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Twitter: @spower_steph, Wales, United Kingdom
composer, poet, critic, essayist

Friday 18 November 2011

What Does "Gay" Mean?

When asked the question, 'What does 'gay' mean?' most people would answer 'homosexual'. Some would specify 'homosexual man' and some might reminisce about the word's older meaning as 'innocently happy' or 'carefree'. But an alarmingly increasing number of people would reply that 'gay' also means 'rubbish', 'crap' or 'stupid'; indeed, they would regularly use it as slang to describe anything apparently negative, no matter how obscure or bizarre: 'That car/jumper/screwdriver/weather/financial crisis is so gay'.

Celebrity chef Allegra McEvedy did just that in a Radio 4 interview in the autumn of 2011, making fun, in her own words, of a type of 'gay, therefore frowned-upon' knife sharpener. Her apologetic, but defensive, reply to offended listeners was that language is 'live'; that 'gay' has 'evolved' and has 'come to mean something a little bit different'. No doubt that is true, and no doubt it's also true that the new 'gay' is meant in a 'friendly' way (as she put it) in many cool circles. That is absolutely not the case, however, with those who gleefully exploit the new usage of 'gay' with vicious and deliberately homophobic intent. And what does is mean for school kids, both LGBT and straight, to be growing up hearing and repeating that 'gay' is the epitome of 'rubbish'? A 2009 Assembly Government survey of bullying in Welsh schools, which reported that by far the most prevalent form of bullying was homophobic, indicates that this is neither witty nor without consequence.

Allegra McEvedy is not the only celebrity to have caused offence with a negative use of 'gay', but she is hardly in the same boorishly ignorant league as broadcaster Chris Moyles, to name another; for, while she aimed her 'affectionate' teasing at an out gay man, she herself is an out lesbian who continues to make active charitable contributions to the LGBT community. Of course, a gay person can make gay jokes in a way that would not be acceptable coming from a straight person, and any community that cannot see the funny side of its own stereotypes is in danger of disappearing up its own polemical posterior. However, the new, derogatory 'gay' has become so commonplace amongst LGBT and straight people that McEvedy clearly felt entirely comfortable using it on air. This raises further troubling issues.

Her slip (if it can be called that) comes at a time of renewed questioning of what constitutes an insult and how we use language - for example the recent debacle over Ricky Gervais's offensive use of the word 'mong'. It also comes as more people, especially women, are challenging the increasing incidence of open and direct homophobic, racist and misogynist abuse. The latter, for example, is the experience of huge numbers of women journalists, bloggers and forum users online. The fact that the new, pernicious usage of 'gay' has been adopted by sections of the LGBT community, however 'softly',  therefore raises questions about whether large numbers of LGBT people are sleep-walking into tacit collusion with alarmingly homophobic and increasingly right-wing forces. To turn fully from ironic cool to downright chill, there is another word that is seeing increased usage in the same negative sense as 'gay' and that is 'Jew'.

Let's scratch a little below the surface of the word itself as positive term and as an insult. When homosexual rights campaigners began publicly to embrace 'gay' in the 1960s, it was a political act; a smartly conscious hijacking of an innocent adjective that had already been in euphemistic use for some time. Indeed, the very innocence of the archaic definition captured beautifully the ironic defiance of a newly politicised community tired of ignorance, prejudice and abuse. The wider cultural triumph of this campaigning use was that large areas of straight society came to adopt the LGBT community's own word of choice to describe not just gay people in positive terms, but also to describe in positive terms the potential reality of homosexual lifestyle and experience, which contradicted the popular myth of a dark, lonely existence. 'Gay' no longer meant merely 'effeminate man', but instead became a hugely successful and widely respected umbrella term.

