The One about THE "G" WORD.
I hate the word, “ GAY. ”
Good. I've got that off my chest. In the English Oxford dictionary the word GAY means, “Light-hearted and carefree.” When did “gay” as homosexual begin its journey of 'saving' grace to a class of people? Let’s look back.
Historians believe the first use of “homosexual” was by Karl-Maria Kertbeny, born as Karl-Maria Benkert (1824-82), an Austrian-born Hungarian journalist, memoirist and human rights campaigner born in Vienna. He first coined the word ‘homosexual.’ Mr. Kertbeny, wrote passionately in opposition to Germany’s anti-sodomy laws, Paragraph 175 , in the 19th century.[i]
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Karl-Maria Kertbeny (Benkert) |
As a young man, while working as a bookseller's apprentice, Karl-Maria Benkert had a close friend who was homosexual. This young man killed himself after being blackmailed. It was this tragic episode which led Benkert to take a close interest in the subject of homosexuality, following what he called his "instinctive drive to take issue with every injustice". Benkert claimed to be "normally sexed" and there is no evidence to contradict this, despite the skepticism of some writers. Nevertheless, he began to write extensively on the issue of homosexuality, motivated by an "anthropological interest" combined with a sense of justice and a concern for the "rights of man." In 1869, he anonymously published a pamphlet entitled 'Paragraph 143 of the Prussian Penal Code of 14 April 1851 and Its Reaffirmation as Paragraph 152 in the Proposed Penal Code for the Norddeutscher Bund. An Open and Professional Correspondence to His Excellency Dr. Leonhardt, Royal Prussian Minister of Justice.' What was Paragraph 175? This was the anti sodomy law against homosexuals enacted in Germany since 1871. The provisions were vastly expanded by the Nazis in 1935. The 2 Germanys retained the law much after the war, and it was finally repealed only in 1994 . [ ii] It saw the first public use of the word ‘homosexuality’, although he had used it in May of the previous year in a private letter to Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, the German gay-rights advocate. |
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Before then, there were very few neutral words to describe people who experienced romantic or sexual attractions toward others of the same sex. Those used, such as “bugger” , “ molly ”, “sodomite” or “pederast” , were loaded with condemnation and shame. But as the budding science of sexology began to grow, and as same-sex loving defenders began to speak out about what same-sex love was all about, their first problem was with how to name it: the “abominable vice” wouldn’t do. A new word was desperately needed to describe their lives and feelings. |
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The first to try to give it an acceptable name was Karl Heinrich Ulrichs . In the 1860’s, he described the Urning [“homosexual male”] as a “male-bodied person with a female psyche”, who is sexually attracted to men and not women; the opposite form was Urningin (“lesbian female”] Ulrichs devised an entire system of classification based on different combinations of attractions and gender roles. Some of these words gained usage in English, but they quickly became obsolete, replaced by Kertbeny’s new creation.
Kertbeny also believed that homosexuality was inborn and unchangeable, an argument later called the "medical model". This contradicted the dominant view of the time, that men committed "sodomy" out of mere wickedness. Kertbeny pointed out that many of the great heroes of history were homosexual. He was the first writer to put these now-familiar arguments before the public. Once self-identified homosexual men, such as Ulrichs, began to campaign for homosexual rights, Kertbeny faded from the scene. If he was homosexual, he was never prepared to say so. In 1880, he contributed a chapter on homosexuality to Gustav Jäger's book Discovery of the Soul , but Jäger's publisher decided it was too controversial and omitted it. Nevertheless, Jäger used Kertbeny's terminology elsewhere in the book.
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Karl Heinrich Ulrichs |
In his Psychopathia Sexualis (1886) , German sex researcher Richard von Krafft-Ebing , borrowed the terms homosexual and heterosexual from Jäger's book. Krafft-Ebing's work was so influential that these became the standard terms for differences in sexual orientation, superseding Urning. |
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Having established the ‘birth’ and surroundings for the word, “homosexual.” I now come to the word, GAY . |
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Masculine Women, Feminine Men [iv] |
It was called, “Pansy craze.” [v] For a brief time in the late 1920s and early 1930s, a relatively open gay culture thrived in Chicago, with gay cabarets and nightclubs proliferating throughout the Near North and South sides. By 1930, Variety reported, there were 35 “pansy parlors” in Towertown, the neighborhood named for its proximity to the Old Chicago Water Tower.
A place called Diamond Lil’s , at 909 North Rush Street, was packed so tight with partying gays that people were turned away.
“African American drag entertainers performed for racially mixed audiences at some of the South Side’s most famous ‘black and tan’ [cabarets]. Mexican ‘queers’ carved out a space for themselves along Ashland Avenue, and ethnic working-class ‘queens’ from the city’s North, South and West Sides met at private parties and public drags throughout the city.”
