Why do we still have the H-word?

Every semester I tell my students "The proper terms are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, LGBT, LGBTQ, LGBTQQA, and queer.  The proper terms for same-sex desire or behavior are same-sex, homoerotic, or homoromantic. The H-word is offensive, and may not be used."

Every semester they are shocked.  "Wait...that's offense?  I thought it was what them people liked to be called.  I thought 'gay' was the bad word."

So I ask them:
1. How many gay organizations have "gay" in their title?  Answer: About 5000
2. How many gay organizations have the h-word?  Answer: None.
3. How many festivals and parades are called "Gay Pride."  Answer: Over 300.





4. How many festivals and parades are called h-pride?  Answer: None.

5. In a survey, The Advocate asked "What should we be called?"  How many said gay, lesbian, LGBT, or queer?  Answer: Over 90%

6. How many suggested the h-word?  Answer: None.

The H word brings a history of oppression.  It was used to label LGBT people criminal psychopaths.  It was used to justify why they should go to prison for 20 years to life.  It was used to justify placing them in mental institutions, where they were subjected to lobotomies, electroshock, castration, and forced sterilization.  It was used to justify the belief that they were not human beings at all, but demons and monsters plotting to destroy civilization.

It's still used that way.  Check Amazon.com.  The books with the H word in their titles are mostly written by homophobes to justify a continuing policy of oppression.

In 1969, the Gay Liberation Front and the Gay Activists Alliance said "Enough!  That word will no longer be used!  The proper term is Gay!"  The Mattachine Society and E.M. Forster disapproved, but their objections were quickly silenced.

My question is, why don't heterosexuals know it?

In 1966, the Civil Rights Movement said "The word 'Negro' is offensive.  Do not use it.  The proper term is 'Black.'"  Within two years, all books, magazine articles, and tv broadcasts were saying "Black."

Why did it take a sit-in protest to get the "New York Times" to say "gay"?

Why did it take the American Psychological Association until 2003 to say that the proper term was "gay"?

Why do students still walk into my class every semester thinking that "gay" is bad and the H-word, the word denigrated by gay rights groups since before their parents were born, is ok?

What's Wrong with the Word "Homosexual"?

Some people who comment on this blog actually use the term "homosexual."  I delete their comments.

The word makes my ears hurt.  I will not permit it to be said in my classrooms.  I never use it in my writing.  I will purchase no book with that term in the title.

The English language didn’t have a word for people who are exclusively drawn to one sex or another until 1892, when the English translation of Richard Von Krafft-Ebing’s Psychopathia Sexualis appeared.  It divided human beings into two populations, the heterosexual and the homosexual, the one normal, natural, benign, the other contingent, abnormal, unnatural, purveyors of evil, victims of an insidious and destructive psychopathology.  Psychiatrists, criminologists, teachers, and journalists continued to talk about the dark, sinister “homosexual” psychopath for the next 70 years.

Meanwhile, in subcultures organized by people with exclusive same-sex desires and behaviors, the common term was “gay,” probably derived from prostitute slang of the 1890s.  We don’t know how early it was used, but at least by 1932, when Noel Coward wrote the song “Mad About the Boy”:  “He has a gay appeal that makes me feel there’s maybe something sad about the boy.”

Certainly by 1938, when, in the movie Bringing Up Baby, Cary Grant must answer the door in a lady’s nightgown, and he tells the startled caller, “I’ve just gone gay all of a sudden.”  The bisexual actor ad-libbed the line as an in-joke for his friends, assuming it would go over the  heads of the audience.

It was deliberately meant as a code term, used only by members of the subculture.  As late as the 1960s, you could say “I’m going to a gay party tonight,” and judge by the reaction of the listener if they got it or not.

Most outsiders preferred not to "name" same-sex desire at all -- it was much too sinister – but if they had no choice, they used the word “homosexual.”  The first gay rights organization, the Mattachine Society, used the word “homosexual,” reasoning that otherwise no one would know what they were talking about.

In 1969, the Gay Liberation Front, and the subsequent Gay Rights Movement, made two significant changes.  First, they believed that they were not psychotic, not abominations, not evil.   They chanted “Gay is just as good as straight."

Second, the word “homosexual” had to go.  It was old-fashioned and bigoted. It referred to a mental disorder.  Besides, it had to do with who you have sex with, and they were about so much more than that.  They were about living and working together, sharing a history and a destiny, being a community.  They were not homosexuals, skulking in the darkness, seeking out anonymous liaisons in t-rooms.  They were gay.

