Please note: Saying someone is gay is not talking about their sex life

There are a lot of well intentioned people who seem to think simply acknowledging that someone is gay is talking about that person's sex life.

It is not.

Want proof? I'm gay. What do you now know about my sex life? Nothing. No more than you know about anyone else's sex life.

This is the sort of thinking that has been used AGAINST gay people for a long time. Any time someone simply acknowledges that they're gay some right winger turns it into "Keep your sex life private".

Want to put your spouse's photo on your desk at work? "Please keep your sex life out of the workplace."

It's a nasty double standard - it seems most of american culture is all about acknowledging heterosexuality. But as soon as a gay person reveals a crush on someone, or mentions his or her spouse in the most innocuous way possible, or does anything but pretend to be hetero- or a-sexual, they are "flaunting their sex lives".

I know if you are reading this on DU you are probably not one of those people. But even well intentioned people fall into traps sometimes. And IMHO this is one of them.

thinking about anybody normal (as in not drop dead gorgeous) having any kind of sex..front, back, upside down or whatever, is kind of off-putting! Doesn't matter whether they are gay, straight or in between. Human sex is pretty funny.

Here's what I wish... I wish there were a better word than partner or boyfriend or girlfriend to describe a gay spouse. They just don't do it. The gay community came up with gay and it is so perfect and really caught on. And husband or wife is confusing.

That's just me.. I'd like the see the whole thing normalized as quickly as possible.

But again, just knowing that someone is gay doesn't tell you a single thing about that person's sex life.

I think I remember the gay community coming up with it. I'll look it up.

LOL however, I have a gay friend who tells me way too much about his sex life and that of all his partners. But I have one hetero friend who does the same thing.

Etymology of the modern usage

The use of the term gay, as it relates to homosexuality, is documented as early as the 1920s. A quote from Gertrude Stein's Miss Furr & Mrs. Skeene (1922) is possibly the first traceable use of the word, though it is not altogether clear whether she uses the word to mean lesbianism or happiness:

They were ...gay, they learned little things that are things in being gay, ... they were quite regularly gay.

The 1929 musical Bitter Sweet by Noel Coward has the first uncontested use of the word: in the song "Green Carnation", four overdressed, 1890s dandies sing:

Pretty boys, witty boys, You may sneer
At our disintegration.
Haughty boys, naughty boys,
Dear, dear, dear!
Swooning with affectation...
And as we are the reason
For the "Nineties" being gay,
We all wear a green carnation.

Coward uses the "gay nineties" as a double entendre. The song title alludes to the gay playwright Oscar Wilde, who famously wore a green carnation himself.

Bringing Up Baby (1938) was the first film to use the word "gay" in reference to homosexuality.

Gay was originally used purely as an adjective ("he is a gay man" or "he is gay"). Gay can be also used as a plural collective-like noun: "Gays are opposed to that policy", but this use is rare and deprecated. It is rarely as a singular noun "he is a gay" and sounds unusual in this context, hence its use by the Little Britain comedy character Daffyd Thomas (a gay man who believes himself "the only gay in the village" despite abundant evidence to the contrary).

In the 1960s, gay became the term predominantly preferred by homosexual men to describe themselves. Gay was the preferred term since homosexual was the name used by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) to denote men affected by the "mental illness" of same-sex attraction. The illness of homosexuality was removed from the DSM in 1973, but the clinical connotation of the word was already embedded in society.

By 1963, the word was known well enough by the straight community to be used by Albert Ellis in his book The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Man-Hunting.




Folk etymologies

It has been claimed that "gay" was derived as an acronym for "Good As You", but this is a backronym (based on a fake etymology).

Another folk etymology accrues to Gay Street, a small street in the West Village of New York City — a nexus of homosexual culture. The term also seems, from documentary evidence, to have existed in New York as a code word in the 1940s, where the question, "Are you gay?" would denote more than it might have seemed to outsiders.

I saw your post in the other thread re: outing gay resmuglicans.

Assigning images of gay sexuality to anything to do with gay people is right out of the fundie playbook.

