Oscar is Gay: LGBTQ Representation on the Duolingo Language App

The Duolingo language learning app gives you points for completing exercises, stories, and podcasts in your chosen language (or languages).  I've been using it for over two years, and tried out almost every language they offer.  Some are fun.

In Finnish, you learn the words for "wizard" and "shaman" right away.

In Portuguese, you learn "armadillo" before "dog."

In Swedish, you usually don't "eat" something, you "eat it up."  I wonder if English used to require that construction, too.

Remember all of those Arabian Nights stories where they say "O Vizier," "O Genie," and so on?  Turns out that in Arabic, you must begin direct address with "yah," so: "O Benjy, what time is it?"

 Sometimes I quit right away: in Welsh the speakers sound enraged, in Italian they speak in a monotone like robots, and in Latin the female speaker sounds like she's trying to seduce you: Ego...ooh...mulier sum.  How about it, baby?

Sometimes I go five or ten lessons, until things become too confusing.

Is the Arabic دوز pronounced duuz, du'iz, or duuza?  Different speakers say it differently, with no explanation.

The Korean "eo" and "o" are pronounced the same, as "i," but the lessons expect you to differentiate them.

J'ai acheté des fruits must be translated as "I bought fruits," not the correct  "fruit," and hűtőszekrény can only mean "fridge," not "refrigerator," even though we never say "fridge" in America.

The problem is, five mistakes and you are not allowed to use the app again for 2-4 hours. And you're competing with others to see who will accumulate the most points by the end of the week and stay on your achievement level, and who will be demoted.  So you can't afford to have 2-4 hours off, and you end up doing the exercises in Spanish and French, languages that you already know, so you won't make many mistakes, and ignoring your Swedish, Czech, or Finnish.

But enough complaints.  Duolingo has one quality that makes it superior to any textbook I have ever seen.

Introductory textbooks invariably teach you with dialogues about heterosexual romance.  A guy visiting the country tries to pick up a girl.   Later lessons show them ordering in a restaurant, visiting a museum, and so on.

On Duolingo, most of the exercises are not about romance at all, and when they are, about 20% of refer to women's wives and men's boyfriends.    

Some of the languages come with 50-100 stories (brief dialogues that test reading comprehension and listening skills)  Several involve gay romance: 

A man is waiting for his date, but he's sick, so his friend suggests "The perfect man for you": a doctor.

A woman is introduced to her girlfriend's family: Mom has five sons but only one daughter.  Well, now two. Welcome to the family!

An elderly male couple listens to a song, which is very bad, but they like it because they heard it on their first date.

An elderly man is depressed because his daughter is away studying in Australia, but his husband has arranged a surprise visit.

In Spanish, French, and German, most of the stories involve a group of people living in the same apartment complex.

1, Eddy, a fun-loving, rather dimwitted gym teacher and physical fitness buff.  (They have the same names in every language.)

2. His son, eight year old Junior, who is always trying to figure out ways to avoid chores and homework and spend his time playing video games.

3. Lin, who doesn't really have a job: she rides her motorcycle and goes to rock concerts.  According to Duolingo, she dates men and women, but I don't recall any stories that show her socializing with anyone but Bea (below) and her grandmother:

4. Lucy, elderly but strong, forceful, and athletic, apparently a former spy.

More after the break

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., 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.

See also:  "Da Vinci's Demons": An absurdly heterosexual Da Vinci, a bi guy who only likes ladies, two monstrous gay predators

Pasolini's "Arabian Nights": The less well-known tales told with pe* nises and homophobia

"Caravaggio's Shadow": As time goes by, the gay Baroque painter becomes more and more straight. With n*de Italian men

6000 Ways to Say "Penis"

As an undergrad Modern Languages major, I studied Spanish, French, German, and Greek.  In grad school in Comparative Literature, I studied Italian, Russian, and Turkish.  Since then, I've studied several other languages.  Of course, I didn't get far in most, and they fade away over time; today, about all I can get by in are the original Spanish, French, and German.

But I'm still interested in languages, particularly isolates, the remnants of ancient language families that have somehow managed to avoid the encroachment of economically-superior English, Spanish, Urdu, Chinese, or Arabic.

Actually, after my execrable dating experience with Ari the Linguist, I don't really want to learn the languages; I just want to meet men who speak a language unlike any other in the world, and maybe learn a few new words for penis or My hotel is nearby.

1. Burushaski: 87,000 speakers in mountains of far northern Pakistan, near the borders of China and Tajikstan.

Their valley, Hunza, was the source of the Shangri-La legend.  Travelers said that they had no wars or disputes, and eternal youth.  So this Burushaski gym rat could be over 100.  He's had a shipen since he was about 20; before that, it was a sushun.

Tash chom means pull, sex appeal, and to find someone to spend the night with.



2. Tarascan (Purepecha), the remnants of an empire that threatened the Aztecs in precolonial Mexico, now has 240,000 speakers in Michioacan.

Kuini in Purepecha means penis, bird, and prison term.  I'm wondering about the prison term.

