Poking at my feelings about being "gay"

[sqbr]

I've seen an uptick lately in people using "gay" as a catchall for lgb or even lgbt. See for example this post (the gif is the Dean from Community dressed as the devil with a chainsaw saying "GAY MARRIAGE").

It irritates me, but every catchall term irritates someone, so I'm not sure if what I have is a genuine issue with the term or just a matter of personal taste. So I'm going to poke at it!

When I was growing up as a kid in the 80s you were either "gay", "lesbian" or "straight", where "gay" meant a man attracted solely to men, and lesbian meant a woman attracted solely to women. Non binary and bi people were not on the radar, and trans people were barely acknowledged. There was much more awareness of gay men than lesbians, though most of that awareness was negative eg I mainly heard "gay" used as an insult between boys in my class.

I spent a while wondering if I was a lesbian, but then I got attracted to boys, so decided I had to be straight. The path to figuring out I'm a biromantic asexual was long and rocky, as was the slightly longer path to figuring out that I'm non binary. Something that really didn't help was the active hostility to bi, trans, and ace people from the "lesbian and gay" community, especially since it was mostly the "gay" as in "gay men" community.

I only later encountered the term "gay" being used to refer to anyone other than men who are solely attracted to men, but until recently only saw it being used in the context of "gay woman" as a synonym for "lesbian".

In more recent times I have seen it used in an even broader sense, to refer to any sort of same sex attraction or queerness in general. But the older associations remain.

To me, the fight to add the letters other than G to LGBT was important and memorable, and I react against anything that looks like backsliding. The addition of Q, I, and A is important too(*): the broad inclusiveness of "queer", and awareness and specific inclusion of intersex, asexual and aromantic people. Even if you think people whose only claim to "queerness" is being ace or aro don't count as queer (which is an argument I do not feel like getting into), those of us who are LGBTI and also "A" need to be remembered.

Things aren't the same now as they were when I was growing up. But there is still a hefty chunk of the queer/lgbtqia/"gay" etc community who want to center the community around "same sex attraction" in a way that decenters and is sometimes actively hostile towards bi, trans, intersex, asexual and aromantic people. There has been intense pushback against the term "queer", and suggestions we define the community as "same sex attracted and/or trans"...but it's clear that the people saying this are mostly cis people interested in connecting with other same sex attracted people. And the community continues to be dominated by cis men.

So my intuitive understanding of "gay" tends to be (a)"man solely attracted to men" (b) "man solely attracted to men or woman solely attracted to women" (c) "like 'queer' but more hostile to people like me".

(a) and (b) are neutral terms, but do not apply to me. (c) is a negative term that I don't want to apply to me. Regardless, being referred to as "gay" makes me deeply uncomfortable.

Yet there are also a lot of bi, trans, asexual and aromantic people who refer to themselves as "gay", and not just gay trans men and trans lesbians (I haven't encountered any intersex people doing it, but don't encounter many intersex people in general). I feel like it's partly an age thing, to young people on tumblr "gay" clearly has a set of positive associations to do with their specific subculture and humour. For example, there's a meme of looking at cute person and thinking "Oh no, I'm gay", and I can't think of any way to reword that without "gay" that would keep the same tone. I don't want to be all "the language of the Youth rubs me the wrong way and is thus Problematic". But it rubs me the wrong so much omg.

For example, consider this post about "fashion looks that make all gay ppl nut:", as posted on the wlw (bi and lesbian women) site autostraddle.

Whatever the OP meant by "gay", Autostraddle clearly reads it as referring to more than just men.

But (a) it is all masculine leaning or at most androgynous clothing. (b) the comment "wlw and mlm solidarity" ignores the possibility of "gay" people of other genders. I feel like if someone made a post about "queer" or "lgbt" reactions to fashion, it would be a little harder to to ignore feminine presenting and non binary people. But maybe it wouldn't be! Autostraddle has a long history of using "queer woman", "lesbian", "wlw" etc interchangeably. And I have seen a lot of people use "queer" and "lgbtqia" etc but very obviously mean (presumed to be) cis gay men and lesbians.

Still, fair or not, I associate this kind of erasure more with "gay".

Also, if "gay" is the catchall term, what term do we use for men who are solely attracted to men? "Gay man" would still be too vague, since it could refer to being bi, or a non binary man. Maybe even straight or aro ace trans men? I'm not sure whether this usage of "gay" applies to straight trans people. I have seen other non-binary people say we are all "gay" because none of our attractions are "straight", but does this only apply to those of us who have attractions at all, eg those who aren't aro ace? I don't like the idea of trans people's inclusion in the community being implicitly or explicitly connected to our sexuality, there's a reason there's a "T" in LGBT.

But MAYBE I'M MISSING SOMETHING.

I certainly have more empathy now for the people for who being referred to as "queer" is like nails on a chalkboard. Not so much for the ones who are jerks about it, which is why I am trying not to be a jerk about this.

For now I'm just going to accept that I am always going to find it irritating, but try and keep an open mind as to it's broader validity.

