Please don't call me that.

[laligin]

I'm not a lesbian.

I've been thinking about this a lot, recently, and I've worked out

Comments

[helygen]

I completely get where you're coming from, but you may have overlooked the term 'homosexual' which is also used to reference a gay man. I know it means 'same sex' and applies to men and women, but it's used more often than not in relation to men, and it's also used, and shortened, to belittle gay men in the same way that you've shown the word lesbian can be used.

I've no point to make, as I agree with your viewpoint; I just want to redress the balance in my quiet little pedantic way ;)

x

[laligin]

This is perfectly true. Particularly in America. And I have a degree of dislike for "homosexual" outside of legal jargon for exactly the same reasons.

:/ It's tricky, though. I mean, even in gay circles, lesbians are still lesbians. LGBT and all that. But gay men get to leave "homosexual" at the door, as it were.

*hugs* Thank you for pointing it out.

[msp_hacker]

I have totally heard people use "Oh, before he became gay...".

Also, when hear the word gay ( when it's not using negatively ) it's mostly referring to homosexual men, or rarely everybody. Like how "he" also swallows up neutral gender in English.

Either way, I just like the word "lesbian" period. ( I'm also one of those weird people that wish that Urarian would come back. ) BUT, you should call yourself whatever you want.

[laligin]

(: That's fair. I know some people like it, prefer it, or just don't mind either way. This is totally just from my point of view. I am in no way empowered to speak for a group of people. XD

(Also, yes, I've heard people say that, too. But I've heard others call them on it.)

Whenever I hear stuff like "the gay community" it does tend to be aimed at men, you're quite right. Sometimes it's more inclusive, though, and I tend to think to myself, "Oh, yeah, that's for me..." If I see something that's "aimed at lesbians" or similar, though, something in it just repels me. >_< ("He" for gender neutral also annoys me, though "they" as a singular is slipping into common usage, so...)

This post, I admit, partly came about because I was chatting to someone and mentioned, "Oh, I'm gay," and got told, "You mean you're a lesbo." Like I'd got it wrong.

Also, Urarian - tell me more?

(:

[msp_hacker]

From my understanding, and not wanting to drag out my books at the moment, Urarian was the spear counterpart to the poetic euphemism "Lesbian". Invert -> Uranus is inverted on it's axis -> Urarian.

[laligin]

Interesting. If I'm understanding you correctly, then I kinda like it. (: Partly, I will admit, because in one of the fantasy worlds I've got going, there's a blanket term (as "queer" has been reclaimed to serve, these days) which came about along similar lines of thinking. Not the usual, but not wrong. You know.

[crystalshard]

I don't have much to say here, except *hugs*. Lots and lots of *hugs*.

[laligin]

Which is always a welcome response, whatever I post. (: Thank you!

[verasteine]

I can completely understand this, the way you explain this. I'm trying to find some positive, non-condescending way to say, I think it's cool you've figured this out... and not finding it, so I'm sticking with, I think it's cool you've figured this out.

On a side note, and this is not criticism of anything you said, but this is a problem that's not necessarily true for all languages. In my language, you'd say, he's gay (actually, literally you say, he's homo, but it's non-pejorative) and she's lesbian. The 'a' that English uses doesn't exist; lesbian is not a noun. It's gender-specific. Gay is becoming a common term now, borrowed from English, but didn't exist before.

[laligin]

(: Your language is doing it right, in my opinion.

And you're entirely correct, of course. I have an innate English bias that I forget about. >_< Oops. I apologise.

[verasteine]

Nothing wrong with innate biases; I hadn't really thought about this in the English language either :). And I'm trying to think if I know how other languages do it, but the only other one I speak is German, and I don't speak it well enough for these details. It now intrigues me, actually. And makes me wonder why this developed in English liked this. Which is all larger than the scope of what you just said, and certainly not as important.

[laligin]

(: Actually, I've just been discussing that a very little with phantomreviewer on Twitter. In truncated form, it being Twitter. I started reading a book a while back that looked at gay female relationships in some eras of English history, and did some examining of why at some times "romantic friendships" were encouraged between women, while men would be locked up for any hint of the same. I seem to remember one of the main conclusions was that female homosexuality wasn't regarded as a threat, in a patriarchal society, where male homosexuality was.

Which sort of explains why there's different words and different associations for it, in English.

That and English has stolen so many words from so many languages over so many years it just doesn't know what to do with them all, so uses all of them with fine distinctions and nuances. >_< Which is usually why I love it, but some gender neutral stuff would be nice every now and again.

[tripartite]

Yes, I've had all of these. Among others. From strangers, acquaintances, and family.
I am sorry people are douche bags.

[laligin]

Most people are quite nice, really. Some of those instances were people trying to be funny and missing by quite a long way. But yes, some of them were nasty too.

Thank you, though.

[tripartite]

You're welcome. :)