That 'merely', however, is an important point because the word 'gay' remains a byword for effeminacy for those who persist in ignorance of the wide spectrum of LGBT identity, and to such people the word still carries old, clichéd 'fairy' connotations. Seen in this light, its adoption by LGBT and straight people alike as a negative term or a term of abuse not only perpetuates effeminate stereotyping, but also begins to take on distinctly misogynist overtones: when 'gay' is derided, it is precisely the perceived feminised aspect of homosexual male stereotype that is held up for ridicule. Here, thinly disguised,  is that familiarly tiresome motif of the supposed weakness and inferiority of the feminine, which is at best patronised. Alas, a quotation from the hapless McEvedy's apology, which was posted subsequently on her website, only serves to reinforce the point: 'I meant it....in the same way.....one might use the word 'girlie'.....not exactly complimentary but affectionate.'

The exact reverse has happened to the word 'gay' as happened to 'queer' when LGBT people reclaimed that epithet from its insulting intent into proud, self-defining attitude. While 'gay' has been allowed to become at once trivialised and demonised, 'queer', in contrast, has been wrested from its pejorative usage by straight people to become an assertive political statement of sexual and cultural identity. It was move perhaps inspired by the US Civil Rights movement, in which the black community rehabilitated the once-pejorative term 'black' - and, more recently and more controversially, for some black youth the word 'nigger'. Of course context is very important, both in regard to the word itself and the manner and environment in which it is used, if one is to understand the intent and meaning of its deployment. There is also the more philosophical question of whether, or to what degree, the meaning of a word is dependent upon those who interpret it. It is clear nevertheless that the evolution of language is not a passive process. We choose our words and, whether we do that carefully, carelessly or somewhere in between, when we use words we quite literally take up space: we 'occupy', if you will, our own place within the most powerful arena of social participation and exchange that is language. So it matters what we say, to whom and how.

Fashion and peer pressure have always been important influences on how language changes. In the present, it is clear that part of the reason why 'gay' has taken a negative turn is because there is a backlash against what is deemed to be 'politically correct'. For many, 'Equal Opportunity' has somehow become conflated with 'Health and Safety', and the more ludicrous examples of the latter apparently justify an irrational suspicion of, or hostility towards, any measure brought in to help or protect vulnerable groups. Indeed, it may now be the case that, for some, 'gay' merely amounts to another label for those 'others' who are seen to be taking scarce public money, or jobs or housing. A barrage of negative media publicity and oppositional scare-mongering greets recipient and policy-maker alike whenever the latter struggles - not always successfully - to define and apply principles of justice and equality for all. It is unfortunate that, as the establishment takes such faltering and often reluctant steps, growing numbers of people - including some who are perhaps more fortunate from those same vulnerable groups - now think it is cool to be anti-PC in language if not in deed. But it is precisely at this populist level that a pernicious kind of right-wing libertarianism seeks to take hold in ways that could ultimately trample hard-won values and minority rights underfoot.

With some justification, there may indeed be those in the LGBT community for whom the term 'gay' now feels outdated and no longer an adequate descriptor of that community, but there are very many people worldwide who continue to identify as gay. So it is not just ironic but galling that some LGBT people may now feel themselves so comfortably integrated that they can afford to belittle a word which was once so key to their own - or at least the previous generation's - struggle for liberation. Alas, gay equality is neither so established nor so universal that we can afford to be complacent in a time of difficult economic and social change. While street slang now tells us that 'bad' is 'good' and that 'sick' is even better, it cannot be a positive sign that 'gay' has changed meaning so catastrophically in our post-rap society. In the UK, huge advances have undoubtedly been made towards gaining equal civil rights for LGBT people, but the day-to-day reality for many is one of continuing struggle  against homophobia of all kinds, from the most flippant to the most lethal. In some countries, being gay is not only still illegal, but punishable by torture, imprisonment, banishment or death. So this raises the question of what word now equates to the old meaning of 'gay' - that is, simply 'good' or 'glad-making' - when the new gay means 'rubbish'. Because 'queer', for all its attitude and reclaimed, politicised power, doesn't begin to do that.


Published in Planet 205 Feb 2012: www.planetmagazine.org.uk