We generally think that the purpose of words is to communicate ideas; thus words should be relatively stable to maximize comprehension across the broadest number of people. Of course, many people prefer to use words as fad items for purposes of status marking so that they can sneer at those who aren't up to date. Eventually, this facilitates demonizing and punishing those who aren't with it.
From the New York Times:
To most ears, it probably sounds inoffensive. A little outdated and clinical, perhaps, but innocuous enough: homosexual.
But that five-syllable word has never been more loaded, more deliberately used and, to the ears of many gays and lesbians, more pejorative.
“ ‘Homosexual’ has the ring of ‘colored’ now, in the way your grandmother might have used that term, except that it hasn’t been recuperated in the same way,” said George Chauncey, a Yale professor of history and an author who studies gay and lesbian culture.
Consider the following phrases: homosexual community, homosexual activist, homosexual marriage. Substitute the word “gay” in any of those cases, and the terms suddenly become far less loaded, so that the ring of disapproval and judgment evaporates.
Some gay rights advocates have declared the term off limits. The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, or Glaad, has put “homosexual” on its list of offensive terms and in 2006 persuaded The Associated Press, whose stylebook is the widely used by many news organizations, to restrict use of the word.
One not completely obvious bug with jettisoning "homosexual" for "gay" is that "homosexual" fairly covers both "gay" and "lesbian." In other words, "homosexual" is non-sexist while "gay" is clearly male-dominated. As a lesbian leader pointed out once, "We're not gay, we're angry!"
But the sexism of gay is not really a bug, it's a feature. After a number of years of persecuting older individuals for saying "homosexual" instead of "gay," then the persecutions can begin of people for saying "gay" instead of "lesbian and gay." And then the bisexuals and trans will have their turn persecuting the losers who say "lesbian and gay." And then the different flavors of trans will get to persecute those who aren't paying adequate attention to their immensely important differences, and so forth ad infinitum.
Of course, the phenomenon you note can also identify the most dedicated slaves to political correctness. You really have to be cowed to replace one syllable (Black) with seven!
ReplyDeleteAfrican-American? Really?
I insist on the appellation "Homosexual." If challenged, I ask how does deviate strike you, or perhaps invert?
ReplyDeleteDid you hear about the fun Piers Morgan had with his latest transgender (NOT "transgendered"!!) guest, Janet Mock?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.buzzfeed.com/chrisgeidner/transgender-advocate-janet-mock-piers-morgan-sensationalized
Will anybody survive World War T?
Will anybody want to?
Micro aggressions have nano aggressions,
ReplyDeleteTo marginalize and slight 'em,
And nano aggressions have pico aggressions,
And so ad infinitum.
you made my day with that.
Delete" You gotta know how to respek everyone: animals, children, spazmos, mingers, lezzers, fatty boombahs, and even gaylords. So, to all you lot watching this, but mainly to the normal people, respek."
ReplyDelete-Ali G
In Oak Ridge National Laboratory, in the same building that houses the library (and an odd display case eulogizing Szilard for helping the medical imaging business), there is or used to be a sensitivity poster naming "insensitive" or offensive words. I was nonplussed and a bit flabbergasted to see "homosexual" on this Index Librorum Prohibitorum. It is a perfectly descriptive, unprejudiced term. But we must not merely accept Stalin, we must love The Great Gardener with all our hearts. Homosexuals are gay...why no call them "joyous enlightened bringers of light"?
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteYoy. This is all nothing more than "You say to-may-to, I say to-mah-to."
Another one to add to today's ever-burgeoning instances of a pointedly boiled-up tempest in a teapot.
Just use the term 'hobosexual' to cover all of the confusing variations out there that nobody really wants to delve into too deeply and be done with it.
ReplyDeletead nauseam
ReplyDeleteNative American is a loaded term, as is the word privilege.
ReplyDeleteHow long until World War G (or T) turns its attentions onto trans fat? Are all the doctors and nutritionists who say eating trans fat secretly homophobic? Why do these hate-mongering doctors say TRANS fat is bad, huh???? Because it's TRANS??? What about cis fat? Why are they discriminating against trans fat????????????????
ReplyDeleteThey're way ahead of you.