The term “gay” was not without detractors.  Many famous homophiles, such as Gore Vidal, Christopher Isherwood, and Truman Capote, said it was much too frivolous for a bona fide minority group.  Many people said that it was sexist, like using “men” to mean “all people,” ignoring the women.  It also assumed exclusive same-sex desire, behavior, and romance, whereas the community also included bisexuals and transgendered persons.  Eventually LGBT appeared an alternative, and then "queer."

Regardless, “homosexual” was gone, and would remain out of favor among gay people for the next 40 year.  In an Advocate poll in 2000, in answer to the question “What should we be called?”, 95% of respondents said gay or LGBT; 3% homosexual.

There are over 5000 gay or LGBT organizations in the United States, and no homosexual ones.

Barnes & Noble lists 3,389 books with “gay” in their titles and 305 with “homosexual,”  most written to argue that “homosexuals” are bad, evil, and psychotic after all: The Homosexual Neurosis, Hope and Healing for the Homosexual, The Homosexual Agenda.

The Gay Rights Movement had a good precedent for a society-wide name change. In 1965, the Civil Rights Movement objected to the term “Negro,” then used by government agencies, journalists, and on the streets.  Negro was old-fashioned and bigoted.  They chanted “Black is Beautiful!”  They wanted to be called Black.

Mass media changed instantly.  Within 2 years, no one was saying “Negro” except for the incredibly old-fashioned and the bigoted.  In Julia, in 1966, the titular character is on the telephone, & identifies herself as “a Negro.”  The white man she is talking to, not wanting to appear bigoted, pretends that he has no idea what she means, forcing her to use the new term “Black.”

But “homosexual” didn’t change easily. Even though gay people yelled, picketed, conducted sit-ins, and so on, it took until 1985 for the New York Times to agree to substitute gay for homosexual.  In 1976, in the Doonesbury comic strip, Joannie’s law school classmate says “I’m gay,” and she doesn’t understand.

The American Psychiatric Association removed gay people from their list of dangerous psychotics in 1973, but refused to call them “gay” until 1997.  About 20% of scholarly articles today still have “homosexual” rather than “gay” in their titles.  In newspapers and magazines, “gay” tends to win out in titles, but in the articles “homosexual” pops in as if it an exact synonym.

Every time I tell students that the word "gay" is appropriate and the word “homosexual” old-fashioned and bigoted, they are astonished.  They tell me, “But every other teacher I have ever had in my life said ‘homosexual’ was good and 'gay' was bad.”   They then trot out a gay friend who says “I have no problem with homosexual.” I ask if they are aware of the century of oppression centered on that word.  They are not.  They think of “gay” as bigoted!

Male Nudity in Italian Class

The only good thing about Hell-fer-Sartain, Texas, where I taught at a horrible state college after getting my M.A. in 1984, was the free tuition for faculty.  There wasn't a lot at that I wanted to take, but the did offer Italian.

It didn't start out well:
Roger e un ragazzo americano. Maria e una ragazza italiana. Roger e Maria sono amici. . .

Roger is an American boy visiting Italy. He goes to a café and tries to pick up a local girl. In the first lesson we learned “What is your name?”, "Your country is beautiful," and "How old are you."

Roger learns the time so he won’t be late for the cinema, learns the names of food so he can order in the restaurant, gets an overview of national history as they tour the museums.  In Chapter 10, we learn the Italian word for "kiss" (bacio).

Why do even language-learning dialogues have to be about a boy and a girl?  No men in Italy?

I never thought of Italy as a "good place."  The only fiction about Italian boys in love was The Little World of Don Camillo, and movies set in Italy seemed to involve mostly horny heterosexuals: Roman Holiday (1953), La Dolce Vita (1960),  Island of Love (1963), Avanti (1972).  Pasolini was entirely heterosexist. I had never seen Ernesto (1979).

I knew about Thomas Mann's gay obsession in Death in Venice, and about Wilhelm Van Gloeden's homoerotic photographs of Sicilian youth, but they were German.

But one weekend I drove two hours into Houston, to the Wilde-and-Stein Bookstore, and bought Ganymede in the Renaissance, about how Renaissance artists used the myth of Ganymede, a mortal boy swept up by Zeus to become his catamite.

And I discovered a whole gay world in Renaissance Italy, artists, writers, statesmen.

1. Leonardo Da Vinci. He got a girlfriend on Rocky and Bullwinkle.

2. Michelangelo.  As portrayed by Charleton Heston in The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965), he got a girlfriend.

