History of the Word “Gay”

and start meaning same-sex relationships and how did it happen by now we're all pretty familiar with the word gay as a term that means people who express or experience same-sex sexual attractions sometimes this is aligned with gender such as gay being specifically assigned to men in same-sex relationships while lesbian is applied only to women other times gay is just more ubiquitously used to describe a range of relationships that aren't heterosexual but for the majority of its history the word gay had little to do with same-sex relations it meant happy or bright and lively looking so how did geisha from a word to describe a good mood - a word that encompasses sexual identity and why well to get started on this etymology we first have to ask what were some of the earlier uses of gay well as I mentioned before gay has a variety of rather benign uses dating back as far as the 13th century that range from a person being described as joyous to also saying that something is brightly colored and not to sound like the beginning of every terrible high school English paper but I did a quic etymology rundown on the word gay and found some now rare and out-of-date uses that are also pretty cool one meaning was to be fine or showily dressed another was Noble fine excellent and another still was light-hearted but my favorite underused meaning of the word gay is probably the gay science which translated means the art of poetry which started around the 17th century and is sometimes known as the translated title of Fredrick Nietzsche's 1882 text so thanks dictionary and also thanks Nietzsche okay so we've gotten over the hurdle of early meanings of gay but that brings us to our next question when did gay become associated with sexuality so it seems like that timeline started in the 16th century when some early meanings of gay were associated with being hedonistic or frivolous and in the 18th century gay houses was a term for brothels but even though those definitions of gay were associated with sexuality it doesn't mean that they were explicitly linked to same-sex relationships so when did that change well before gay the more common term to describe same-sex relationships or people who express any kind of same-sex or non normative does higher in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was homosexual but this term was linked to the common belief at the time that same-sex attraction was a psychological disorder that could be treated and cured along with this rise and medical intervention there were also a number of sodomy or anti-gay laws throughout the world that sought to criminalize consensual gay sex these laws were widely enforced in the US and UK until the mid 20th century although many of these laws remain on the books around the world and in April of 2018 British Prime Minister Theresa May expressed regret over the UK's role in spreading similar laws around the world where 37 of the Commonwealth's 53 member nations still have anti-gay laws and forced or on the books but the practice of considering queer desire and illness has been denounced by the American Psychological Association and the American Psychiatric Association since 1973 and 1975 respectively however the shift to using gay in the common language took a bit longer the new york times didn't adopt the use of gay until 1987 although it still doesn't use it in all contexts but now GLAAD 'less homosexual as an offensive term in their media reference guide supplementing gay as the appropriate stand-in but it was around the mid 20th century that the use of gay to describe sexuality often but not exclusively for men became more common practice although there are examples and uses of gay to mean same-sex relationships and attractions tracing back to the 1920s in his book words out gay men's English scholar William leap traces what he terms lavender linguistics or the rhetorical and linguistic strategies used by gay men to communicate amongst themselves and with the broader world he draws on scholar Joseph Goodwin's theorization of the double subjectivity of interpretation which means that messages require the interpretation of both the speaker and the receiver to make meaning leave notes that phrases and meanings and gay men's English often operate this way with double meanings present that require other types of knowledge for them to make sense for example in an article for the New York Times called the decline and fall of the H word professor George Chauncey notes that uses of gay and queer communities often operated as a code so that people could express same-sex desire through language without picked up on by others who would respond negatively to them Chauncey is quoted saying a lesbian could say she met a gay gal the night before and her lesbian friend would know exactly what she meant while her straight boss would have no idea what she was talking about and by the 1960s gay became a banner for communities who fought under the mantle of gay liberation arguing for the decriminalization of same-sex relationships and equality in all aspects of public life groups organizing under the Gay Liberation Front after 1969 as well as activist Frank Kamini who coined the phrase gay is good in 1968 helped to bring the use of the word as a symbol of pride into wider use so gave was repurposed and taken up in positive context of self-identification and group communication after the latter half of the 20th century so how does it all add up well it seems like earlier iterations of gay were most commonly aligned with positive things like joy and bright colors but as time rolled forward we started to see gay first aligned with ideas of hedonism brothels and then later same-sex relationships but colloquial usage in the 20th century by queer communities saw the word repurposed to replace more contentious medicalised terms by the 1960s it was associated with increased visibility and human rights for marginalized communities and gained traction as a marker of Pride and self-identification and today the term has been adopted in conversations about gay rights and civil rights precisely because a prolonged activist engagement so it seems like despite or maybe in spite of dictionary definitions everyday usage can radically impact the meaning and scope of a single word so what do you think any other info [Music]