ReplyDeleteIn the 4 letter version of the alphabet soup you saw "GLBT" and "LGBT" (The full alphabet soup is up to at least LGBTTQQ2SIAAP, les gay bi transgender transsexual queer questioning 2-spirit intersex asexual allies pansexual). Proper speech is now just "LGBT" to place the L before the G.
Regular gay guys who are just regular guys who want to have sex with men are pretty much on the outs, especially when they're white. Being too masculine or into any sort of beer/sports type activities condemns the gay male in the eye of PC, as does being too feminine which is misogyny. Having preferences for masculine dudes or in-shape dudes is now unacceptable.
That's why the politically correct thing that that crowd does now and demands of everyone else is to use their ever expanding acronym.
ReplyDeleteGiven the high rates of depression and suicide among homosexuals, gay seems somewhat inappropriate.
ReplyDeleteThe fairness obsession has become madness.
ReplyDeleteIt has, in fact, become a form of S&M.
What about heterosexual? Are we allowed to call ourselves heterosexual, or would that be a loaded term too? It seems that if homosexuals, gays I mean, get to define what people call them, aren't we allowed the same privilege?
ReplyDeleteI'm willing to bet that whoever is banning the term homosexual will also do the same to heterosexual to ensure there are no back doors, pun intended, to insulting them.
"But that five-syllable word has never been more loaded, more deliberately used and, to the ears of many gays and lesbians, more pejorative.
ReplyDeleteConsider the following phrases: homosexual community, homosexual activist, homosexual marriage. Substitute the word “gay” in any of those cases, and the terms suddenly become far less loaded, so that the ring of disapproval and judgment evaporates."
"Homosexual" isn't the loaded word. "Gay" is the loaded word.
Control of language is a favorite tactic of totalitarians everywhere, Cultural Marxists being no exception.
ReplyDeleteAnother frequent example is the use of "British man" when referring to dedicated Jihadists fighting in Syria, or beheading real British men in the streets of London, etc, etc.
I think the PC police are likely to overplay their hands here, as normal people start to tune out over the absurdities, or even to fight back legally as was the case in Canada recently.
Anon.
"Oriental" is a perfectly neutral word, and more descriptive than "Asian", but it has now also become taboo.
ReplyDeleteAnd for some reason, to say "Chinaman" is to mark oneself as an unreconstructed bigot, although it's perfectly fine to say "Englishman" or "Frenchman".
The ultimate aim is to humiliate and degrade people by turning the neutral words of their everyday conversations into "hate speech", to keep them running on the euphemism treadmill, fearful of missing the latest change of meaning dictated by WWT/G crowd.
ReplyDeleteThis has been going on forever.
ReplyDeleteWho would ever guess that a moron is superior to an imbecile who is superior to an idiot.
"Moron" was coined in 1910 by psychologist Henry H. Goddard[3] from the Ancient Greek word μωρός (moros), which meant "dull"[4] (as opposed to oxy, which meant "sharp" (see also: oxymoron)), and used to describe a person with a mental age in adulthood of between 8 and 12 on the Binet scale.[5] It was once applied to people with an IQ of 51–70, being superior in one degree to "imbecile" (IQ of 26–50) and superior in two degrees to "idiot" (IQ of 0–25)."
Don't dispair. In a few years when gay becomes a slur and falls into disuse, we can recycle the Christmas Carol, Deck the Halls without howls of laughter from pre adolescent children.
Little do they seem to know that the use of "faggot" is very much alive among hetero men and "flamer" among women.
ReplyDeleteAdolescents and teens still say, "That's soo gay" as a perjorative.
"Homosexual" is, of course still part of the scientific literature.
"Micro aggressions have nano aggressions,"
ReplyDeleteI guess with microchips and high tech, even aggressions have to be 'digitized' and fine-tuned.
Microparanoia, microhysteria, microsensitive, microallergic, micronagging.
Like the boy in the plastic bubble. No immunity against anything.
From puritanism to microtanism.
Inversexual is more like it.
ReplyDeleteinverse-sexuality
World War T and World War G are boring me, frankly.
ReplyDeleteWhen World War P comes around, now THAT will be something to watch. Truly that will be the battle of our time.