3. Donatello, who sculpted the famously effeminate David, a counterpart to Michelangelo's more macho version.

4. Benvenuto Cellini.  His Autobiography was on the list of recommended readings in my class in Renaissance History in college.  But not a word in class.

5. Caravaggio, played by Dexter Fletcher and Nigel Terry in the 1986 movie.

6. Aretino, who wrote Il Marescalco, about a gay man forced to marry a woman, but she turns out to be a man.

7. Ariosto.  I bought his Orlando Furioso in a Ballantine Adult Fantasy edition, but had no idea.

8. Matteo Bandello, who wrote 12 Novelle, one about a gay man.

9. Dante.  Ok, he was probably heterosexual, and from the Middle Ages, but he wrote the beefcake and bonding classic, The Inferno.

10. The painter Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, nicknamed "Il Sodoma"

11. Giovanni, the foreign exchange student I had a crush on at Rocky High.

Auburn, Indiana: Beefcake Boys and the Little Brown House

The nearest big city to my parents' home town is Auburn, Indiana, population 13,000 (doubled since I was a kid), known for its own now-defunct automobile manufacturer (1900-1937), a bank robbery by John Dillinger (1933), and humorist Will Cuppy (1884-1949), who published The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody.  He never married; maybe he was gay.

Auburn was also home to my Aunt Lynn and Uncle Gus, whose two kids were considerably younger than me, so I was often saddled with the job of "entertaining them"while the grown-ups gossipped. They lived one block from a park and six blocks from another park, but nowhere near anything fun; the nearest bookstore was in Fort Wayne, and the only museum in town was a museum of cars.

But the park six blocks away had one advantage: the Brown House, which had been there since my parents were kids and is still there today.  A frozen custard with a maraschino cherry on top!  Why hasn't that idea caught on?

Looking for Auburn beefcake, I searched under "Auburn High School." There are 14 in the U.S., plus a university.

This wrestler is from a Facebook page devoted to "Auburn High School Wrestlers."  It doesn't state which one.





















This photo is of Boylan Catholic Boy School Swimming Vs. Auburn  High School, Rockford, 2016, copyright Paul Johansen.  Prints available on his website.

Why so many Auburns?  It just means "reddish brown." Auburn, Indiana is named after the Auburn in the poem "The Deserted Village" (1770) by Oliver Goldsmith, which is depopulated as residents move to the nearest big city, or to America:

Far different there from all that charmed before
The various terrors of that horrid shore;
Those blazing suns that dart a downward ray,
And fiercely shed intolerable day

Hey, geniuses, Goldsmith thinks America is horrid.

Surprise -- the high school in Auburn, Indiana is actually named Dekalb, after the County.

But there are a dozen Delkalb High Schools in the U.S., including two in Indiana.

These Speedo-wearing guys are from the Sports DeKalb and Dynamo Water Polo Club, which partnered for the 2018 Power Bar Cup in Atlanta.

This guy broke the York Athletic Pool Record for the backstroke "previously held by Daniel H__ of Dekalb."

I don't know which Dekalb, or which Auburn.

But I know that there is only one Brown House in the world, and it's still serving frozen custard with a maraschino cherry on top.

B.E.E.F.C.A.K.E. in the T.O.W.N. that loved A.C.R.O.N.Y.M.S.

This photo is entitled only JCHS.  I get that the HS must be "High School," but JC?  "Jesus Christ?"  "Just Canoli?"  "Jeans Coordinated"?

I found the twitter account: JCHS@ CWCJCHS. The must have a problem with vowels.  

It told me that their team is the Chiefs.

Which led me to James Caldwell High School in West Caldwell, New Jersey.

So it's C WC (West Caldwell) JC (James Caldwell)  HS (High School).  The "C" is apparently just a random letter.

West Caldwell, New Jersey  (WCNJ), 16 miles west of New York City (NYC), is indeed next to the town of Caldwell (CNJ). Both were named after the township, which was named after Revolutionary War (RW) hero James Caldwell (JC).

There are 10,000 people, relatively well off.  According to the Census Bureau's American Family Survey (CBAFS), the median family income is over $100,000.

Its major tourist draws are the Crane House, which is now the home of the Historical Society of West Caldwell (HSWC).

And the First Presbyterian Church of Caldwell (FPCC), which dates from 1782 (this building from 1876).

But who cares about historic buildings?  After all those acronyms, there better be some beefcake at CWCJCHS.

