Pamela Paul in the New York Times: Let's Say Gay

But it’s not only older people who bristle. “The mainstream media, and mainstream ‘L.G.B.T.Q.’ media, treat the word ‘lesbian’ like it’s the plague,” noted Julia Diana Robertson in the lesbian publication The Velvet Chronicle.

Let’s be clear: Many lesbians and gay people are fine with this shift. They may even prefer umbrella terms like “L.G.B.T.Q.” and “queer” because they include people who identify according to gender expression or identity as well as sexual orientation. But let’s consider those who do not, and why. For one thing, “gay” and “queer” are not synonymous, as they are increasingly treated, particularly among Gen Zers and millennials. Likewise, the term “L.G.B.T.Q.,” which sometimes includes additional symbols and letters, represents so many identities unrelated to sexual orientation that gays and lesbians can feel crowded out.

Last week on “CBS News Sunday Morning,” the writer David Sedaris said he was done “fighting the word ‘queer.’” He went on, “Like the term ‘Latinx,’ ‘queer’ was started by some humanities professor and slowly gathered steam. Then well-meaning radio producers and magazine editors thought, ‘Well, I guess that’s what they want to be called now!’ But I don’t remember any vote being taken.”

This raises a question for me, a language obsessive and someone interested in the ways word choices reflect and drive the culture: Why change the word for same-sex orientation? And to echo Sedaris: Who decides these things anyway?

Let’s start with the basic dictionary-sense differences between the words. “Gay” has a clear, specific meaning that applies to both men and women: “homosexual,” which is the first entry in most dictionaries. “Lesbian,” of course, bears the same meaning, but strictly for women.

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Whereas the first definition for “queer,” according to Oxford and Dictionary.com, is “strange, odd.” Another definition refers not only to gay people but also to “a person whose sexual orientation or gender identity falls outside the heterosexual mainstream or the gender binary,” according to Dictionary.com. That could mean “transgender,” “gender neutral,” “nonbinary,” “agender,” “pangender,” “genderqueer,” “demisexual,” “asexual,” “two spirit,” “third gender” or all, none or some combination of the above. Being queer is, as bell hooks once said, not “about who you’re having sex with — that can be a dimension of it — but queer as being about the self that is at odds with everything around it and it has to invent and create and find a place to speak and to thrive and to live.”

While we’re here, the Q in “L.G.B.T.Q.” currently can stand for both “queer” and “questioning.”

Confused? You should be! “Queer” can mean almost anything, and that’s the point. Queer theory is about deliberately breaking down normative categories around gender and sex, particularly binary ones like men and women, straight and gay. Saying you’re queer could mean you’re gay; it could mean you’re straight; it could mean you’re undecided about your gender or that you prefer not to say. Saying you’re queer could mean as little as having kissed another girl your sophomore year at college. It could mean you valiantly plowed through the prose of Judith Butler in a course on queerness in the Elizabethan theater.

Given the broad spectrum of possibility, it’s no surprise that many people — gay or straight — have no idea what it means when someone self-identifies as queer.

But this is important: Not all gay people see themselves as queer. Many lesbian and gay people define themselves in terms of sexual orientation, not gender. There are gay men, for example, who grew up desperately needing reassurance that they were just as much a boy as any hypermanly heterosexual. They had to push back hard against those who tried to tell them their sexual orientation called their masculinity into question.

“Queer” carries other connotations, not all of them welcome — or welcoming. Whereas homosexuality is a sexual orientation one cannot choose, queerness is something one can, according to James Kirchick, the author of “Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington.” Queerness, he argues, is a fashion and a political statement that not all gay people subscribe to. “Queerness is also self-consciously and purposefully marginal,” he told me. “Whereas the arc of the gay rights movement, and the individual lives of most gay people, has been a struggle against marginality. We want to be welcomed. We want to have equal rights. We want a place in our institutions.”

Many gay people simply prefer the word “gay.” “Gay” has long been a generally positive term. The second definition for “gay” in most dictionaries is something along the lines of “happy,” “lighthearted” and “carefree.” Whereas “queer” has been, first and foremost, a pejorative. For a certain generation, “queer” is still what William F. Buckley, jaw clenching, called Gore Vidal on ABC in 1968 — “Listen, you queer” — before threatening to “sock you in your goddamn face.”