The nighttime entertainments did not attract just gays. High society and the middle class flocked to the cabarets to gawk or to experience the prurient thrill of dancing with one of the “homos.” The so-called Bughouse Square in front of the Newberry Library was such a well-known pickup spot that the Chicago Gray Line Sightseeing Company included it on its Chicago-By-Night tour, advertising the promise of “the unusual, strange and different” in “gay night life.”
Prohibition, Jazz, speakeasies, and bootlegged liquor are only a small portion of what makes this era so fascinating. The period of the 1920s and early 1930s changed the way society viewed homosexuality–a relatively new term at the time. It was a time of exploitation yet cultural growth for the gay community.
With its wildly relaxed attitudes, Chicago’s Pansy Craze, as the brief phenomenon has come to be known, emerged from Prohibition just as homosexuality first came to be recognized in this country as a distinct sexual orientation. The outburst lasted only until the mid-thirties. “The Pansy Craze was part of the same phenomenon that produced the Negro vogue in Harlem,” says the University of Chicago history professor George Chauncey. “Massive waves of immigrants from Europe and the American South were arriving in American cities so that white middle-class urbanites became fascinated with exploring the new communities taking place in their midst, whether immigrant, bohemian, black, or gay.”
First published i n 1968, DSM-II (the American classification of mental disorders) listed homosexuality as a mental disorder. In this, the DSM followed in a long tradition in medicine and psychiatry, which in the 19th century appropriated homosexuality from the Church and, in an élan of enlightenment, transformed it from sin to mental disorder.
In 1973 ,[vi] the American Psychiatric Association (APA) asked all members attending its convention to vote on whether they believed homosexuality to be a mental disorder. 5,854 psychiatrists voted to remove homosexuality from the DSM, and 3,810 to retain it. The APA then compromised, removing homosexuality from the DSM but replacing it, in effect, with "sexual orientation disturbance" for people "in conflict with" their sexual orientation. Not until 1987 did homosexuality completely fall out of the DSM.
Meanwhile, the World Health Organization (WHO) only removed homosexuality from its ICD classification with the publication of ICD-10 in 1992, although ICD-10 still carries the construct of "ego-dystonic sexual orientation." In this condition, the person is not in doubt about his or her sexual preference, but "wishes it were different because of associated psychological and behavioral disorders".
To most ears, it probably sounds inoffensive. A little outdated and clinical, perhaps, but innocuous enough: homosexual . But that five-syllable word has never been more loaded, more deliberately used and, to the ears of many gays and lesbians, more pejorative. 
“ ‘Homosexual’ has the ring of ‘colored’ now, in the way your grandmother might have used that term, except that it hasn’t been recuperated in the same way,” said George Chauncey , a Yale professor of history and an author who studies gay and lesbian culture.
Consider the following phrases: homosexual community, homosexual activist, homosexual marriage. Substitute the word “gay” in any of those cases, and the terms suddenly become far less loaded, so that the ring of disapproval and judgment evaporates.
Some gay rights advocates have declared the term off limits. The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, or Glaad, has put “homosexual” on its list of offensive terms and in 2006 persuaded The Associated Press, whose stylebook is the widely used by many news organizations, to restrict use of the word.
Franklin E. Kameny , a gay rights pioneer, coined the phrase “Gay is Good” in 1968 as a way to help strip away some of the negative association. By then, gay had become the preferred term among gays and lesbians. But it would take decades for the rest of the country to catch on.
The New York Times resisted the word gay until 1987, preferring homosexual (now, it prefers the word gay in most contexts). The Washington Times set off in quotes the term gay marriage until 2008. The newspaper also updated its standards that year to say the term was preferred over “homosexual marriage.”
“Gay doesn’t use the word sex,” he said. “Lesbian doesn’t use the word sex. Homosexual does.” [vii]
Still, I think the word, GAY, instead of homosexual is: Just. Plain. Queer.
These days, this sign, wielded in New York in 1971, might very well be lettered differently.
Credit Fred W. McDarrah/Getty Images [viii]
[i] http://lgbthistoryproject.blogspot.com/2012/05/how-male-same-sex-desire-got-its-name.html
[ii] http://desispeaks.com/nazi-homosexuality/
[iii] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/01/26/berlin-story
[iv] http://www.charliecochet.com/photo-friday-the-roaring-20s-and-the-pansy-craze-updated/
[v] http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/November-2005/The-Gay-30S/
[vi] https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/hide-and-seek/201509/when-homosexuality-stopped-being-mental-disorder
[vii] https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/post/frank-kameny-american-hero/2011/03/04/gIQAH2DRfL_blog.html?utm_term=.dc42885edace
[viii] https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/23/fashion/gays-lesbians-the-term-homosexual.html
Franklin E. Kameny, a gay rights pioneer, coined the phrase “Gay is Good” in 1968 as a way to help strip away some of the negative association. By then, gay had become the preferred term among gays and lesbians. But it would take decades for the rest of the country to catch on.
