Straightening out distinctions between gay, lesbian [View All]

[kweerwolf]

Apparently, in writing about people who are homosexual, the word gay no longer covers both men and women. (Contrariwise, the word guy, as I noted in a recent column, now does apply to both sexes when taken together, though seldom to women individually.)

Most stylebooks are a half-step behind current usage. Gay, alone, is "acceptable as popular synonym for both male and female homosexuals (noun and adjective)," advises the AP, "although it is generally associated with males, while lesbian is the more common term for female homosexuals." The Times says "Gay(s) may refer to homosexual men or more generally to homosexual men and women. In specific references to women, lesbian is preferred. When the distinction is useful, write gay men and lesbians." It seems to me that the usage is now the specifically inclusive gay men and lesbians whether the distinction is useful or not.

Why is gay no longer encompassing enough? "Historically, gay represented both homosexual men and women and technically still does," says Chris Crain, editor of the gay weeklies The Washington Blade and The New York Blade, "but a number of gay women felt that gay was too male-associated and pressed to have lesbians separately identified so they weren't lost in the gay-male image." That led to such names as the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. (The Washington Blade began in 1969 as The Gay Blade, a play on an old expression about a gallant.)

Diane Anderson-Minshall, executive editor of Curve, a lesbian magazine in San Francisco, agrees that the one-word adjective was expanded to set homosexual women apart: "When, in the queer world, you say 'the gay community,' the majority of the time that conjures up San Francisco's largely male Castro District, or West Hollywood or Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, so interjecting the word lesbian into the mix is a necessary reminder that we — gay women — are not simply a subset of that larger male world but rather our own distinct community of individuals." The editor freely uses "queer," formerly a slur, to include not only lesbians but "bisexual women and lesbian-identified transgender women." This leads to the initialese LGBT, standing for "Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender," as well as its gay-first GLBT.

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/editorial/outlook/3440294