RYAN LEE
| 11.26.2008
I’M AMUSED WHENEVER people do linguistic gymnastics to avoid using the word gay. It’s a simple word that sparks great anxiety in some people, and their solution is to ignore it the same way “The Real Housewives of Atlanta” ignore sanity.
Aside from Republican presidents, no one has a harder time saying the word gay than members of the Atlanta media, which is ironic considering how many homos are in newspaper offices and television stations.
The Atlanta-Journal Constitution recently wrote an article on dating in politics, and failed to mention that one of their primary sources was gay. Explaining why he doesn’t date Republicans, the gay source said, “We tend not to go to the same bars, the same places, the same clubs.”
The article made it seem like he was talking about Republican women, but of course they “tend not to go to the same bars” as the gay Democrat for reasons unrelated to politics.
In a story about two men being kidnapped in East Atlanta last year, the AJC didn’t report that the victims were a gay couple, even though friends deemed that information important enough to include in a police report. The AJC sensationally played-up the kidnapping story, and I am certain the newspaper would have duly noted if it were a straight couple, with a lead sentence along the lines of, “Bobby stole Sarah’s heart, and now a kidnapper has stolen them both.”
The latest jokester who chose to look silly rather than say gay was WSB-TV reporter Amanda Rosseter. Standing in front of Blake’s, Rosseter reported on a string of robberies in Midtown where the assailant targeted “young white men of small stature near the corner of 10th and Piedmont.”
Amanda, you used 13 words to avoid one. Say it with me: Gay.
MISPLACED POLITICAL CORRECTNESS is what prevents reporters from telling the truth. Gay people have long been reluctant to be identified as such publicly, so journalists feel like it’s improper for them to use the label unless it has “direct relevance” to the story.
Gayness is certainly relevant in a dating story, as it is in a report about a criminal stalking gay hangouts for gay victims. Omitting that word isn’t a respectful gesture or protection of privacy — it is a perpetuation of the invisibility gay people have always lived in.
When I graduated and got a job at a gay publication, several of my friends worried about me getting pigeonholed as a “gay writer.” I was also fearful, since I have many interests and ideas that have nothing to do with my homosexuality.
A graduate student doing a research paper on gay media recently interviewed me, and he asked about being labeled a gay writer.
“Well,” I said, “that’s what I am. It doesn’t matter if I write for David or for The Wall Street Journal — I’d still be a gay writer. I know what you mean, and I don’t want anyone to think that gay issues are all I care about or am capable of writing about. But I am a gay writer, there’s no getting around that. And that’s no longer a scary thing for me, or something I feel the urge to run from.”
SHAMEFULLY, THE WORD GAY IS
often forbidden in campaigns to defeat constitutional amendments to ban same-sex marriage. We’ve bought into the bankrupt idea that we can use words like “discrimination,” and “human rights” and “equality” — but we must not let voters know these measures are about gay people, or we will lose.
Using the word gay is politically problematic, because over thousands of years, gay people went from being wicked, to criminal, to mentally sick, to outlandish in the public conscience. We’ve overcome most of these stereotypes, but a definitive challenge to gay existence lingers: Invisibility.
Those characterizations lasted so long because few rose to resist them. Once we showed up for the fight, things began to change.
We still face many challenges, and we may never win a battle on our first attempt. But we don’t stand a chance as long as we refuse to use the most basic words to describe who we are and why we are fighting.
|
