And now for your aprés-Blogadoon: The Telegraph reports that the police have been told not to call gays homosexuals. Couple of quick addenda to that – I’m not entirely sure that the word ‘gays’ is particularly appropriate either, thanks very much. Anymore than ‘blacks’ would be. In fact if everyone would just get used to calling poofs and dykes ‘sir’ and ‘madam’, everything would probably be much more entertaining.
Aside: ‘Homosexual’ is a really grim word, associated with saying ‘you have a disorder’. It’s like saying you are a ‘influenzal’ – both defining the person by their sexuality and simultaneously defining the sexuality as a defect. And before anyone says anything, “heterosexual” is both a later word and a later concept and was mostly only used in cases where someone had to assert that they weren’t gay or when the goal of heterosexuality was enforced on poor deviants via electroshock, aversion therapy and hormone supplements.
Second aside: I feel a bit sorry for straight people on this one actually, because they can’t call gay people “poofs”, “fags”, “dykes”, “queers” or any of that stuff without people thinking they are weird facists. Whereas I can. Except of course that I seem to have an anti-gay reputation in some of British media because they didn’t know I was a big smelly poof and think I’m being serious. Which of course I am.