"That's So Gay" Is Jt So Wrong | Psychology Today

Contents:

• ENGLISH PRONUNCIATN OF GAY
• LET’S SAY GAY
• HERE'S WHAT FLORIDA'S 'DON'T SAY GAY' BILL WOULD DO AND WHAT WOULDN'T DO
• GAY
• WHAT WORDS CAN I SAY TO DECLARE THAT I’M GAY?
• WHAT DO IT MEAN TO BE GAY? DEFN AND MEANG OF GAY
• WHAT DO ‘DON’T SAY GAY’ ACTUALLY SAY?
• "THAT'S SO GAY" IS JT SO WRONG
• SYNONYMS OF GAY
• “SAY GAY” IS TRENDG AS EVERYONE SPEAKS OUT AGAST FLORIDA’S DON’T SAY GAY LAW
• THE SOLUTN TO "GAY" INSULTS: FREEDOM OF SPEECH
• VIO RURFAC OF KG VON TELLG POLICE HE'S "GAY" TO RELOTE IN JAIL

ENGLISH PRONUNCIATN OF GAY

" — Tammy Baldw"The next time someone asks you why LGBT Pri march exist or why Gay Pri Month is June tell them, 'A bisexual woman named Brenda Howard thought should be. " — David Carter, "Stonewall: The Rts That Sparked the Gay Revolutn""Every sgle Amerin — gay, straight, lbian, bisexual, transgenr — every sgle Amerin serv to be treated equally the ey of the law and the ey of our society.

AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTPamela Bons /Visum, via RxLast month, the new print of the advocy group Human Rights Campaign, Kelley Robson, posted a six-and-a-half-mute vio to troduce herself and ame the missn of her anizatn, which was found 40 years ago by the gay activist Steve Enan to help fund polil mpaigns for pro-gay-rights ndidat. The word “queer” is climbg equency and n be ed terchangeably wh “gay, ” which self not so long ago replaced the dour and fatly judgy “homosexual. In the same perds, e of “gay” has fallen om 2, 228 to 1, 531 — still more monly ed, but the directn of the evolutn is impossible to miss.

LET’S SAY GAY

’ media, treat the word ‘lbian’ like ’s the plague, ” noted Julia Diana Robertson the lbian publitn The Velvet ’s be clear: Many lbians and gay people are fe wh this shift. For one thg, “gay” and “queer” are not synonymo, as they are creasgly treated, particularly among Gen Zers and lennials. Q., ” which sometim clus addnal symbols and letters, reprents so many inti unrelated to sexual orientatn that gays and lbians n feel crowd week on “CBS News Sunday Morng, ” the wrer David Sedaris said he was done “fightg the word ‘queer.

“Gay” has a clear, specific meang that appli to both men and women: “homosexual, ” which is the first entry most dictnari. ” Another fn refers not only to gay people but also to “a person whose sexual orientatn or genr inty falls outsi the heterosexual mastream or the genr bary, ” acrdg to That uld mean “transgenr, ” “genr ntral, ” “nonbary, ” “agenr, ” “pangenr, ” “genrqueer, ” “misexual, ” “asexual, ” “two spir, ” “third genr” or all, none or some batn of the above.

HERE'S WHAT FLORIDA'S 'DON'T SAY GAY' BILL WOULD DO AND WHAT WOULDN'T DO

Queer theory is about liberately breakg down normative tegori around genr and sex, particularly bary on like men and women, straight and gay. Sayg you’re queer uld mean you’re gay; uld mean you’re straight; uld mean you’re uncid about your genr or that you prefer not to say. Sayg you’re queer uld mean as ltle as havg kissed another girl your sophomore year at llege.

It uld mean you valiantly plowed through the prose of Judh Butler a urse on queerns the Elizabethan the broad spectm of possibily, ’s no surprise that many people — gay or straight — have no ia what means when someone self-intifi as this is important: Not all gay people see themselv as queer.

There are gay men, for example, who grew up sperately needg reassurance that they were jt as much a boy as any hypermanly heterosexual. Whereas homosexualy is a sexual orientatn one nnot choose, queerns is somethg one n, acrdg to Jam Kirchick, the thor of “Secret Cy: The Hidn History of Gay Washgton. “Whereas the arc of the gay rights movement, and the dividual liv of most gay people, has been a stggle agast margaly.

GAY

The send fn for “gay” most dictnari is somethg along the l of “happy, ” “lighthearted” and “reee. ”What I hear most often om gay and lbian iends regardg the word “queer” is somethg along the l of what Sedaris poted out: “Nobody nsulted me! In the se of “queer, ” ’s pecially worrisome and not only bee superses wily accepted and unrstood terms but also bee the gay rights movement’s succs have historilly hged on efforts at people, lbians and bisexuals fought for a long time to be open and clear about who they are.

” A versn of this article appears prt on, Sectn A, Page 24 of the New York edn wh the headle: Why the Word ‘Gay’ Is Fallg Out of Fashn. old funny gay quot, funny gay saygs, and funny gay proverbs, llected over the years om a variety. Let's make a law that gay people n have birthdays, but straight people get more ke--you know, to send the right msage to kids.

WHAT WORDS CAN I SAY TO DECLARE THAT I’M GAY?