"Gay" was the pre-existing term for homosexuals before the word "homosexual" gained currency as being less offensive -- all of this generations ago.
ReplyDeleteOf course, even in that forgotten era, 'gay' was used in an entirely ironical way, since homosexuals tended -- even then -- towards manic-depressive personality states.
The manic state = found a new lover.
Depression = their lover found a new lover.
The turn-over in gay 'arrangements' still astounds 'straights.'
(Those 'not bent'?)
Other gay terms still saturate the language: "Heard it on the 'down-low' is not a reference to quiet talk -- it's a reference to pillow talk -- of which only women and homosexuals were socially expected to transmit.
It would be considered an extremely damaging social faux pas if a man were to admit that he was acting on the basis of pillow talk. (The sin being in the admission, of course.)
Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate The Modern Denial of Human Nature Has a whole chapter on the absurd Cultural Marxist notion that there is no reality outside of language.
ReplyDeleteThe "LGBT" movement knows that peer reviewed academic biological and social science undermines their agenda. Hence better to have Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty or some fundamentalist preacher from a snake handler church in West Virginia discussing the biblical injunctions against homosexual marriage on tv, standing in as the perfect straw man. The Gay Agenda knows having somebody from the "Hate Group" The Family Research Council dryly discussing the realities of academic literature that does not support their cause could be fatal.
The NYT article basically admits that anybody who takes the time to review the consensus academic studies on sexuality will begin to seriously question Gender/Sexual Marxism. Serious impartial academics use the term homosexual.
Again to the Marxist mind, getting rid of the word homosexual will alter reality.
In a way, maybe they are right.
"It's not called being gay; it's called being FABULOUS!"
ReplyDeleteSomething my nine year old daughter picked up off the internet, and which she loves to bust out with from time to time, for no particular reason.
As others have said: The love that dare not speak its name now can't keep its mouth shut.
ReplyDeleteWould you call straight people heterosexual? It sounds pretty clinical to me. I wouldn't call my straight friends heterosexual, I'd use the word if I was talking about a medical paper, not people I personally knew.
ReplyDeleteThis gay guy doesn't think preferring a word that's been in common currency since the 1970s, that doesn't have implications of clinical diagnosis, overtones of "being gay is a medical disorder" etc is that unreasonable.
Political correctness is fully Orwellian, even in the sense that it often makes me think, "am I the only sane person, or are the others sane and I've gone insane?" This is a kind of Winston Smith situation...
ReplyDeleteGay is something of a euphamism. I try to avoid euphamisms. Especially pecee ones.
ReplyDeleteIt isn't affirmative action, it's race preference.
It isn't African American - unless we're talking about Charlize Theron - it's Black.
It isn't gay, it's homosexual, lesbian or sodomite.
It isn't public sector workers, it's taxpayer funded workforce.
etcetera.
Nick- Pretoria
I refuse to adopt the term "gay", just as I refuse to adopt the terms "African American", "Asian", or "Native American". Better to be ostracized than despise myself for cowardice.
ReplyDeleteWhy can't we just re-introduce sumptuary laws instead of using multi-cult jargon to mark the social hierarchy? I'll promise not to wear green silk or purple velvet if you'll stop trying to force me to apologize for speaking normal English. A forlorn hope of course, the whole point is to force decent people to grovel.
"This gay guy doesn't think preferring a word that's been in common currency since the 1970s, that doesn't have implications of clinical diagnosis, overtones of "being gay is a medical disorder" etc is that unreasonable."
ReplyDeleteSo you 'prefer' a certain form of words? We keep hearing about YOUR preferences. OK. You're a special snowflake... Whoops, not funny special or anything. Happy now?
Gilbert P.
This is a kind of Winston Smith situation
ReplyDeleteThere is no "kind of". It is exactly that. The situation is exactly the one Orwell warned us about.
"Homo-" is the opposite of "sexual". The real question is how did a nonsensical term gain currency in the first place.
ReplyDeleteActually, "homosexual" was the first gay propaganda term. And it came from Germany! Look it up.
i like heinlein's starship troopers method: if you've served in the military you're a citizen. otherwise you're not. period end of sentence.
