[OT] Languages and cultures (was Re: survey)

[Bernard Devlin]

On Sat, Feb 20, 2010 at 9:14 AM, Sarah Reichelt
<sarah.reichelt at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think it is changing again. My teenage sons refer to anything they
> don't like as being "gay".
> So a difficult assignment is "gay"; missing the bus is "gay"; a
> teacher who growls at them is "gay".
>
> It doesn't have to be a person, and while it has certainly not
> reverted to it's original meaning, it is losing it's homosexual
> connotations. But maybe that is just here in Australia.

Not just limited to Australia, I've heard that usage on South Park for
years.  I've no idea if South Park was creating or following a trend.

Clearly we've now lost the use of that charming little word.  Although
in all truth, I think homos had been feeling 'gay' was a rather 70s
word and was now as unfashionable as flared corduroy trousers.   (Hang
on, I think they came back in and went out again a few years ago...)

Anyway, homos have got a variety of other epithets (hostile and/or
clinical) by which they can described.  Now that the majority of
people describe themselves as 'straight' or 'heterosexual', we are in
a different world from the late 1960s when gay people (along with
black people) started to declare terms they wanted the majority to use
to describe these minorities.  I still have some old manifestos of the
Gay Liberation Front -- they are hilarious.  But I think the world I
grew up in was already quite different from the world where those were
written.

Back then straight people would describe themselves as normal i.e.
they didn't have a term for themselves.  There's even videos from the
1980s of people being interviewed on the streets of London, and when
asked "are you heterosexual" they would reply "no, I'm married".
Since then we've had metrosexuals, transexuals ('men giving birth'?),
gay coming to mean 'naff''.  I doubt there's anyone left in the UK who
doesn't know the difference between heterosexual/homosexual.

Personally I've always thought queer was suitable for gay people --
I've always found people who wanted to be normal to be rather creepy.
Being oneself I can understand, but suppressing individuality to go
with the crowd seems to reduce us to sheep.  Mind you, queer would
then become an inclusive term that meant 'those who resist being
normalized'.  I'm sure there's more than a few people on this list who
would describe themselves as 'queer'.

Having married a man recently, I certainly feel less than outré than
in my youth.

Bernard