Gay is just ONE of the terms I use to describe myself. I'm also Jewish, white, French, a college graduate, have blue eyes, a cancer survivor, etc....

And the only thing you need to know about me being "gay" is WHO I live, not HOW I love who I love.

it's not always all about sex with gays any more then it is with heterosexuals. Although for both gays and hetros it can be about boffing everything that gets one turned on and hot it isn't always for either... it can be where the heart leads you and the heart doesn't have the same barriers that society does.

until the negative opinion of sex itself changes in the US attitudes won't change in regards to us. Of course it isn't about sex but like it or not for some people it is.

And talking about it is part of making a change.

When everyone is the same - no one has to think about anything.

When everyone is straight repression and denial is so much easier. Women become pregnant, children are born, people marry - but you never have to acknowledge that physical intimacy is part of the equation.

but when someone is different, it bring attention, and brings consciousness, and brings the truth. And then you can't hide from the fact that people want, need and desire sex. And that's a scary thing for many people. And the next step is to demonize the thing that scares them.

How dare we make people so uncomfortable.

A Wrinkle in Time? Children's book, but very good.

If you know I'm gay, you know that in my sex life, I favor one kind of partner,
If you know I'm bi, you know that in my sex life, I may favor no kind of partner,
If you know I'm straight, you know that in my sex life, I favor one kind of partner.

Yes, sex life details can often be derived from any mention of one's sex life.

A picture of me with someone, on a desk, doesn't mean I'm having sex with them. Heck, if I'm married to them, it's likely that I'm not. :)

I think the bigger problem is not whether or not people "discuss" being gay, it's about an insane mindset which doesn't want to even *discuss* sex. The people who don't want to discuss sex, of any kind, at work, in public, etc.

They're ashamed of it.

You still don't know a thing about my sex life -- you don't know if I even HAVE a sex life at all.

Knowing I'm gay doesn't tell you anything about what I do or don't do.

And you're in the trap.

Declaration of sexual preferences is a statement of what kind of sex life a person would prefer, but not an actual statement of the sex life someone actually has?

Is that right?

attracted to a gender - not who within that gender they are attracted to, and certainly not "what kind of sex life a person would prefer" if one at all.

As I said, it doesn't tell you ANYTHING about that person's sex life.

"I would prefer sex with people of a specific gender, if I had sex".

I would agree that this is scant information about a sex life, but it is still not devoid of *any* information.

I hate that. I absolutely hate that. As if my being gay is nothing more than sex. Nothing more than what I do in bed.

It's sickening. It erases, obliterates...doesn't even acknowledge...love. Committment. Loyalty. Trust. Friendship. The feelings that I have for my partner, Doug. The love I have to want a build a life around this man.

I keep a picture of Doug and me on my desk at work. That picture...is a daily reminder to the world that I have been very, very fortunate to have found love...and to acknowledge that I found someone that...completes me. That I found a man who is an essential part of my life. And I dearly, dearly hope that he feels the same about me.

To have those feelings not respected...to be reduced to nothing more than "keep your sex lives private" is insulting beyond words.

I'm recommending your post, mondo joe. Thank you.

Terry

K and R.

I'm tired of the notion that heteros can say and do whatever they want and being hetero is an immensely multi-faceted thing. But being gay is only about sex! Give me a break. Being gay or bi is as multifaceted as is being straight. Acknowledging one's status as gay or bi is no more flaunting their sexuality than acknowledging one's status as straight.

Bigoted, narrow-minded right wingers really cheese me off.

I'm not gay myself but I think it's totally unfair that gay people can't be open about who they are and share pictures and stories about their partners and families without being accused of bringing their sex lives into the workplace. I've never got the connection myself. I didn't realize that whenever I share pictures or stories about my wife and kids I'm bringing my sex life into the workplace.:wtf: It's insane that we as a society can't do better than this. It's one thing to talk about sex but it's totally different to just want to talk about people important to you. I think that it is just that gay sex, especially between gay men, seems to elicit strong visceral responses from most people, especially men. Hopefully, such attitudes and behaviors will change over time.