“GAY doesn’t use the word sex,” he said. “Lesbian doesn’t use the word sex. Homosexual does.”
Go ahead, make a wave!
Men and women picket the White House on May 29, 1965 in a protest organized by the
Mattachine Society of Washington. (File photo/United Press International)
Note that those protesters were risking their careers and their livelihoods. 1965 was during the "purple purge" by the feds and the states.
My photo does not mention this - Mr. Kameny, is holding the sign second from the left! The real deal. We are left to imagine what was being spoken and looked at just outside of the camera's frame!
I prefer to use the word queer myself and it’s good to see Netflix is reviving the show Queer Eye. I don’t watch the show but like the fact that they don’t cave to the freedom strippers that want to censor the word queer.
Taking men from "ugly" to "unbelievable" is not a bad thing, Dean! I do not watch the show myself, but you know what? I am going to watch it tonight on Netflix! Eight Episodes!!
I try to limit the amount of steel wool that grows out of my ears so I put some effort into looking respectable.
I don't want people to get the wrong impression from my earlier comment. I'm not anti-homosexual just anti-pc.
Dean, that Episode 1 of the 'Queer Eye - Fab Five' is simply amazing. What the guys did for this 57 year old bearded car-man who let them "in" (and boy did he ever) is just heart-stirring and hero-iffic!! Thanks for the show suggestion. Now I'm busy with Episode 2!
You talked me into watching one Calbab. I hope everything works out for Tom and Abbey. I think they should have trimmed the beard tighter but overall it was a big improvement.
I kind of get that... also people make terms that a group doesn't always want.
For instance, most people think that "Native American" is the PC word for Indians, but that was actually a designation the US government gave Indians. Most Indians would prefer being called American Indians, Indians, or "First People". So now we are stuck with a term that we don't want and PC people love to use.
And don't call a black person from the Caribbean, "African American" unless you want to be told off but good.
I think we should all be focused on intentions and not words. PC is usually quite fake and forced.
Dean! I just got done watching the "Queer Eye" NASCAR Episode 3. Everything about Episode 3 screams "Watch Me!" Here are a sampling of its highlights:
1. Southern Cop Make-over.
2. Married w/ 2 beautiful girls.
3. Trump ("Make America Great Guy")
4. Black "Queer" has a heart-to-heart (Non-show) with Southern Cop about police shootings. Deep and 'At that Level'!
5. IMPACTFUL ENDING
I have enjoyed them all up to this one: This one makes a statement. Episode 3.
I feel so good for Tom. So real. So personable. So effective with Abbey. (I hope she keeps him!) It is like watching Tom - the rose - open up for the sun again! Lot's of dynamic moments in these scenes.
There's nothing un-PC today about the word queer, and it applies to anyone who isn't strictly cisgender or straight. But I think that just like the word "gay" it's a former slur which was reclaimed and rehabilitated by the targets of that slur.
Everyone and Dean ! I just finished watching Eight of eight episodes of Queer Eye on Netflix . And, . . .I must say that I really enjoyed them all. Episode 8 (The Final One) is so poignant, positive, touching, and agreeable that I had to find a way to share it with NT'ers! NOTE: Sorry, I do not find a viewable Youtube full version to share.
Here is the link to dailymotion. All I had to do was go there - start it - Queer Eye Episode 8 begins .(If you stay to the end, you will be 'blessed.')
Go to:
Queer Eye Episode 8
It's been an incredible journey. The 'FAB FIVE' came in here and flipped our fire station upside-down a week ago. I would not have called five gay guys a blessing. . . . I would not have called them into the fire station. It's not in our culture, really in this area, . . .to consider something like that. And, . . .it's almost a little surprising that we put these boundaries on our lives , and we think that our way is the right way, and the only way. . . .And, that's just simply not true. I don't say this lightly, er, I love them very much.
Jeremy Holmes Colvington Georgia Fire Department.
Great, I'm glad you enjoyed them. I'm not a big TV watcher but might consider watching another episode in the future.
Sure. This episode, 8, is online at the link (above). Of course, there you have the luxury of fast forwarding and skipping about through it. That said, blocking out an hour to get the true sense of just how far a Georgia Fire Department -including the Fire Chief- went to interact and display symmetry with the FAB FIVE, will encourage and cause reflection by everyone who sees it. I am impressed. Well, I'll stop there.
Yes I can definitely see how it's good for everyone even knuckle dragging middle aged straight guys like myself.
I am affected by it. Processing. . . .