ReplyDeleteRecently I read a piece written by some student activist types in the MIT school newspaper decrying the (non-existent) "rape culture" at MIT. That in itself was par for the course and unremarkable but for some reason the article included gratuitous shout-outs to the various flavors of homosexual. They recited a long list of all the different kinds that they could think of - trans, ambiguous, whatever and and the end, just to be sure they hadn't missed any, included "other" . It was hilarious.
ReplyDeleteRE: African American,
ReplyDeleteI have actually never met a Black person who uses this term in private life....
"Would you call straight people heterosexual? It sounds pretty clinical to me."
ReplyDelete'Hetero and sexual' are redundant.
What I've been curious about is whether it's becoming oligatory to use words like "husband" or "wife" to refer to same-sex partners.
ReplyDeleteOne reason iSteve is interesting to me is that you get commenters here who are unaware of the particulars of Christian subculture. I assure you, "homosexual" is in common use in these circles, and isn't going away.
Would you call straight people heterosexual?
Yes, of course I would, and do. In fact I don't think I have ever used the word "straight", because that word is as much part of the trendy homoganda vocabulary as "gay" is. I feel dirty even thinking about using the word "straight"; it makes me feel like I've become a Hollywood Marxist puppet.
If they insist that I stop using the clinical but basically polite and neutral "homosexual", I'll probably go back to saying "sodomite". It's very rude and a little crass (and will probably cause me to lose a few friends), but at least it doesn't do violence to the English language. The euphemism treadmill has gone far enough; it's time for a little push-back. Similarly, if they demand I swap "disabled" for "differently-abled", I'll just go back to saying "Cripple".
ReplyDeleteBy the way, does it strike anyone as odd that "black" and "person of color" are acceptable terms, but "Negro" and "Colored" are not, despite their completely identical definitions? Out of politeness, I generally try to refer to people with whatever word they would prefer, within reason (no, I won't call a man a "she" just because he decided to amputate his genitals), so this is a purely academic observation for me. Still, "Colored" always seemed to be a somewhat more chromatically-accurate word than "black". Was the abandonment of the former term related at all to the "Black is Beautiful" movement in the '70s? Also, I have the sense that "Afro-American" is dated and "African-American" is to be preferred, but there seems to be no logical reason to prefer the clunkier version with more syllables- nobody considers the terms "Franco-American", "Hiberno-American", "Anglo-American" to be offensive (then again, neither are "Gringo" or "Cracker", apparently- it's "Who? Whom?" again). The prohibition on the most notorious anti-black epithet, at least, I can certainly understand, since the word seems to be a diminutive form, with corresponding connotations of belittlement and dismissal. Still, excising it from classic 19th century literature where no such connotation was intended is absurd in the extreme.
Did you hear about the fun Piers Morgan had with his latest transgender (NOT "transgendered"!!) guest, Janet Mock?
ReplyDeleteLet me guess -- he mocked her?
"Anonymous said...
ReplyDeleteWould you call straight people heterosexual? It sounds pretty clinical to me."
No, I call them normal.
"Anonymous said...
ReplyDeleteWhat about heterosexual? Are we allowed to call ourselves heterosexual, or would that be a loaded term too? It seems that if homosexuals, gays I mean, get to define what people call them, aren't we allowed the same privilege?"
Straights should tell homosexualists: You don't get to define us. We'll use our own word to descibe ourselves. That word is normal.
This one is a bit odd, because it doesn't seem to relate to how normal people actually use the words - 'gay' seems much more likely than 'homosexual' to be used pejoratively, especially by children and teenagers.
ReplyDeleteSo, this seems evidence that the exercise of controlling language by telling people that a word is pejorative is not connected to whether or not that word is actually used pejoratively. It's purely about power and control.
"Anonymous said...
ReplyDeleteWould you call straight people heterosexual?"
Yes.
People born in the U.S., especially those whose family have been here a long time, should be able to call themselves "native Americans", but they can't unless they are American Indians. In other words, there is no term for white people of European descent whose families have been in the U.S. for generations (is there?), because "we're all just a bunch of immigrants".
