The Associated Press has issued its new style guidelines on LGBT-related terms. (Is “LGBT” in there?)
The GLAAD page above also includes links to the style guidelines followed by the New York Times and Washington Post and a history of the AP’s LGBT stylebook updates.
One thing that strikes me is a reference to “the pejorative connotations of words like ‘homosexual.'” That’s true, isn’t it? It can seem pejorative. But it’s weird that it can. After all, the word isn’t a slur – it means exactly what it says: “same-sexual.” I guess what makes it sound off-putting is the clinical nature of it. But it all seems arbitrary. “Fag” is right out, unless you’re a gay person talking about another gay person; “queer,” formerly pejorative, has been reclaimed; “gay” is the preferred term, unless it’s being spoken by a middle-schooler as a put-down (“That’s so gay!”).
I think I’ll just go by “Jeff.”
(N.B.: Almost as arbitrary, and yet also true, is the fact that referring to someone as “Jewish” is fine whereas referring to someone as “a Jew” comes off as awkward and possibly quasi-offensive.)
I’ve never understood the “Jewish” vs. “a Jew” thing.
I suppose it has to do with “Jew” being used as a pejorative for hundreds of years in the US and Western Europe. I’d have thought that Jews would have reclaimed the usage of the word over the last 50 years or so, much as gays have queer, but perhaps not?
But, like most words, it probably depends on the connotation and context. A really enterprising hater could probably employ almost any word and make it a slur of some sort.
I like to think of myself, not as gay, but as Gayish.
I just came across an e-mail you wrote me over a year ago (that was so friendly and kind) and realized I needed to come check in with you. Just saying hello.
Glad to see you are still going strong.
Well, the word “Jew” seems to sort of limit a person, as if being Jewish were one’s defining characteristic. Since “gay” both a noun and an adjective, it seems a bit more soft.
I prefer “Vertically Challenged Friend of Dorothy”
Cool. I love stuff like this. (I guess I’ll have to copy the changes into my AP stylebook I bought just a few months ago!) I think an aspect that lends to the pejorative connotations of the word “homosexual” is the fact that it’s hardly used by gay people in reference to themselves. And so it sometimes does have a kind of distancing or alienating effect.
By the way I’d love to see the Washington Times stylebook which I presume, given their coverage, stipulates scare quotes in reference to same-sex “marriage.” Ugh.
And in that example, I think the term “scare quotes” should be taken literally.
I used to think of ‘homosexual’ as pejorative, but as I read this, I realized that at some point I stopped responding negatively to the word. I think it was the clinical history of the term that originally bothered me. Living in Europe, I haven’t “felt” the clinical connotation with the word from those around me (including my husband) who use it. As a result, I find myself frequently using ‘homosexual’ in conversations here because it seems somehow more substantial or serious or inclusive than the word “gay”. I don’t think I’d do this in the U.S., though.
I still believe that words have tremendous power, but it’s interesting how the shading – and power – of a word can shift through the unspoken (and frequently unconscious) nuancing of a word based on individual and group understandings of a word’s meanings.
I find myself wishing more and more, as I’m speaking with someone else in English, that the words in English we were speaking meant the same things to each of us.
So when I was screaming in ecstasy, it would have been more polite to say “Fuck me, Jewish boy!” instead of “Fuck me, Jewboy!” which is what came out? I’ll remember that for the next time.
I think there’s an exception for dirty talk.
Poof is best.