Pronouns: Why Gay Men Call Each Other "She" and "Girl" | Them

Contents:

• CALL ME BY MY PRONOUNS: WHY GAY MEN CALL EACH OTHER "GIRL"
• BUTCH, FEMME, OR STRAIGHT ACTG? PARTNER PREFERENC OF GAY MEN AND LBIANS

CALL ME BY MY PRONOUNS: WHY GAY MEN CALL EACH OTHER "GIRL"

Sexual orientatn refers to the endurg physil, romantic and/or emotnal attractn to members of the same and/or other genrs, cludg lbian, gay, bisexual and straight orientatns. As GLAAD not, "Transgenr people may be straight, lbian, gay, bisexual or queer. A person who transns om female to male and is attracted solely to men would typilly intify as a gay man.

Though effemate guys are often stereotyped as gay, beg a femboy isn’t necsarily tied to any sexual orientatn. Beg femboy don't mean you're gay.

Anyone om a trans woman to a gay, non-bary dividual n intify wh the term. That means a person of any genr n be attracted to someone who intifi as female or who exprs feme sexual orientatn terms such as “homosexualy” or “heterosexualy, ” gynosexualy do not specify the person’s own genr relatn to their sexual orientatn. The e of she/her pronouns by cisgenr gay men, along wh words such as "girl" or "honey, " is a long-standg and creasgly visible practice.

BUTCH, FEMME, OR STRAIGHT ACTG? PARTNER PREFERENC OF GAY MEN AND LBIANS

For many gay men, g the words wh their iends is a way of embracg femy and showg vulnerabily or affectn to others who share their inti. Creatg a shared culture — cludg language — around femy n be a way of reclaimg the bas for opprsn many gay men have experienced, as well as disptg the harmful genr few if any lguistic practic are all one thg, all the time. It may be time to reevaluate cis gay men’s e of words like "she" and "girl" to make sure they align wh ongog efforts to rpect nonbary genr inti, and avoid makg assumptns about people’s pronouns.

Lguists, social scientists, and crics have observed and studied cis gay men’s e of “she, ” and their asssments pot to the multiple and often nflictg dimensns of the practice. So for even to make sense for gay men to e ‘she, ’ we have to have some kd of associatn wh ‘she, ’ and ually that associatn is femy, whatever that might mean to or our culture. “Men g women’s pronouns, and women g men’s pronouns, has got an enormo time pth Amerin lbian-gay English.

It’s not a recent formatn at all, ” explas William Leap, an emer profsor of anthropology at Amerin Universy and pneerg expert on queer men llg each other "she" or "girl" was historilly a way of protectg themselv as well as buildg muny the ntext of homophobic and vlent mastream culture. In the 1940s, ary censors were on the lookout for evince of homosexualy, which uld provoke a ary vtigatn.