ReplyDelete< A forlorn hope of course, the whole point is to force decent people to grovel. >
ReplyDeletePrecisely. Which is why I, too, refuse to adopt any preferred modes of address. It is now known, by the young fools who work at the bank branch I frequent, not to address me by my first name unless so invited.
For a time I answered the marketing calls by asking the caller what gave him the right to ask for a stranger by his given name. The morons doing the calling literally stammered; they didn't know how to respond. That got boring; I now pick up and hang up.
Microaggressions? You want micro? Hell no. All macro, all the time.
Decades ago when using colloquial language to discuss sexual orientation, it was acceptable to use the queer vs straight dichotomy .
ReplyDeleteThe word queer having the meaning since Shakespeare of eccentric, unusual, weird, bent, irregular, the opposite of normative...
The nice thing about the word queer, is that it was applicable to the diversity of persona/identities that homosexuals adopt; the "Macho Man", body beautiful narcissist, BSMD leather fetishist, Twink, Drag Queen, the effeminate, the bitchy....
Then in the 1970's the "gay" liberation movement declared war on the word queer.
The funny thing is that militant and simply recalcitrant homosexuals have never gotten the memo and still use queer.
My question is why can't the rest of use queer because it does not have the down with the agenda connotation that gay does?
These guys are idiots. "Gay" denotes a particular cultural understanding of homosexuality. Time-travellers excepted, there were no gays in Ancient Greece, and there are no gay animals.
ReplyDelete"Same-sex" might seem like reasonably inoffensive alternative, but two points: First, "same-sex relationship" is ambiguous in a way that "same-sex marriage" is not, because relationships are not always even potentially sexual, though this may be news to some in the LBGTetc. circuit. Second, why would we *not* want to offend the self-proclaimed language (and would-be thought) police? In fact, isn't there a kind of moral duty to offend them. So long as it amuses our fellow citizens, I say yes.
The politically correct word that encompasses all the flavors of sexual nonconformism (gay, lesbian, bi, trans and so on) is "QUEER"
ReplyDeleteFemtoaggressions are the most harmful of all, as they can't even be picked up by Scanning Electron Agressoscopes.
ReplyDeleteBut you can feel them, Steve.
You can feel them.
nothing new. controlling language is a long time, basic tactic of the cultural marxists. i've noted this many times on here.
ReplyDeletetheir greatest victory was getting everybody to call short fat american indians 'latinos'.
it would be like them convincing everybody that eskimos are 'slavs', because russia controlled alaska for a while.
they had no use for trying to convince us that africans were europeans. so despite almost all africans in the US having names like Leroy Washington, and speaking English, and being Baptist or Methodists, all of which are totally alien to africans, none of which came from africa, and all of which were adopted directly from europeans, cultural marxists never tried to convince us that english named, english speaking, protestant religion practicing africans were, in fact, anglo saxons.
however, the 5 foot tall brown guys down at the home depot are hispanic.
People of choler.
ReplyDeleteP.S. Ahoy. Steve, Tiger Cub stuff.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/technology/marthagilltech/100012936/why-pushy-parents-lower-their-childrens-grades/
Just this morning my dentist told me that at his Catholic high school in San Francisco (in the '60's), the football coach had to be eased out because he was - um - you know.
ReplyDeleteIn the MacPherson report into the murder in London of what the BBC calls "the black teenager Stephen Lawrence*", the fact that some officers used the word "coloured" to describe non-native Britons (which was the polite word to use in the 1950s/60s - "black" would have been considered rude if not insulting) was presented in court as proof of their racism.
ReplyDeletehttp:/www.civitas.org.uk/pdf/cs05.pdf
* the BBC don't call the victim of a riot a few years earlier "the white policeman Keith Blakelock". I wonder why not ?
This language boobytrap might be more than status-marking—one might even describe it as "language as shibboleth." As with that Hebrew word (shibbólet שִׁבֹּלֶת), whose "sh" sound was difficult for non-Hebrews to pronounce, the constantly shifting landscape of acceptable political speech serves to differentiate the in-group from the out-group. In other words, you might support the rights of negroes and homosexuals, but if you describe your views in those terms you immediately mark yourself as a member of the wrong tribe (or at least as a tribal member who isn't fully with it).