It tak some telligence and sight to figure out you're gay and then a tremendo amount of balls to live and live proudly. The poetry you read has been wrten for you, each of you - black, whe, Hispanic, man, woman, gay, straight. The fact that many Amerins nsir a disease says more about them than do about homosexualy.

WHAT DO IT MEAN TO BE GAY? DEFN AND MEANG OF GAY

From a relig pot of view, if God had thought homosexualy is a s, he would not have created gay people. Only sce the begng of the 20th century has queer been ed to refer to people who intify as gay or lbian. GLAAD prefers that we don’t e the term homosexual bee ’s “aggrsively ed by anti-gay extremists to suggt that gay people are somehow diseased or psychologilly/emotnally disorred.

WHAT DO ‘DON’T SAY GAY’ ACTUALLY SAY?

Bee suggts that beg lbian, gay, bisexual, or of another sexual orientatn is a choice and the person n be “cured. It’s OK to scribe someone you know who publicly self-intifi as gay, lbian, bisexual, or another sexual orientatn as out. But never out someone, or expose their lbian, gay, bisexual, or transgenr inty, whout permissn.

But, people who are gay, lbian, bisexual, or transgenr also re about a wi variety of other polil, social, and cultural issu. The term homosexual agenda is ed by anti-gay extremists to create a climate of fear and mistst.

"THAT'S SO GAY" IS JT SO WRONG

It’s sometim ed as a disparagg way to scribe the recment of heterosexuals to a homosexual liftyle. But Florida’s Parental Rights Edutn act — which crics have dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill — has sudnly sparked a natnal war of recent weeks, lears of global rporatns, edorial boards of major newspapers and Hollywood actors have all weighed on the proposed legislatn, wh some llg “eply disturbg” and others “nonntroversial. ” Conversely, opponents say would unfairly target the LGBTQ muny — particularly gay and trans stunts — and is “pretendg to solve a problem that don’t exist.

For starters, cricism that the “Don’t Say Gay” bill do not fact say “gay” anywhere s text is te. The bill, which passed Florida’s Senate last week and the state’s Hoe of Reprentativ Febary, do, however, nta the terms “sexual orientatn” and “genr inty, ” each legal experts say that whether the bill prohibs the word “gay” self is a “distractn. ”Beyond brandg, a re argument over the bill centers around whether would prohib the “stctn” or “discsn” of sexual bill’s sponsors have emphatilly stated that the bill would not prohib stunts om talkg about their LGBTQ fai or bar classroom discsns about LGBTQ history, cludg events like the 2016 adly attack on the Pulse nightclub, a gay club Orlando.

SYNONYMS OF GAY

\n Explorg the different meangs of a ntroversial word “gay” is everywhere you look the days.

“SAY GAY” IS TRENDG AS EVERYONE SPEAKS OUT AGAST FLORIDA’S DON’T SAY GAY LAW

Gay activists support gay rights such as gay marriage, while gay-bashers prott all thgs gay, cludg the gayby boom. There’s also been a rash of suicis volvg gay youngsters who were bullied—which is perhaps why the trailer for The Dilemma ught major flak. Most people are very aware of the meang of “gay” as happy or lame, but the word has had an astoundg range of other meangs as well.

What “gay” means pends entirely on your time perd and perspective, and the days, perspective n be hard to fd. ” The sense of “gay” as happy or merry dat om the 1400s and spired some bizarrely specific sens, such as “of a horse: lively, prancg” and “of a dog's tail: rried high or erect.

” In several earlier fns, we n see the seeds of “gay” begng to mean homosexual, if only bee the meangs f wh what would bee gay stereotyp. “Gay” also meant somethg like “prostute-y” the 1800s, as a “gay woman” or “gay girl” was what we ll a sex worker the days. They were together then and traveled to another place and stayed there and were gay there...

THE SOLUTN TO "GAY" INSULTS: FREEDOM OF SPEECH

This example om that year shows jt how -flux (and vert) the meang was: “Supposg one met a stranger on a tra om Boston to New York and wanted to fd out whether he was ‘wise’ or even homosexual.

’ And by a slight accent put on the word ‘gay’ the stranger, if wise, would unrstand that homosexual rorts were meant. On the one hand, ’s 100 percent unrstandable why GLAAD is a ltle sensive to anythg that sounds like gay-bashg. Isn’t Vghn’s clarifitn—“not homosexual gay, but, you know, my-parents-are-chaperong-the-dance gay”—equivalent to the famo Sefeld “Not that there’s anythg wrong wh that”?

As I unrstand the homophobic viewpot, gay people are nsired sners and evil-doers—a lot worse than lame, right?

VIO RURFAC OF KG VON TELLG POLICE HE'S "GAY" TO RELOTE IN JAIL

If the llective gay people of the world uld magilly transform all “gays are abomatns” sentiment to “gays are like, totally lame, ” I have a feelg they would take that barga, bee nobody bothers to legally discrimate agast the lame. Maybe gay people n miserate wh the physilly lame, who lost the battle over that word years ago. The dislike of “gay” is an awful lot like the dislike of “retard”—both words, when ed sultgly, are hated for reasons that are very passnate.