Nouns

Thank you.

I think i got it now. Sure, i think most people are aware the original meaning of the very word gay means "happy". Which as you said it's not a noun...
Is it still widely used in English speaking countries by the way...i mean "gay" = "happy" synonym? I know one of Nietzsche's major works is translated to English as "the gay science".


And: i meant, my mother tongue uses the Cyrillic alphabet . But of course I am now writing using the Latin as English exclusively uses only the latin one p.

 

Yeah it does. Am I nothing more than simply who I find attractive?

 

I don't really know what else there would be to call me. Homosexual is too scientific and not casual enough; it also used to denote a mental illness and still carries that stigma with some people.

 

Well... saying 'a gay person' rather than 'a gay' is still summing you up by who you find attractive. What's the difference?

I'm in circles where the word gay is used derogatorily, and if they said 'gay person' it could still be meant in a bad way. It's all about the intent of the person saying it... Just like the N word, black people aren't being offensive to each other when they say it...

 

Some things do annoy me.

Just "gays" on its own or "a gay" or "a homosexual" is irksome, as it almost makes it sound like we are an entirely different gender or even species - objectlike even. "A gay man" or "a homosexual person" is better, although I don't like when its shortened to a "gayman" and it does again make it sound like a seperate category of men. For example people often use just "men" to mean straight men and "gay men" for men who are homosexual. I feel people genuinely see "gay men" as "not quite men" or "lesser men" (and vice versa with lesbians) which is wrong really.

The way I see it I am a man first and foremost, who just happens to be gay. I have a different sexuality to "straight men", not a different gender classification.

I do appreciate though its probably a minefield for people to try and get right. But yeh, I prefer "man who is gay" or "man whose sexuality is gay" to the alternatives.

 

"A gay" implies that that is, fundamentally and/or importantly, what you are.
"A gay person" implies that being gay is smaller and/or less important part of what you are.

If you loved to draw and you were gay, would you rather be called "a gay" or "an artist"?

Of course, some people do consider being LGBT+ a huge part of them, and that's perfectly alright. I suppose I'm just giving the other side of things.

 

i'm confused, but it is hard to offend me unless you are intending to then i will notice, probably

 

Hmm... I think some grammar nazis people get more annoyed by either missing nouns, or adjectives functioning as an ommited obvious noun. English, and all of it's dialects, are living languages. They adopt new words (or, in the case of English, beat other languages over the head and rifle thru their pockets for loose vocabulary), change meanings of words,even change some linguistic structures.There are whole languages out there where one might not even specify the subject or object discussed for several sentences, if ever specified. As long as the message is clearly conveyed, I don't really care so much. Example with rough literal translation follows:

Hajimemashite. (Formal greeting)
Confuzuledu desu. (Confuzzled is.)
Yoroshiku onegaishimasu. (*very formal/polite* pleased to meet)

 

Usually no. I refer to myself as a lesbian, and that's a noun. And I somewhat prefer that over saying I'm gay, and that's an adjective... I find that 'gay' sounds better as an adjective and that 'lesbian' sounds better as a noun. It depends...

As for gender, I wouldn't say I'm female; I would say I'm a girl. Doesn't 'female' refer to sex anyway, not gender (though I'm cis)?

Saying 'a homosexual' doesn't sound weird to me either, and neither does 'a heterosexual', 'a bisexual', 'an asexual', 'a pansexual' and so on.

 

Lesbian, to me, is such a beautiful and lovely word with an amazing history. I view it pretty much as one would view the nationality of a person. AKA, a German/German person, a Canadian/a Canadian person, an American/American person, etc.

Female/male isn't restricted to the birth/bio sex of a person. You can say you're of the female sex or of the female gender - either is correct, by definition.

As for the "-sexuals," I agree. But for some reason, "a transsexual" doesn't really sound too right to me...

 

My point was to suggest that there was no difference between being called 'a gay' and 'a gay person', because it's being used as a noun rather than an adjective which some people dislike.

The artist situation you've described is different, they're nouns for different things rather than being a different look on the same thing (a gay and a gay person). I would be upset by someone saying what you've said, but for a different reason to what we're talking about in this thread.

In the case of 'a gay' vs 'a gay person', I feel that there is no difference (both could be used offensively, but there is no basic difference). In both you are being summed up by your sexuality.

Meh i don't know. Having read it through again I think if I were gay I would be offended by being called 'A gay'.

 

Absolutely this. I don't really mind em as nouns but I far prefer them as adjectives. Especially with the word "lesbian"

 

This transsexual is fine with it as well.
I don't care as long as you're not calling me delusional.

 

being called "a transgender" kind of annoys me. Not sure why.

I think that's because I have kind of a negative association with being referred to with nouns. Specifically derogatory ones.

 

I don't mind a single bit. In Dutch you turn adjectives into nouns a lot. Like, he is a bisexual, he is an asexual, and such. It doesn't matter to me how people talk about it. =)