EDIT: See winterbird's comment about deliberately using it as a non binary person as a way of pushing back at cisgaydude gatekeeping. I think this sort of thing has to be done carefully, but can see the appeal.

In private conversation someone reminded me that some people use "gay" not as an umbrella, but as a personal descriptive term for their own difficult to define sexuality and/or gender, the way some other people use "queer". That's not what I'm talking about in this post but is definitely worth acknowledging as a thing.

(*) And yet I keep reflexively shortening it to LGBT. There really are no universally good terms.

Comments

[winterbird]

I don't feel like you're missing something at all. But I do think young people, being driven away from using the catchall term queer (both by themselves, each other, TERFs, and antis) needed a catchall term in lieu of that, which ended up being 'gay.' (I really hope this doesn't mean there's a period of time where younger generations are like 'well gay used to be used as a slur so you CAN'T' etc. But there probably will be.)

I do use it on Tumblr, though mostly in a reclamatory sense, and specifically in referring to myself and not others (i.e. 'my gay little heart' or something) - and partly because I know it makes gay cis men SO ANGRY when we do it. I think that's actually...a part of the experience for some, is that it's a thorn in the side of the cis-gay-male community (particularly the huge white chunk of it), and on Tumblrs where it gets used, you can see that part of the community in the comments and replies and reblogs getting absolutely infuriated by a) folks like me using the word and b) responses from mogai folk like: 'well until you start actively including us in your community, or validating us under the words we're 'meant' to be using, we'll use your word, thanks.'

So I have to admit, for me personally, especially spending like 5 years on Tumblr both in the gay male community and also in the mogai communities, there's been a real sense of 'fuck you' specifically to that cis-gay-male component, as in 'you think this is your word, but this doesn't get to be only your word if you keep treating us like crap.' (...Which is spiteful and mean, for sure, but I do think that's a pretty significant part of certainly its prevalence in Tumblr spaces; especially for queer folk who are keyed into the cis-gay-male community. That said, I know a lot of people who use gay to describe themselves (when they cannot be traditionally understood to be seen as gay) are just doing it because they've seen it elsewhere.

But in active debates about sexuality which is often 'cis gay male' Tumblr vs. '*every other pocket of queer' Tumblr - there's definitely a reclamation happening, not just taking a slur back like queer from the whole of society, but taking a word that is loaded and difficult within the LGBTQIA community back into the whole community (which is definitely not a smooth process and maybe not even an appropriate process). I think it's safe to say that most young folk aren't doing that with that in mind. But the debates focusing around 'you can't use this word it belongs to US and YOU'RE not gay' are definitely an 'us' vs. 'them' where the them, in this context, are cis-gay-men and the word - not necessarily reclaimed - but deliberately used out of context, is 'gay.' There's this whole battle going on it seems that's happening now around 'why do you get to use this word, when that's the word that everyone validates or mentions most or talks about most re: gay marriage etc. Since that thing concerns me too, I'M going to use it.'

Anyway, that's certainly where I think it mostly originates from as a political concept. I still wish we'd just use the word queer, tbh, but that's my old damn 90s / early 00s heart that enjoyed the process of reclamation anyway and a lot of people - esp. young people - genuinely hate that word.

I don't think I was tagging a lot of those posts on myawesomespace back in the day (I just looked and it doesn't seem like I was), but I've definitely reblogged a few posts/discussions that look like this:

gay guy: stop using the word gay for your NB crap that's not even real
NB: you saying that is why we use the word gay.

Or:

gay guy: stop using the word gay for all these things that aren't straight but aren't my comfortable sector of the gay community.
LBTQIA person: welp you call it GAY marriage and GAY adoption and the GAY community, so we're just following your lead. ;)

Honestly, it is truly quite a provocative movement at its core when people actually start discussing *why* they're doing it (certainly, that's where I first learned about it and after a year of thinking about it, it's why I started doing it myself as a considered political choice to highlight issues in the community - it's definitely not a choice without its issues though). It may have changed since then, but the Australian 'gay marriage' thing brought it up again in the circles I run in.

(But tl;dr the bias of my Tumblr circles means I could be in a tiny little pocket which doesn't apply to anything else at all, because Tumblr is WEIRD).

[sqbr]

*nods* I have seen other people talk about it as a reclamation thing, it usually doesn't work that way for me emotionally but I understand the appeal intellectually. *edits post*

[pseudo_tsuga]

your experience of the _______* community is so different than mine that it's almost fascinating how two people with something in common can differ so wildly! I suppose a) it's because I grew up in 90's SF and b) I must follow very different people on tumblr.


*It felt weird to use a specific term when this entry is all about that! For what it's worth, I do use gay as a catch all term in casual conversations and in writing most often use lgbt+. But I think there will never be one "right" term and it's just a question of what you're trying to accomplish and who you're trying to reach

[sqbr]

*nods* The reason I started with the long autobiographical ramble is that my reaction is very much rooted in my specific experiences, which are definitely not universal.

And yeah it is hard to know what term to use in a discussion about the issues with different terms :)

[bunny_m]

*