Words evolve through use and substitutes. Interesting article, Calbab. I once read something about "gay" being used in England a couple hundred years ago extending to sexuality from just "happy and carefree" to a more extreme "given to pleasure and dissipation". There were "gay" men and "gay women", often used as a slang for prostitutes. Language is a very strange thing, you know. And equally fascinating in the way it evolves. Look at what we are doing to it in the age of technology!
So right. I remain rather surprised in researching this information to learn that "gay" has not always meant "joyous" in of all places Europe! Berlin was a 'gay capital' before Hitler! What is truly interesting is how much history of the world is out their locally, and I, we, can only find it when we venture 'out there' one word, or phrase, at a time. (Smile.)
It is all so interesting. Knowledge is powerful stuff. It's like so much 'sunshine' caressing the mind and spirit. I would love to know more about it! (Special Smile.)
Haha, you know all you need to know, Calbab. And you're still learning. As I am.
HA!
I myself have tired of all of the sub-categorizations we have placed humankind into over the past fifty years or so.
How about just people? After all once your tear all the social phobias, descriptions etc. away, that's all we are, just people.
I agree, in a perfect world that would be the way it should be. But human beings are not perfect. We do this mentally whether we admit it or not. So the best we can do is make it not matter.. which of course goes back to how we feel about these differences. It's when we have no reaction to the differences that we will just treat each other as people.
Yeah. Amen, Luther. However, it is precisely these sub-categories which aid in classifying us all enough for statistical and problem-solving solutions. So it is needful. Uh-oh! A Hitler reference is unavoidable here. . . CAUTION!
Germany in the 1920s
Weimar Germany was a liberal bastion and Berlin was the most gay friendly capital in the western world. Paragraph 175 existed and was used as a tool for police blackmail. The most prominent face of gay friendly Berlin was intellectual Dr Magnus Hirschfeld , founder of The Institute of Sexual Research and an early activist for LGBT rights. When he was travelling outside Germany, the Nazis burned down his building. His library was burned along with books by other subversives.
Germany under the Nazis (1930-1945)
In the quest for racial Aryan purity, the first casualties were the Jews and Roma (gypsies). Christian Germans were initially left alone as long as they were not communists, trade unionists or other enemies. Homosexual men came under scrutiny as they were considered infertile and did not produce more Germans. Lesbian women were not directly targeted as the Nazis felt they could still produce babies. Over 100,000 homosexual men were arrested under paragraph 175. About 15,000 were sent to concentration camps. In these camps, they were forced to wear a pink triangle for identification.
False security of German Homosexuals – Ernst Roehm
Roehm was Hitler ’s right hand man till the “Night of the Long Knives” (1934), when he was killed along with many of Hitler’s enemies. Roehm was an openly homosexual man and was therefore hated by the army. Roehm founded the precursor of the notorious SS – Hitler’s army of thugs. When the notorious Reichstag fire took place, the Nazis and the Communists blamed one another. Roehm, his alleged lover and all homosexuals were also blamed. From then on it was open warfare between the Nazis and homosexuals. Roehm was killed along with 300 enemies.
Arrests, concentration camps
From 1930, the first prisoners started arriving at Dachau camp. Homosexuals thought they were German citizens, but were wrong. The Nazis considered Homosexuality a disease that would weaken and destroy the Fatherland. Most arrests were German Christians and escaped the gas chambers. However, they were made to do slave labour and be subject to medical experiments. Two-thirds of the inmates perished.
End of the war
From mid 1944 the tide turned against Hitler . The Soviets approached from the East. The British and Americans were advancing on the western front. Air raids became a regular feature and most German cities were destroyed. The concentration camps were, however, left unbombed, and they had to be physically liberated by ground troops. Survivors were rescued. However, for the homosexuals still left in the camps, rescue did not take place. The liberators left the homosexuals to serve out their terms. For homosexual victims of the camps, the war did not end.
Reference:
DISCLAIMER : All of this is "alleged" until verified. The second cartoon is nearly egregious, but on a deeper level laughable! I can't help myself but allow it. I report - You decide!
"Gay" used to mean "Happy".
Hell, Even saying someone is "Happy" means "Gay", as to the definition of what "Gay" means now.
"You're sooooo "HAPPY" !
How times have changed.....how they've changed.
I never get tired of listening to it.
All the different country dance videos are GREAT !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I am a Huuuuuuge MINIONS FAN !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Have you checked this out yet?! http://24hoursofhappy.com/ Hint: You can click anywhere on the 'dail' for a new performer. Dance! Bump ! Slide ! Boom !
Haven't seen that version.. My wife thinks I'm a nut for watching the same song over and over when I flitter through YouTube on all the different hours and countries of "Happy".
I just tell her it makes ME "Happy".
That's all it has to do! Make your spirit well! It's a happy song!
The German word for GAY is, "Schwul." Does any of this explain why Hitler used a "Pink Triangle"? And the story turns. . . .