What I hear most often from gay and lesbian friends regarding the word “queer” is something along the lines of what Sedaris pointed out: “Nobody consulted me!” This wasn’t their choice.

So how did it happen? Partly it’s the force of academic and institutional language, which has permeated the influential worlds of the arts, Hollywood, publishing and fashion. Another part is generational: Gen Zers — 21 percent of whom identify as “L.G.B.T.,” according to Gallup, a percentage that has nearly doubled in just four years — often use social media to frame the conversation. As the linguist Gretchen McCullough explained in her book “Because Internet,” word shifts take hold much faster these days.

“Queer” bobbed around the academy in semiotics and gender studies classes for decades before activists unleashed it with the help of social media in the past decade or so. “Queerness” and “queering” now materialize in all manner of contexts, whether it’s queering John Wesley, queering the tarot or queering quinceañeras.

In recent years, other activist terms have followed light-speed trajectories. The term “Latinx” overtook academic institutions and briefly became fashionable in the media, still prevalent in some influential publications, like The New Yorker, even though only 3 percent of Hispanics (or Latinos, if you prefer) use it. Similarly, the word “fat.” As Sarai Walker, the author of “Dietland,” has written, “fat activists use the word proudly in an effort to destigmatize not only the word, but by extension, the fat body.” For her, the word represents not merely acceptance but also the promotion of body positivity.

To be clear: There’s nothing wrong with embracing a particular word to describe yourself. The problem arises when a new term is used in ways that misrepresent or mischaracterize some of the very people it’s meant to include. This is especially true when people in the population in question outright reject the fashionable term. Such is the case, it seems, for overweight people, who, according to a number of studies, rank “fat” among their least desirable descriptors. For many, the word “fat” remains a fourth-grade way to shame someone. Choosing a euphemism like “curvy” need not be denounced as complicity or avoidance. Nor should a medical term like “overweight” be considered verboten, as it is by some activists, because it implies the existence of a normative weight.

Language is always changing — but it shouldn’t become inflexible, especially when new terminologies, in the name of inclusion, sometimes wind up making others feel excluded. In the case of “queer,” it’s especially worrisome and not only because it supersedes widely accepted and understood terms but also because the gay rights movement’s successes have historically hinged on efforts at inclusion.

Gay people, lesbians and bisexuals fought for a long time to be open and clear about who they are. That’s why they call it pride.

Like Breona, say our name!

I was glad to read this article this morning. "Queer" is too often nothing more than a piece of role-playing that's used to look "cool" on social media. My guess is that "gay" and "lesbian" are looked at as Boomer terms, when in fact LBG Boomers fighting for decades for their rights are the reason the Gen X and Gen Z "Queers" can hold up their heads. But God forbid they acknowledge that.

I am surprised this piece did not get more play on Datalounge.

I was also surprised the NYT seemed to cut the comments off pretty quickly.

What were the comments before they cut it off? Pro or con?

Very much pro and a lot of gay men saying that while they supported the right of trans people to be happy, they felt that gay and trans were two very different things and should not be lumped together--one was about gender and the other about sexual preference (who you want to sleep with.)

There were also many people, straight and gay, expressing concern that there were parts of the "trans agenda" they did not support (Lia Thomas) and were tired of being called bigots about it when they'd spent their whole lives fighting for black and gay rights.

^^It mirrored a lot of what is said on Datalounge and that's why I was surprised it did not get more traction on here.

I thought it would get more comment on DL but I am not at all surprised that the NYT cut off comments.

Why cut it off if it was pro the article? People are agreeing with what they printed.

The Times was probably counting on readers countering the oped writer. When that didn't happen, it put the kibosh on comments.

I read some of the comments and the vast majority was supportive of Ms. Paul. I guess some of the Op-Ed Board got triggered by that.

So many "queers" are just heterosexuals, so I do not take that term seriously.

As soon as something/someone is identified as queer or an article talks about "queer" this versus GLB that, I just tune out.

So "Don't Say Gay" takes on a whole new meaning.