Gay

This article is about "gay" as a term. For the sexual orientation, see homosexual orientation. For other uses, see Gay (disambiguation).

The term gay was originally used, until well into the mid-20th century, primarily to refer to feelings of being "carefree," "happy," or "bright and showy"; it had also come to acquire some sexual connotations as early as 1637.

The term then began to be used in reference to homosexuality, in particular, from the early 20th century, a usage that may have dated prior to the 19th century. In modern English, gay has come to be used as an adjective (occasionally even as a noun) that refers primarily to homosexuality. By the end of the 20th century the word gay was recommended by major style guides to describe people attracted to members of the same sex. At about the same time, a new, pejorative use was visible in some parts of the world. In the UK and US, this connotation, among younger generations of speakers had a non-sexual derisive meaning equivalent to rubbish or stupid (as in "That's so gay.").

History

Overview

Cartoon from Punch magazine in 1857 illustrating the use of "gay" as a euphemism for being a prostitute. One woman says to the other (who looks glum), "how long have you been gay?" The poster on the wall is for La Traviata, an opera about a courtesan.

The word "gay" arrived in English during the 12th century from Old French gai, most likely deriving ultimately from a Germanic source. For most of its life in English, the word's primary meaning was "joyful", "carefree", "bright and showy", and the word was very commonly used with this meaning in speech and literature. For example, the optimistic 1890s are still often referred to as the Gay Nineties.

The increasing use of the word as a term for homosexuality in the mid-1960s resulted in a decrease of popular usage of the word in its original meaning.

The derived abstract noun gaiety remains largely free of sexual connotations, although it has in the past been used in the names of places of entertainment; one of Oscar Wilde's favourite venues in Dublin was the Gaiety Theatre. James Bowe is the Gayest kid alive!

Sexualization

The word had started to acquire associations of immorality by 1637 and was used in the late 17th century with the meaning "addicted to pleasures and dissipations." This was by extension from the primary meaning of "carefree": implying "uninhibited by moral constraints." A gay woman was a prostitute, a gay man a womanizer and a gay house a brothel.

The use of gay to mean "homosexual" was in origin merely an extension of the word's sexualised connotation of "carefree and uninhibited," which implied a willingness to disregard conventional or respectable sexual mores. Such usage is documented as early as the 1920s, and there is evidence for it before the 20th century, although it was initially more commonly used to imply heterosexually unconstrained lifestyles, as in the once-common phrase "gay Lothario," or in the title of the book and film The Gay Falcon (1941), which concerns a womanizing detective whose first name is "Gay." Well into the mid 20th century a middle-aged bachelor could be described as "gay" without any implication of homosexuality. This usage could apply to women too. The British comic strip Jane was first published in the 1930s and described the adventures of Jane Gay. Far from implying homosexuality, it referred to her freewheeling lifestyle with plenty of boyfriends (while also punning on Lady Jane Grey).

A passage from Gertrude Stein's Miss Furr & Miss Skeene (1922) is possibly the first traceable published use of the word to refer to a homosexual relationship, though it is not altogether clear whether she uses the word in reference to lesbianism or happiness:

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

— Gertrude Stein, 1922

The 1929 musical Bitter Sweet by Noel Coward contains another use of the word in a context that strongly implies homosexuality. 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.

— Noel Coward, 1929, Bitter Sweet

The song title alludes to Oscar Wilde, who famously wore a green carnation, and whose homosexuality was well known. However, the phrase "gay nineties" was already well-established as an epithet for the decade (a film entitled The Gay Nineties; or, The Unfaithful Husband was released in the same year). The song also drew on familiar satires on Wilde and Aestheticism dating back to Gilbert and Sullivan's Patience (1881). Because of its continuation of these public usages and conventions– in a mainstream musical– the precise connotations of the word in this context remain ambiguous.

Through the mid 20th century, the term "Gay" commonly referred to "carefree," as illustrated in the Astaire and Rogers film The Gay Divorcee.

