• Send us Mail
  • Follow us on Twitter
  • Join our Facebook Group
  • Subscribe to our RSS Feed
  • Search Site

Polari Magazine

  • Home
  • Up Front
    • Editorial
    • Clementine: The Living Fashion Doll
    • Polari Safari
    • WTF? Friday
    • Bulletin Board
    • Polari Facts
  • Features
    • Interviews
    • Features
    • Gallery
    • Opinion
    • Heroes & Villains
  • Community
    • Oral Histories
    • Coming Out Stories
    • Relationships
    • IDAHO
    • LGBT History Month
    • Blogs
  • Reviews
    • Books
    • Film and Television
    • Music
    • Stage
    • Visual Arts
    • Classics: Books
    • Classics: Film and Television
    • Classics: Music
  • About
    • About Polari Magazine
    • Contributors
    • Contact

You are here: Polari Magazine / Opinion / Gay Used To Be Such A Nice Word

Gay Used To Be Such A Nice Word

16 Feb 2009 / Comments Off / in Opinion/by Paul Baker

Obviously, bigots weren’t too thrilled about its appropriation – “Gay used to be such a nice word”, they moaned. And we laughed at them.

Men who fuck men and women who fuck women have been called a lot of things over the decades. The word homosexual was coined in the 1860s by Karl Maria Kertbeny – he’d hoped it replace the current term of the day: pederast. Karl believed that homosexuals were actually superior to heterosexuals. Sadly, although the word caught on, Karl’s meaning of it didn’t. Instead that vicious bitch Richard von Krafft-Ebing got hold of the term and told everyone it meant an effeminate man who was mentally ill. Yeah, thanks for that.

At best homosexual is now used in a neutral “scientific” way to refer to us; at worst it still has those connotations of electric shock therapy and people getting arrested in loos while wearing beige cardigans and then killing themselves in the last act.

About five years ago when my bank manger asked me to fill in a life insurance form asking if “I was a drug user or a homosexual” I practically over-turned the desk in a sissy-fit of rage. “I am NOT a homosexual!” I screamed, channelling my inner Quentin. “I am gay. There’s a difference. And besides, it’s none of your business.” I didn’t get the life insurance. The ultra right-wing American Family Association hate the word gay so much that they automatically change it to homosexual when quoting news stories (with hilarious consequences for the sprinter Tyson Gay). Whichever way you look at it, homosexual=bad, gay=good.

The adoption of gay was a major breakthrough in our never-ending two-steps forward, one-step back march to equality. Prior to us taking over the word en masse in the early 1970s it had meant ‘disposed to joy and mirth’, although it could also refer to prostitution or impertinence. The liberationists gave it the good PR, but it had been used by upmarket British queens for decades before then.

I struggled to say the word when I came out in the 1980s, but I knew deep down that it was nothing to be ashamed of. You heard it so many times in the same breath as pride, liberation and community. It was a nice thing. Obviously, bigots weren’t too thrilled about its appropriation – “Gay used to be such a nice word”, they moaned. And we laughed at them.

Fast forward to the present day and here’s a typical case. On a computer games bulletin board, one of the users recently posted up the following message: “Fallout 3 could probably be the most anticipated game of ALL TIME. It’s so gay that Interplay cancelled it.” To most people under the age of 25, gay hasn’t referred exclusively to sexuality for about a decade now. Instead it means lame. But it also means gay as well. Like a pair of rutting snakes, the two meanings are fused solidly together – so that when someone says “that’s gay”, they’re not only being derogatory towards the thing they don’t like (mobile phone ringtones, snowboarding, small convertible cars to give a few high-profile cases) , but they’re getting a free dig in at people who like same-sex sex. Or are they? Some children are calling things gay – probably not understanding the word’s sexual meaning. And a while ago the young Liberal Democrats launched a “homophobia is gay” campaign, showing everyone just how postmodern and ironic they can be.

I tend to be one of those people who get worked up about words – and I know I’m in the minority. Most people (especially gay men) don’t seem to mind the derogatory use of gay – in fact they revel in making a big deal about how they don’t care, how they’re strong and big and “so past it” and that anyone who disagrees is part of the thought police who also wants to ban Christmas and put smokers and binge drinkers in Guantanamo Bay. If I try a lame argument like “But linguistics is my job – I wouldn’t tell you how to do conveyancing or fly that plane”, then I get accused of elitism. So I keep quiet. My main concern is that we no longer have a word for our sexuality that has a straightforwardly “nice” meaning any more. And that while most contemporary gay men are so sophisticated that they can cope with the multiply-layered meanings of gay these days, I’m not so sure that a sensitive 11 year old who’s just discovering that they really really like Ugly Betty, or a member of the BNP, would feel the same way. In 2008 a study by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers found that gay was the most frequent term of abuse heard in schools, with poof, batty boy, queer, lezzie, homo, faggot and sissy also making the top ten (although there were no racist words in the list). So, ironically, now it’s me who’s saying “gay used to be such a nice word”. And even more ironically, gay is now going the same way as homosexual (which also started off with such good intentions). Do you see a pattern here?

