3 ms·
"Propensities toward attraction were recognized, but it never formed a core part of personal identity" Like many words, "gay" "straight" "bisexual" and so on h
by woodandsteel 6y ago
"Propensities toward attraction were recognized, but it never formed a core part of personal identity"
Like many words, "gay" "straight" "bisexual" and so on have more than one meaning. One of those meanings is the idea that who one is attracted to is the core of one's identity. Another common meaning is that it is simply descriptive of attraction, and says little about the rest of one's personality.
- scarmig 6y agoRight. But they're loaded terms, and I think it's best to avoid using them when discussing historical sexual patterns, because of how easy they are to misinterpret and how it's easy to accidentally slip into the second definition while ostensibly using the first. It's similar to projecting the contemporary term "dictator" to Roman dictators: they're very different things, despite a superficial similarity. Even in the contemporary USA, sexual preferences and practices don't neatly map to those categories. See, for instance, the hyper-concrete use of "males who have sex with males (MSM)" in public health, to capture all the men who have sex with men who are (ahem) straight.
- woodandsteel 6y agoI disagree. Think of how the gay movement took the word "queer" and turned it from an insult to something neutral or even positive. The way to change peoples minds is to change the meanings of words. In particular, take the most common words and change their connotations, rather than inventing awkward new expressions that very few people will adopt.