3. Mapuche: 250,000 speakers in southern Ecuador.  Their leader Capulican is memoralized in a beefcake statue.

The slogan of the Mapuche civil rights movement is Newen penis, "Power to Mapuche Brothers."

The Mapuche word for penis is punun, which, sounds like punum, and happens to be the same as the Quechua word for bed. 

They specialize in a novelty carving called an Indio Picaro, a smiling Mapuche Indian who, when you raise him up, displays an erect penis.

4. Basque, with 720,000 speakers in the Pyrenees of northern Spain. 

Penis in Basque is zakil.

5. But the biggest of the language isolates is Korean, with 78 million speakers.

The average Korean penis length is 3.8", the smallest in the world (the U.S.is 5.0").

There's a blog that attempts to answer this unjust accusation, offering proof that the Korean eumgyeong is just as big as anybody else's.

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?

Easter Island: Phallic Statues and Penis Festivals

If you thought Mongolia was remote for Westerners, try Easter Island (aka Rapa Nui).  From New York, you fly to Miami, then to Panama City, and finally to Santiago, Chile (about 24 hours).  From there, only one airline flies to the town of Hanga Roa on Rapa Nui, once a day (about 6 hours).

It's a tiny island, about 15 miles long and 8 miles wide, alone in the Pacific Ocean, probably settled from the Marquesas Islands, 2000 miles away.

Once the early Polynesians got there, they became very interested in the penis.

1. Most Rapa Nui men incorporated the word Ure, "Penis," into their names, but in the 19th century Christian missionaries put an end to the practice.

2. The Moai, "Easter Island Heads," are actually complete torsos, over 800 of them, 20-30 feet high, weighing over 80 tons, sculpted and installed over a period of 300 years (1200-1500 AD).  They took so much time and energy that the islanders had little time left for other pursuits, and so many trees were felled to facilitate transport that the island is now almost entirely treeless.

The noses of the figures have often been interpreted as phallic symbols.  Indeed, some scholars interpret the Moai themselves as giant phallic symbols, representing the sexual potency of the Rapa Nui men. There's a legend still common on the island that a penis served as the model.

3. Rongo Rongo, the Easter Island script, appears on dozens of tablets and ceremonial objects.  By the time the Europeans arrived, no islander remembered how to read it, and it remains untranslated.  But at least one of the glyphs is called "Tangata Ure Huki" "Man with Erect Penis"

4. The Tapati Fesival, held every year during the first two weeks of February, is a celebration of the island's history, culture, and penises.  There are parades, dances, athletic contests like haka pei (sliding down a mountainside on a tree trunk), and a race called the Tau'a Rapa Nui: men wearing only skimpy loincloths race through town carrying bunches of phallic-symbol bananas.

See also: The Beefcake Festival of the Andes.

8 Gay Reasons to Visit New Guinea (and 5 Reasons Not To)

New Guinea is a large island north of Australia, with a population of 7 million divided between two countries: the Papuan province of Indonesia to the west, and the independent country of Papua New Guinea to the east.

Here are 8 Gay Reasons to visit:

1. It's the most linguistically diverse place on Earth, with 850 languages in many different families. Most people communicate in Tok Pisin, the only pidgin language to attain official status.  It is based on a trade form of English.  The Tok Pisin word for penis is kok, or kandare ("uncle").

2. In spite of official homophobia same-sex behavior has been documented in many tribes.  Most common is a rite of passage for adolescent boys requiring them to have sex with an older man of the village.  Usually the relationships end in a year or two, but, as Gilbert Herdt notes, in about 5% of cases they remain intact.

3. Anthropologists are most likely to document age-gradiated same-sex activity, so they can write that the men aren't really gay.  But some have been brave enough to note tribes where the adult men favor same-sex relations as noble and invigorating, and think of heterosexual relations as a necessary evil.

4. Gay men have often found a safe place there.  Tobias Schneebaum lived for several years among the Asmat, and married a man (although both were free to find other partners).

5. Michael Rockefeller, the "secretly" gay son of New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, also found a safe haven in New Guinea.  Until he was killed and eaten.

6. Melanesian men tend to be extremely muscular.

7. They wear koteki, or penis sheaths, both to protect their sex organs and to make them look bigger. If that's possible.

8. Tribal art does not follow the Western custom of making the sex organs as small as possible.

On the other hand:

1. It's very dangerous, with a sky-high crime rate.  Port Moresby has a homicide rate of 54 per 100,000, the same as Detroit and New Orleans.

2. It's one of the most homophobic countries in the world.  Not quite Saudi Arabia, but close.  male same-sex acts are criminalized, with the penalty of 14 years in prison.

3. Officially, the population is "horrified" by the Western concept of gay people.

4. There are no gay bars, clubs, or organizations.  Everything is strictly underground.

5. Flights to Port Moresby from the U.S. cost about $4,000, and you have to change planes in Sydney.  Why not just stay there, and have a nice holiday in one of the most gay-friendly cities in the world instead?

See also: What's Not to Like about New Guinea

10 Gay Things You Should Know About Cornwall

 This post has been moved to Small Town Beefcake

Pidgin to da Max: Breaking the Silence in 1980

See Tales of West Hollywood