aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Tuesday, March 21, 2006

William Safire on ‘gay’, 1981 & now

In his weekly NYTimes’ Magazine “On Language” column of September 27, 1981, he begins by discussing the term ‘geezer’ which I, like he, like:

I like the word ‘’geezer.’’ A century ago, this dialect form of ‘’guiser,’’ or one dressed in the guise of a mummer, meant an old person, particularly a woman; over the years, it picked up and then partially dropped a connotation of eccentricity, but turned mainly masculine. It can now be used either in derision or with affection to refer to old people, particularly - to my ear -outspoken old people, usually men.

Then moves on to euphemisms:

Anybody who is so sensitive about the word ‘’old’’ that he insists on being called a ‘’golden ager’’ or ‘’senior citizen’’ is too old to cut the mustard of controversy. I am middle-aged; I wish I were young again, but I don’t get any surge of youthful energy out of calling any crises in my middle-agedness midlife. ‘’Old’’ is something nobody likes to be (except considering the alternative), but if you are old, then old is what you are, and calling yourself venerable or in the sunset years isn’t going to make you any younger.

Ah, but aren’t euphemisms generally a way of making people feel better about what they are? Yes and no. Cripple is a word that hurts, and is limited to afflictions of the limbs, while handicapped has a connotation of built-in sympathy and dignity, and is a broader term covering any sort of disability. Certainly ‘’handicapped’’ is a euphemism, but so what? Euphemism is not always bad, nor is a change in terminology always euphemistic: Yesterday’s insane asylum is not today’s mental hospital.

So euphamism and change in terminology is ok, unless the affected group asks for it: Thus his rejection of the term “gay:”

Are these decisions all by-guess-and-by-God, or are some standards at work here? One criterion that emerges is the source of the pressure for change: If it is spontaneous, or fills a linguisticpsychological need, then it should be accepted, but if it comes in the form of fiat from government or demand by pressure group or propaganda for a movement, then it can rightly be resisted.

Without communication disorder or speech disfluency, I resist the word gay just because homosexual-rights groups insist upon it; I don’t say queer, because that is a slur, but homosexual is neutral and accurate. If lesbians argue that ‘’homosexual’’ should be limited to men, I would put up a feeble fight -arguing that the homo is the same as the ‘’man’’ in ‘’mankind’’ and covers women, too - but I’d cave in; if many people used the separate terms, that differentiation would be in the direction of precision.

Those nettlesome homos insist upon it. My experience was, and I think history now shows, that it was “sponaneous.” And I do note that even then he “resists” the term “gay,” he doesn’t “reject” it.

A couple weeks later, John Simon took him to task, ‘’You are waxing prolix in your middle age!’’ and he got 208 letters, six postcards and a telex from people who know the difference between Latin and Greek derivations.

“Surely you must have written that as a provocation, or come-on,’’ observes Taliaferro Boatwright Jr. of Stonington, Conn. Would that I had. ‘’Can you hear me, buried under that mountain of horrified mail?’’ cries Barbara Holland of Philadelphia. ‘’Boy, that was a beaut. What on earth did you think ‘homogenized’ meant? Milk made into man?’’

‘’I have resisted the urge to write you on previous occasions when you expressed opinions I found loathesome,’’ snarls Barnett R. Rubin of Chicago. ‘’Both you and the anonymous lesbians to whom you refer have been deceived by an orthographical homology. A homology, by the way, is a similarity of structure, not a word containing ‘homo’ or ‘man,’ where linguistic reformers would have us substitute ‘person.’ ‘’

How do you remember the difference between the Latin homo meaning ‘’man,’’ and the Greek homo-, meaning ‘’the same’’? Eugene J. O’Sullivan of Tampa suggests the use of a mnemonic: Pronounce the Greekrooted words to rhyme with ‘’Tom’’: ‘’The ‘o’ in ‘homosexual’ should be short, in fidelity to its Greek root, whereas the ‘o’ in ‘Homo sapiens’ should be long, in fidelity to its Latin root.’’ He then goes off the deep end: ‘’The ‘homo’ (hommo) in ‘homonym’ is not a homonym for the ‘homo’ (hoh-mo) in ‘Homo sapiens’; ‘homo’ (hommo, same) is, rather, a homograph for ‘homo’ (hoh-mo, man).’’

One reason for the space being given to this exercise in selfabasement is to demonstrate the frustration of thousands of classicists across this vast land (the Hong Kong mail hasn’t come in yet). For years, they have found no outlet for their fury at the promiscuous mixture of Latin and Greek etymology by languaslobs. Now, at last, they have discovered the National Shame-On-You Center. [...]

‘’(Extra fund: short as it is, this note contains examples of antonomasia (3X), hyperbole, hysteron proteron, metaphor, prolepsis, paramoeon, anaphora (or epibole), prosopopoeia, asyndeton, not to mention paraleipsis. Can you spot them?)’’

I can’t spot a thing. Homoecious readers get me down.

So I was guessing that by now he’d come to embrace it. Alas, in his November 6, 2005 On Language column he looks at Homolexicology again:

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.

Another reason for the wincing at homosexual, especially as a noun, is the emphasis that the word places on sexuality, while gay and lesbian also may range across cultural and social attitudes (but watch out for that no-no lifestyle). An American Psychological Association report notes that homosexual ‘’has been associated in the past with deviance, mental illness and criminal behavior,’’ which has led to a ‘’negative stereotype.’’ As that connotation wears off, I expect that the noun—a Standard English synonym for the now widely used ‘’same-sex’’—will make a comeback.

Grrrr. I’m betting that geezer is wrong!