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?
Revolt of the homosexual sounds like a star wars episode.
ReplyDeleteWe are up against hundreds to thousands of years of religious brain washing. After the Word was twisted in various ways.
ReplyDeleteThe word "homosexual" is only about 120 years old.
DeleteI blame moral panics. Everyone remembers "Batman is a homosexual." per Wertham. (I could write a whole essay about that.) The McCarthyites saw "homosexuals" as likely pawns of the communist influence due to blackmail. In the 80s, it was "homosexuals" to keep away from your children, first due to sexual abuse and then to AIDS. These days, fundie preachers love the word.
DeleteI do know in some languages like Dutch, "homo" is preferred.
The Civil Rights Movement of the early 1960s had enough political power to implement the change from "Negro" to "Black." Most people agreed that racism was wrong, and they didn't want to be pegged racist by using the wrong term. The Gay Rights Movement of the 1970s didn't have that power. Most people thought that being gay was wrong, so they didn't care if they were considered homophobic (the term didn't even exist until 1976).
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