reality is that a person's orientation might be gay, straight, bi, or outside that continuum altogether.

Please forgive me if I'm being a clueless straight person. I'm still trying to read and learn about these issues.
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sparkindarkness

2010-02-14 02:18 am (UTC)

I don't think most people do use it. Even at best it's a clunky FORMAL word - very medical. The only group, as one blogger pointed out most accurately - who DO use it commonly are homophobes. Which is revealing really.

The problem with homosexual as an adjective for an act is it makes assumptions of the people involved. It's awkward, really.
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Sexual Orientation is an invalid concept
youth-masculinity.blogspot.com

2010-06-08 09:10 am (UTC)

The entire concept of 'homosexuality' and 'homosexual' (as well as that of heterosexuality, bisexuality and of 'sexual orientation' itself) is flawed, and invalid, for a number of reasons.

For starters, the entire thing was invented by a people who were not 'men' but were the 'intermediate sex,' i.e., they were males with a female 'soul', or gender in more scholarly term. They were actually the queer gendered people who sought to speak for every male who liked men. But they never really represented men. Men (i.e. males with a male identity, as opposed to third genders), hated, and will always hate the idea of a separate category for those who like men. The intermediate sex likes the idea because, what it is actually seeking is a separate category for their "gender orientation" which they keep confusing with their 'sexual orientation.'

The concept of homosexuality and homosexual is invalid because it is based on the negation of human gender (of inner male or female identity), and sees humans only in the limited context of reproduction -- reproduction which has been a major obsession of the western society, including of Christianity and of modern science. As far as reproduction is concerned, you only need to be a male or female. However, life is not only about reproduction, and gender is much more complex than the sexual organ we're born with. Our inner sense of being a male or female, irrespective of whether we're outwardly male or female is an important ingredient of our gender identity. Our gender identity is actually a combination of both our 'outer sex' and our 'inner sex.'

That is why there has never been a concept of 'sexual orientation' or 'homosexuals' or 'heterosexuals' ever in the past, nor do they exist in contemporary non-West. Instead, all these societies have a strong system of categories based on gender orientation, and there are basically three genders, "Men,' 'women,' and the 'third genders,' the third genders include various categories of people who are both males and females at the sametime, for different reasons. It includes hermaprhodites, but it also includes feminine gendered males, and masculine gendered females.

There is NO concept of 'sexual orientation' or of 'homosexuality' or 'heterosexuality' in the non-Western world, I think the west should learn from us.