ReplyDeleteThe guy has a point, or at least, a coincidence. The only time I use "gay" is as a put-down. I use "homosexual" to refer to them the rest of the time.
ReplyDelete"African-American" was chosen because it's long, has two capitalized letters, works to affirm blacks' American-ness, and is sort of official-sounding. But homosexuals want to go the other way and keep it monosyllabic. Whatever.
Micro aggressions have nano aggressions,
ReplyDeleteTo marginalize and slight 'em,
And nano aggressions have pico aggressions,
And so ad infinitum.
Nicely done.
ad nauseam
ReplyDeleteHaha, I'm the guy who always corrects people on that one everywhere, after some anonymous snob here called me a Philistine for using two Us. I feel like I'm saving them from him.
The fairness obsession has become madness.
ReplyDeleteIt has, in fact, become a form of S&M.
America (and the west) is in the grip of some kind of collective psychological malady vis-a-vis race. Mad as a hatter, really. "Gaslighted" is in the ballpark.
I second Samson J's comment above: pay close attention to the ways in which the media/Great and Good now use the words 'husband' and 'wife'. After more or less disappearing, these traditional terms have suddenly come back, in self-consciously conspicuous usages, to refer to the 'spouses' of homosexuals.
ReplyDeleteSo heterosexual people may have, at best, 'partners', while gays get the husbands and lesbians claim the wives.
And then the bisexuals and trans will have their turn persecuting the losers who say "lesbian and gay." And then the different flavors of trans will get to persecute those who aren't paying adequate attention to their immensely important differences, and so forth ad infinitum.
ReplyDeleteWell, probably not, actually. I think that society is ultimately self-correcting — though perhaps not with the speed we would like. But I suspect the wheels will fall off the Cultural Marxist clown car before we're all socially required to parse all the different varieties of trans-whatevers. At some point there will be a pushback, not for reasons of morality or tradition, but for the simple reason that efficiency-minded elites will get fed up with having to juggle the increasingly-incompatible demands of so many different factions.
In other words, there is no term for white people of European descent whose families have been in the U.S. for generations (is there?)
ReplyDeletePeter Brimelow calls them "Colonial-stock Americans" or "old stock Americans."
I just call them gynephobes and heterophobes (or androphobes), that way there's no confusion.
ReplyDeleteI note that Kingsley Amis in his book on English-language style ceded the word "gay" to the homosexuals on the grounds that it was a small enough concession to a put-upon people. I wonder if he would reevaluate that stance today.
ReplyDeleteAs for me, I do prefer the term "sodomite" as the oldest English appellation, but one has to be ready for the backlash with that. So I often use the almost-as-ancient but much-less-well-known "bardash."
I suggest that "homosexual" be used to refer to people with a particular sexual disposition. This usage is different to "gay", a term which implies that the person enthusiastically acts on that disposition. (And of course "homosexual" includes lesbians, unlike "gay".)
ReplyDeleteBy the way, "sodomite" should be used to refer to people who practice sodomy. I assume that not all gays practice this particular activity.
This is just another example of the Euphemism Treadmill. Here's another example, the word "crippled" and its successors.
ReplyDeleteBeing crippled is a bad thing, so we were told to call crippled people "handicapped" instead. So we did.
Being handicapped is a bad thing, so we were told to call crippled/handicapped people "disabled" instead. So we did.
Being disabled is a bad thing, so we are told to call crippled/handicapped/disabled people "differently-abled" instead. I'm tired of the treadmill, so I've stepped off the damned thing.
In other words, there is no term for white people of European descent whose families have been in the U.S. for generations (is there?)
ReplyDeletePeter Brimelow calls them "Colonial-stock Americans" or "old stock Americans."
American-Americans.
http://www.infowars.com/professor-90-of-news-stories-to-be-written-by-computers-by-2030/
ReplyDeleteHey Steve, I assume you already saw that? The LAT is already publishing stories written by bots?
"Svigor said...
ReplyDelete""In other words, there is no term for white people of European descent whose families have been in the U.S. for generations (is there?)
Peter Brimelow calls them "Colonial-stock Americans" or "old stock Americans.""
American-Americans."
Doormat-Americans