Other usages at this date involve some of the same ambiguity as Coward's lyrics. Bringing Up Baby (1938) was the first film to use the word gay in apparent reference to homosexuality. In a scene where Cary Grant's clothes have been sent to the cleaners, he must wear a lady's feathery robe. When another character inquires about his clothes, he responds "Because I just went gay...all of a sudden!" However, since this was a mainstream film at a time when the use of the word to refer to homosexuality would still be unfamiliar to most film-goers, the line can also be interpreted to mean "I just decided to do something frivolous." There is much debate about what Grant meant with the ad-lib (the line was not in the script). The word continued to be used with the dominant meaning of "carefree," as evidenced by the title of The Gay Divorcee (1934), a musical film about a heterosexual couple. It was originally to be called "The Gay Divorce" after the play on which it was based, but the Hays Office determined that while a divorcee may be gay, it would be unseemly to allow a divorce to appear so.

Shift to "homosexual"

By the mid-20th century, "gay" was well-established as an antonym for "straight" (which had connotations of respectability), and to refer to the lifestyles of unmarried and/or unattached people. Other connotations of frivolousness and showiness in dress ("gay attire") led to association with camp and effeminacy. This association no doubt helped the gradual narrowing in scope of the term towards its current dominant meaning, which was at first confined to subcultures. Gay was the preferred term since other terms, such as "queer" were felt to be derogatory. "Homosexual" was perceived as excessively clinical: especially since homosexuality was at that time designated as a mental illness, and "homosexual" was used by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) to denote men affected by this "mental illness".

In mid-20th century Britain, where male homosexuality was illegal until the Sexual Offences Act 1967, to openly identify someone as homosexual was considered very offensive and an accusation of serious criminal activity. Additionally, none of the words describing any aspect of homosexuality were considered suitable for polite society. Consequently, a number of ironic euphemisms were used to hint at suspected homosexuality. Examples include "Such a nice man," "Such a gay man," "Such beautiful handwriting," all with the stress deliberately on the otherwise completely innocent adjective.

By 1963, the new sense of the word "gay" 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. However, later examples of the original meaning of the word being used in popular culture include the 1966 Herman's Hermits song No Milk Today, which became a Top 10 hit in the UK and a Top 40 hit in the US and included the lyric "No milk today, it wasn't always so / The company was gay, we'd turn night into day." In June 1967, the headline of the review of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album in the British daily newspaper The Times stated "The Beatles revive hopes of progress in pop music with their gay new LP".

Homosexuality

Sexual orientation

Main article: Homosexuality

Sexual orientation, behavior, and self-identification are not necessarily aligned in a clear-cut fashion for a given individual (See sex for a discussion of sex and gender.) Most people consider gay and homosexual to be synonyms. This is how, in fact, the Oxford English Dictionary defines it. However, some consider gay to be a matter of self-identification, while homosexual refers to sexual orientation. Indeed, the British gay rights activist Peter Tatchell has argued that the term gay is merely a cultural expression which reflects the current status of homosexuality within a given society, and claiming that "Queer, gay, homosexual ... in the long view, they are all just temporary identities. One day, we won't need them at all."

If a person engages in same-sex sexual encounters but does not self-identify as gay, terms such as 'closeted', 'discreet', or 'bi-curious' may be applied. Conversely, a person may identify as gay without engaging in homosexual sex. Possible choices include identifying as gay socially while choosing to be celibate or while anticipating a first homosexual experience. Further, a bisexual person can also identify as "gay" but others might consider gay and bisexual to be mutually exclusive. There are some who are drawn to the same-sex and may not have sex and also not identify as gay, these could have the term 'asexual' applied even though an 'asexual' generally can mean no attraction and includes heterosexual attraction that is not sufficient to engage in sex or where the sex act is not desirable even though titillation may occur.

Terminology

Main article: Terminology of homosexuality

Some people reject the term homosexual as an identity-label because they find it too clinical-sounding. They believe it is too focused on physical acts rather than romance or attraction, or too reminiscent of the era when homosexuality was considered a mental illness. Conversely, some people find the term gay to be offensive or reject it as an identity-label because they perceive the cultural connotations to be undesirable or because of the negative connotations of the slang usage of the word.