I'll start with the educational institutions: Wilson Elementary School (WESWCNJ), Grover Middle School (GMCWCNJ), and of course James Caldwell High School (CWJCHS).

CWJCHS offers an Anime Club (JCHSAC), a Latin Language Club (JCHSLLC), a Ping Pong Club (JCHSPPC), and a Gay-Straight Alliance (JCHSGSA). It really should use the more up to date acronym: JCHSLGBTQAAIA (James Caldwell High School LGBTQAAI Allance).

Here's a cute wrestler from...please don't make me write that acronym again.

A triathlon team.  I don't think they are actually high school students.

West Caldwell also has an alternative high school,the West Caldwell Tech campus of the Essex County Vocational Technical Schools (WCTECVTC), and a community college, West Essex Campus of Essex Community College (WECECC).

This wrestler may come from one of those, or he may be from the Cedar Grove Panthers Wrestling Club (CGPWC) in nearby Cedar Grove, New Jersey (CGNJ).  

The Most Embarrassing Team Name at the Most Embarrassing High School

One of my grandmother's ancestors was Nathaniel Hicks, who moved from England to Long Island in 1630, when New York was still a Dutch colony.  He is in no way connected to the town of Hicksville, Long Island, founded two hundred years later.

Hicks was a common English name, a shortening of "Robert" (I don't know how). It still pops up from time to time, mostly in England, as in the strongman Graham Hicks

In Colonial America, it came to mean an unlettered, uncultured, awkward country bumpkin.  But that didn't stop people all over the U.S. from naming their cities "Hicksville" (in Arkansas, Kentucky, New York, and Virginia) or "Hickman" (California, Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, Nebraska).

There are also Hickman Counties in Kentucky and Tennessee, and a Hickman High School in Columbia, Missouri, named after Missouri politician David H. Hickman.

Hickman High students already have the "hick" stigma to live down.  But to add to their woes, they have the most embarrassing team name in the world.

 You'll never guess it.

Ready?

The fighting Kewpies.

Kewpies (baby talk for Cupid and "Cutie") are small, chubby, naked sprites, technically androgynous but usually presumed to be girls.  They first appeared in comic strips in 1909, and beginning in 1912 they were marketed as collectible bisque, celluloid, and plastic figurines.  Never children's toys, they were usually given to lovebirds along with flowers and candy.  They became the iconic carnival prize.













One can think of few more inappropriate names for a team aspiring to be seen as rough and tough.

Hickman High adopted the Kewpie name in 1927, in honor of the Kewpie Doll slogan to "keep smiling."  And it's stuck, with mascots and logos, ever since.












And on their official school cheer:

Strawberry shortcake, gooseberry pie.
V-I-C-T-O-R-Y.
Are we it? Well, I guess, yes.
Cause we're the Kewpies of H.H.S.












No Kewpies on the wrestling uniforms.  But they are expected to "keep smiling."

Kahuku, Hawaii: Beefcake Li Dat

When I lived in L.A., people kept trying to talk me into going to Hawaii.

"It's got beaches!"  they exclaimed.

I should fly 6 hours across the Pacific for beaches?  We have them in L.A., and I never go.

The only reason I would go to Hawaii would be to see some Hawaiian culture.  Almost no one speaks Hawaiian as their first language anymore, but there are 600,000 native speakers of Hawaiian Pidgin.

Like Kahuku, a small town on the north side of Oahu, over an hour's drive from Honolulu.  Not much to do there except go swimming and surfing, like everywhere else on the island.and stop in at Lani's Yummy Yum Funnel Cakes.

Are you kidding?  I'm definitely getting some Yummy Yum Funnel Cakes!  Broke mouf!

Kahuku High School, "The Pearl of the North Shore,"  has 1400 students. It offers a Hawaiian Immersion Program whereby most classes are taught in Hawaiian.  Sports include surfing, soccer, beach volleyball, and wrestling, but no swimming.

And football, of course.  But I think momo boy been cockroaching da funnel cake.

Anybody wearing a crown draws my attention.  Da kine so ono.

Camp Toodik: Two Dicks are Better than One

I thought this had to be a joke, some gay guys having fun with a made-up sign.  Camp Toodik?

Two dicks are better than one.

Or does it mean that you can't have too much dick?

But believe it or not, it's a real place, started by Britt and Nancy Young in 1969.  Since lesbian couples didn't commonly share names back then, Britt must be either Nancy's sister or her husband, who has a girl's name.

Or maybe they were both boys with girls' names, so it was appropriate to call their camp "Two Dicks."

