bothner@Shasta.ARPA (04/25/85)
I find the usage of the terms "homosexual", "bisexual" and "gay"
somewhat confusing; perhaps we could get some discussion on this.
Let us start with the Kinsey scale, which I think is 1 for "only
attracted to members of the opposite sex", and 6 for "only attracted
to members of the same sex". We might then say that people in the
range 1.0 .. 1.0+epsilon (for some epsilon) are straight, people
in the range 6.0-epsilon .. 6.0 are gay, and people between are bi.
(Of course I realize it is pointless to assign individuals precisely
on such a scale.)
The problem is that depending on speaker and context, people (implicitly)
use values of epsilon ranging from very small (close to 0) to very
large (upto 2.5).
This can be somewhat confusing. To complicate the matter: it seems
there are all kinds of political and moral assumptions tied up with
one's liguistic usage (as is often the case). I can understand why
one would want to discourage discussion about causes, choices and
changing of sexual preferences (it's pointless, and tends to encourage
the religious fanatics to start spouting their talk about "willful
sinning"). But doing so tends to gloss over that perhaps people's
sexual orientations aren't necessarily 100% fixed or absolute.
After all, there \are/ people who identify themselves as gays, but
have previously dated, slept with, or married motos. While there
might usually be some element of fear of condemnation (from self
or others), there could also be an element of uncertainty, lack of
self-knowledge or just inexperience. It might seem reasonable
to describe (some?) such people as bisexual, even though at a later
period of their lives, they stick to motss.
Other issues:
I get the impression that it is appropriate to apply "homosexual"
when talking about preferences or activities, and "gay" when
talking about lifestyles and identification. Is this common usage?
Or is it just that "gay" is the Polically Correct word in either
context. Does it make sense it say that someone might be both gay
and bi?
Sometimes "gay" and "homosexual" includes women, at
other times people feel constrained to add "... and lesbian". This
might have something to do with the whole tangled issue of "sexist
language", but I would think that neither "gay" and "homosexual"
are inherently gender specific. Here again, usage seems to vary.
--Per Bothner
ARPA: Bothner@su-score UUCP: ..{decwrl,ucbvax}!shasta!bothner