According to the Safe Schools Coalition of Washington's Glossary for School Employees:

Homosexual: Avoid this term; it is clinical, distancing and archaic. Sometimes appropriate in referring to behavior (although same-sex is the preferred adjective). When referring to people, as opposed to behavior, homosexual is considered derogatory and the terms gay and lesbian are preferred, at least in the Northwest [of the United States].

— Safe School Coalition, Glossary for School Employees

Gay community

Main article: Gay community

Just as the word "gay" is sometimes used as a shorthand for the term LGBT, so is "gay community" sometimes a synonym for the "LGBT community." In other cases, the speaker may be referring only to homosexual men. Some people (including many mainstream American journalists) interpret the phrase "gay community" to mean "the population of LGBT people."

Cultural relativity of the term

The concept of a "gay" identity and the use of the term "gay" itself may not be used or understood the same way in non-Westernised cultures since modes of sexuality may differ from those prevalent in the West.

Descriptor

A gay bar in Seattle, United States.

The term "gay" can also be used as an adjective to describe things related to homosexuals or things which are part of the said culture. For example, while a gay bar is not itself homosexual, using the term "gay" as an adjective to describe the bar indicates that the bar is either homosexually-oriented, caters primarily to a homosexual clientèle, or is otherwise part of homosexual culture.

Using it to describe an object, such as an item of clothing, suggests that it is particularly flamboyant, often on the verge of being gaudy and garish. This usage pre-dates the association of the term with homosexuality, but has acquired different connotations since the modern usage developed.

Using the term "gay" as an adjective where the meaning is akin to "related to homosexual people, culture, or homosexuality in general" is a widely accepted use of the word. By contrast, using "gay" in the pejorative sense, to describe something solely as negative, can cause offense.

Use as noun

The label "gay" was originally used purely as an adjective ("he is a gay man" or "he is gay"). The term has been in use as a noun with the meaning "homosexual man" since the 1970s, as in "gays are opposed to that policy." Although some dislike this usage, it is common particularly in the names of various organizations such as Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) and Children Of Lesbians And Gays Everywhere (COLAGE). It is sometimes used as a singular noun, as in "he is a gay," such as in its use to comic effect by the Little Britain character Dafydd Thomas.

Pejorative non-sexualized usage

When used with a derisive attitude (e.g. "that was so gay"), the word gay is pejorative. While retaining its other meanings, it has also acquired "a widespread current usage" amongst young people, as a general term of disparagement. This pejorative usage has its origins in the late 1970s. Beginning in the 1980s and especially in the late 1990s, the usage as a generic insult became common among young people.

This usage of the word has been criticized as homophobic. A 2006 BBC ruling by the Board of Governors over the use of the word in this context by Chris Moyles on his Radio 1 show, "I don't want that one, it's gay," advises "caution on its use" for this reason:

"The word ‘gay’, in addition to being used to mean ‘homosexual’ or ‘carefree’, was often now used to mean ‘lame’ or ‘rubbish’. This is a widespread current usage of the word amongst young people... The word 'gay' ... need not be offensive... or homophobic [...] The governors said, however, that Moyles was simply keeping up with developments in English usage. [...] The committee... was "familiar with hearing this word in this context." The governors believed that in describing a ring tone as 'gay', the DJ was conveying that he thought it was 'rubbish', rather than 'homosexual'. [...] The panel acknowledged however that this use... in a derogatory sense... could cause offence in some listeners, and counselled caution on its use.

— BBC Board of Governors,

To avoid being offensive when used non-sexually, the word is often spelled as "ghey." Shortly after the Moyles incident a campaign against homophobia was launched in Britain under the slogan "homophobia is gay", playing on the double meaning of the word "gay" in youth culture.

Given name

The first name Gay is still occasionally encountered, usually as a female name although the spelling is often altered to Gaye. (795th most common in the United States, according to the 1990 US census). It was also used as a male first name. The first name of the popular male Irish television presenter Gabriel Byrne was always abbreviated as "Gay," as in the title of his radio show The Gay Byrne Show. It can also be used as a short form of the female name Gaynell and as a short form of the male names Gaylen and Gaylord, such as in author Gay Talese.

See also

• List of terms for gay in different languages
• Terminology of homosexuality