rooter@well.UUCP (Brian Mavrogeorge) (08/17/85)
Terms can be very powerful. Simply by calling someone a term you have applied a whole laundry list of definitions to them. And the definitions change. Homosexual is certainly acceptable to me as a term indicating my sexual preference. However, it says nothing about my "life style" (hate that over-used term). If you called me gay then that would be quite different than homosexual. For me it has connotations of activism, group identification, perhaps whether or not I have come out, pride in one's group. It may also have negative images relating to other's perception of what a gay life would be. If I was a lesbian then there might be the same dynamics at work when you found yourself lumped in with men in the term gay. For women the struggle for rights and women's concerns are very important. Some choose to assert their pride in what they are and identify themselves with others by insisting that they be referred to as lesbians not as gay. Blacks have gone through a similar change. By the way, the word origin of negro is not slave as you suggest. Its root is a word for black. The insistence on being called Black was an insistence on recognition and pride in who they were. But a negro is a Black. And, a gay is a homosexual. The difference is that a negro would not necessarily say he is a Black, and a homosexual does not always say he is gay. In fact I have met some homosexuals who were quite adamant that they were not "gay"! Such is the power of terms to enhance or destroy images. Perhaps our heterosexual friends could ponder the difference between us calling them heterosexuals or calling them straight. In my mind there is a difference. Or even worse if we called them by the popular term "breeders".