An Exclusively Male Term for "Gay"?

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It used to be that in colloquial terms, male homosexuals were gay and female homosexuals were lesbian. But nowadays, many lesbian women refer to themselves as gay. Being the Aspergian nitpicker that I am, it bothers me that there is a female-specific adjective but no longer a male-specific one. Or is there? (No slurs please).

Also, am I the only one who, whenever a woman says or posts "I'm gay", feels tempted to reply "no you aren't! You're lesbian"? It bugs me a lot for some reason, especially since I see the same trend in the German language as of late. Gay men don't call themselves lesbians, so why would women hog this most masculine of all terms?

Is this perhaps a feminist assault on the last exclusively male bastion? I'm kidding of course But it really bugs me because I'm a pedant who likes language to be neat and orderly. If there no longer is a male-only adjective, I'm afraid we will have to make one up in this thread or I'm going to explode. Alternatively, the word "lesbian" should be erased from all dictionaries. I'm fine with a gender-neutral adjective, but women don't get to have two

Its hard to come up with a name for gay men to be honest.

It's probably because, like in many other areas of our language, 'male' is the neutral/default setting. ie, 'gay' = person, 'lesbian' = female specific.

You're fighting for a lost cause, here.

It's certainly possible but all the terms I can think of that are male-only are derogatory and homophobic.

It's not something I'd like to see return for too many reasons to list, but in 18th C. England "Molly" referred to an effeminate male, usually homosexual.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molly_house

Thanks, that makes sense Too bad that there is no Greek island that is famous for a gay poet. I mean gay gay, not gay like Sappho.

Yeah. I wouldn't say we need one.

Technically there's "queens", and there has been some effort in recent years to reclaim "queer" (I don't know if it's taken off).

Well then, it's time for us to repossess those.

In all seriousness, we will never get one of the perjoratives to take a coequal place with, "lesbian." And I'm okay with that. So lesbians get one more descriptive word than we do. I'm perfectly content to rely on the unambiguous term, "gay man," to stand as its male-exclusive substitute.

Language--especially a mongrel like english--is never neat and orderly. We can't even adopt one consistent orthography, a clean and regular system of conjugations or a standardized one-to-one correspondence of sounds and letter patterns. And you're hoping for parallel vocabulary? I admire your romanticism, but I despair of any possility of success.

you could try to get "gayman" to catch on. you know, like, pronounced to rhyme with "layman". heh.


...yeah, don't mind me

I don't think you'll have much success...

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6UTmv2W_-w[/youtube]

Neil Gaiman is one of my favorite authors I'm not sure if he would like the idea.

One more descriptive word? There is also "sapphic", and some lesbians proudly call themselves dykes (although it would never occur to me to call them that). That's five terms already if you count gay and homosexual. I thought men should have at least one that they don't have to share But gay man works I guess. After all, there is no special adjective for bisexual men either.



It's a lot more orderly than German That's why I like the English language so much.

But at least German is highly literal, without all of the Latin mixed in.

I want to have a do at Germany, visit, have a few swallies, enjoy the local atmosphere. I suspect I'd like the Germans very much indeed. Whereabouts are you from in Germany, CrazyCatLord?

Aurich in Lower Saxony I moved here from North Rhine-Westphalia. This is bicycle country (no steep hills, bike lanes everywhere, very considerate car drivers), which makes it easy to get around without a car. The air is much better here too, and the North Sea climate is very mild in the winter. The only problem is that I don't understand a word when elderly people chat in Low German or Saterland Frisian