The answer to it all is that it’s not the words. We can invent word after word, but while the idea that “homophobia isn’t so bad” exists, it’s all ultimately pointless. All our shiny new words for ourselves will end up tainted. Words themselves are just bizarre noises that we make with our mouths – it’s the meaning that we give them that makes them important. One day I hope that there will be no word for us, because we will live in a polysexual utopia and sexual identities will be as unremarkable as breathing air. Until then, I’m afraid it’s back to the PR work – which at least we’re pretty good at.

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Tumblr
  • Pinterest
Tags: gay liberation, paul baker, richard von krafft-ebing, ugly betty

Related Posts

Did you like this entry?
Here are a few more posts that might be interesting for you.
Related Posts
Good News For Complainers
Abominable Voices
Gay Face: Another Contemporary Stereotype
Don’t shove it in my face!
Queer Seafarers in the Falklands
An interview with Greta Schiller
The Camp and the Bitchy
LGBT Heroes – Day 29
LGBT Heroes – Day 4

Search Polari

Latest Posts

  • Polari Magazine 2008-2014December 3, 2014 - 6:16 pm
  • Tearing Up Their Map: An Interview with LambDecember 2, 2014 - 2:45 pm
  • Future Islands • GigDecember 2, 2014 - 1:41 pm
  • Puppets with Attitude (at Christmas)December 1, 2014 - 6:30 pm
  • The Aesthetic of Voyeurism: Interview with Antonio Da SilvaDecember 1, 2014 - 1:25 pm
  • Broke With Expensive Taste • Azealia BanksNovember 28, 2014 - 3:59 pm
  • Royalty Strutting on an American College Stage: Miss and Mr. Gay ISU 2014November 27, 2014 - 2:59 pm
  • Bright Light Bright Light: Everything I Ever WantedNovember 26, 2014 - 11:15 am
  • Jaime Nanci And The Blueboys: ‘Toy’ TalkNovember 25, 2014 - 4:09 pm

About Polari Magazine

Polari Magazine is an LGBT arts and culture magazine that explores the subculture by looking at what is important to the people who are in it. It’s about the lives we lead, not the lifestyles we’re supposed to lead.

Its content is informed & insightful, and features a diverse range of writers from every section of the community. Its intent is to help LGBT readers learn about their own heritage and to sustain a link between the present and the past.

Polari is designed to nurture the idea of community, whether that be social and political, or artistic and creative. It is your magazine, whether you want to read it, or whether you want to get involved in it, if you're gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, or queer.

Polari Magazine is all these: it's a gay online magazine; it's a gay and lesbian online magazine; it's an LGBT arts and culture magazine. Ultimately, it is a queer magazine.

Latest Posts

  • Polari Magazine 2008-2014December 3, 2014 - 6:16 pm
  • Tearing Up Their Map: An Interview with LambDecember 2, 2014 - 2:45 pm
  • Future Islands • GigDecember 2, 2014 - 1:41 pm
  • Puppets with Attitude (at Christmas)December 1, 2014 - 6:30 pm
  • The Aesthetic of Voyeurism: Interview with Antonio Da SilvaDecember 1, 2014 - 1:25 pm
  • Broke With Expensive Taste • Azealia BanksNovember 28, 2014 - 3:59 pm
  • Royalty Strutting on an American College Stage: Miss and Mr. Gay ISU 2014November 27, 2014 - 2:59 pm
  • Bright Light Bright Light: Everything I Ever WantedNovember 26, 2014 - 11:15 am
  • Jaime Nanci And The Blueboys: ‘Toy’ TalkNovember 25, 2014 - 4:09 pm

Twitter

Tweets by @PolariMagazine

Archive

  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • July 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • May 2010
  • April 2010
  • March 2010
  • February 2010
  • January 2010
  • December 2009
  • November 2009
  • October 2009
  • September 2009
  • August 2009
  • July 2009
  • May 2009
  • March 2009
  • February 2009
  • January 2009
  • December 2008
© Copyright - Polari Magazine - Wordpress Theme by Kriesi.at
  • scroll to top
  • Send us Mail
  • Follow us on Twitter
  • Join our Facebook Group
  • Subscribe to our RSS Feed
Website Privacy & Cookies