Sunday, November 06, 2005

Homolexicology

William Safire, in today's Times, discusses the origin and current usage of the various homo-words: gay, lesbian, queer. While the essay is kind of interesting ("The word gay,...was British slang for "a loose woman" in 1825, turning into "a homosexual boy" in 1935 and gaining that meaning in U.S. slang in the 1950's." Who knew "gay" meant whore?), it served more as a reminder that there are many people who fall into some sort of homo-tendencies (as Safire says, "The reader will note my careful use of the word homosexual as an adjective modifying a noun like man rather than as a noun itself. That's for two reasons: first, because the prefix homo is from the Greek homos, "the same," in this case denoting a "same sex" relationship, not to be confused with the Latin homo, "man," as in homo sapiens, the current species of human being.").

I don't spend a lot of time thinking about how I identify--sexually. I used to say "bi" until that got me a lot of dirty looks from ladies I was hitting on (interestingly, men love it. That is another story.). Now I use "queer" (sans all the queer theory I studied in college), if anything at all. I often wonder why people are so obsessed with how they (and others) are defined--sexually or otherwise. I'm repeatedly asked how gay I am. For instance, this past weekend, I was standing around in a bar with some friends (and friends of friends) when one man turned and asked me where I fall on a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being uber gay). Without skipping a beat, I responded 8. What the hell does 8 mean? Why do people care? What if I went around asking people how straight they are? That would be weird, right?

I have two friends who have recently started sleeping with women and now both are in "serious" relationships--that is, they are "in love" (I put quotes in because both women have told me that they're In Love). Both of my friends declared their love for their significant other fairly early in the relationship (but what do I know--I rarely allow my relationships to get that far); both are extremely happy. One set of dykes are what I like to stereotype as Western Mass Lesbians--they live in a cute little townhouse, grow their own veggies, do good stuff for a living, started to live together as soon as one graduated from college, and will no doubt buy a chocolate lab and name it Ghandi or Rosa (Parks). The others (I haven't met her boifriend) are New York Dykes (edgy, urban, artsy, scenesters). I'm interested in the latter relationship mostly because my friend has suddenly become very aware of the dyke dichotomy--the butch/femme thing. When I last saw her, she talked for ages about how she is "seen as femme" and then went on for a while about what that means (in her life), asked how other dyke friends of mine define themselves. And then tried to make me declare how I identify (for the record, neither butch (ha, that would be funny--have you seen me? I’m oppressing myself...ah!) nor femme).

While I think it can be useful for people who are beginning to explore their sexuality and the gendered roles that society provides for us, it's also repressive. I have a good friend from high school who began to date a woman (to whom she is now engaged) late into our senior year of college. She went through an interesting change when she started to date her fiancée--she cut all her hair off, dropped all her girly clothing, and became really angry/militant (more than me at the time, which is saying a lot). She and I were talking about that time period a few weeks ago (when we were, of all places, at a Catholic wedding in New Hampshire). She jokes about that time now and mostly characterizes it as not knowing how to handle being a dyke--to her being a lesbian meant adhering all the stereotypes (short hair, bad clothes). She now dresses like she used to--more feminine clothing, she's grown her hair back out, etc. It's also worth noting that I rarely see such a gender-roled relationship (queer or otherwise): her fiancée literally works on the cars and my friend gardens; my friend is going to be the first to carry a child. Their relationship is, in other words, like the average non-queer relationship.

So, I'm not sure what point I'm wanting to make here other than to question why people feel the need to define their sexuality and how that plays out in one’s life. There are several reasons, probably. First, it's an empowerment thing--the more people identifying as queer, gay, lesbian, etc, the more we'll be accepted in this (heterosexist) world. Also, as much as I hate to admit it, people want to be part of a group--to find the place where you fit; it's comforting. For the record, I recognize this is a privileged series of thoughts.

Really though, I just want to sleep with/have crushes on/flirt with whomever I want, without having to say "now I like boys. Now I like girls". Fortunately, the put-you-in-a-box people haven't stopped me before and won't stop me now.

2 Comments:

Blogger intuitia said...

Another reason for defining one's sexuality: so people you might be interested in realize that if they were to be interested in you then there is the potential for you to be interested back. Or something like that. At least that was a major motivation for ME in labelling myself "bi" my senior year of college . . .

Of course, as I've become more confident that the potent combinaton of flirtation+gossip can lead to ample possibilities, I've gotten over the label obsession. :-P

9:10 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Who needs a label when my dog Stonewall needs to go out? Although I guess a label of queer would be an upgrade from the previous label of white-priviledged-class-woman-with-every-advantage... for the sake of being oppressed at least... Shit, if we're not oppressed, we must be the oppressor. Run and hide or call me queer.

10:43 PM  

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