  Later Britt and Nancy bought a nearby canoe livery (there are such places) and named it Toodik, too.  They retired in 2007, and sold it to Bill and Brenda Lucas.

Who didn't change the name.  Maybe they were trying to draw gay campers.



No, I guess not.  Camp Two Dicks...er, I mean Toodik...emphasizes "family fun."  Husbands, wives, and kids pile into a camper or tents, or rent a cabin, and go swimming, hiking, fishing, canoeing, and kayaking.  There's a swimming pool, wagon rides, craft classes, and bingo for the grown-ups.

I don't know if single people are permitted or not.

So Bill and Brenda must just be ignorant of the sexual connotation.

It was hard finding beefcake photos of the campers.  They mostly seemed rather on the portly side, and their kids were mostly portly preteens.  I can hear a thousand variations on the complaint "Mom and Dad, Camp Toodik is lame!  Can't I stay home and text my friends instead?"

This is as muscular as it gets: two guys, either brothers or the same person photographed twice, riding a life preserver through disgusting muddy water.

Even if I liked camping, I wouldn't want to go anywhere near that mud.

It's about halfway between Columbus and Cleveland, which leads to the question, why do people go to Camp Toodick at all?  Another 1 1/2 hour drive, and they'll be in a big city.  Isn't this a lot more interesting then brown water and trees?

Maybe they come for the camp value. "I'm going to Camp Two Dicks."

The Beefcake of Albert Lay or Lee, Minnesota

Another city name that no one can pronounce is Albert Lea, in the southeastern part of the state near the Iowa border.  Is it "lee" or "lay"?

I thought it was named after some Scottish ballad -- "And draw my bed twae furrows long, and drop me three bonnie brae, for I'll nae more be seen on Earth, 'tis the last of Albert Lea."

Ok, I just made that up.  But a "lea" is a field, as Wordsworth, "upon this pleasant lea.

Surely the name came from something literary.

Turns out that it is named after Albert Miller Lea (1808-1891),  who surveyed southern Minnesota in 1835.  He didn't name it, nor did he ever live there; he grew up in Tennessee, and spent his retirement in Texas.  I checked; he probably wasn't gay. 

Albert Lea's main claim to fame today is the SPAM museum in nearby Austin.

And the Big Island Rendezvous, held every October, which involves dressing in historic costumes.

There is only one high school in town, Albert Lea High, which offers cross-country.

And swimming.  Believe it or not, these are high school-aged swimmers.

I could only find beefcake photos of the wrestlers.

But there are a lot of them.

The Albert Lea wrestler is in back.

And by the way, it's pronounced "Lee."

The Confusing Beefcake of Wilkes-Barre

Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, about 2 hours north of Philadelphia, is a rather run-down working-class town known primarily for the elite Wilkes University, the Mohecan Sun Casino, the Market Street Bridge, with dark sinister eagle-topped pylons out of a dystopian novel...

And confusion.  This tanned beefcake boy, for instance, is from Wyoming, but not the state, the valley in Pennsylvania.

More Wilkes-Barre confusion:

1.  Wilkes-Barre is not named after two towns that merged.  Originally Wyoming, it was renamed in honor of two British Members of Parliament who defended the right of the colonies to break away: John Wilkes and Isaac Barre.

2. No one knows how to pronounce Barre.  Like "bar" or "bar-e" or "barry"?  Knowing that Isaac Barre pronounced his name "bar" doesn't help.

3. Everyone thinks that Wilkes University was named after John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated President Lincoln. John Wilkes was, in fact, a relative.

4. Kings College (no apostrophe) abuts Wilkes University. You can't tell where one begins and the other ends.

5. Teedyuscung is not a river.  He was a Delaware chief.

6. The Susquehannah River flows east.

7, West Nanticoke is actually north of Nanticoke

8. The Wyoming Seminary is neither in Wyoming nor a seminary.  Discuss.

It's actually a private boys' school.

9. Shickshinny is a borough of Wilkes-Barre with a population of about 800, down from 2000 in 1950.  It's also called Shikshinny, as in the country-western song "The Coal Fields of Shikshinny." 

10.  GAR Memorial High School (all caps) stands for Grand Army of the Republic, a fraternity for Civil War Veterans.

11. Korn Krest actually is named Korn Krest.  Someone in the 19th century was a lousy speller.  It's home to the San Souci Parkway (pronounced San Sooey, like the hog call) and Hanover Township High School, home of the Fighting Eagles.

And a vape bar called "Wilkes Barre," which is not in Wilkes-Barre