Why do they call themselves gay?
Gay actually means lighthearted and free. For this reason, Deck the Halls calls for gay apparel. So why do homosexuals call themselves gay?
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I dunno, maybe cus the prancing fruits who accept themselves and are happy with life confuse the masses so all the misers had to shit on their parade and turn a words meaning into something negative because they need to put others down to feel better about themselves. Maybe. I dunno.
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This is why i HATE Wikipedia...
gay (adj.) etymology
late 14c., "full of joy, merry; light-hearted, carefree;" also "wanton, lewd, lascivious" (late 12c. as a surname, Philippus de Gay), from Old French gai "joyful, happy; pleasant, agreeably charming; forward, pert; light-colored" (12c.; compare Old Spanish gayo, Portuguese gaio, Italian gajo, probably French loan-words). Ultimate origin disputed; perhaps from Frankish *gahi (related to Old High German wahi "pretty"), though not all etymologists accept this. Meaning "stately and beautiful; splendid and showily dressed" is from early 14c. In the English of Yorkshire and Scotland formerly it could mean "moderately, rather, considerable" (1796; compare sense development in pretty (adj.)).
The word gay by the 1890s had an overall tinge of promiscuity -- a gay house was a brothel. The suggestion of immorality in the word can be traced back at least to the 1630s, if not to Chaucer:
But in oure bed he was so fressh and gay
Whan that he wolde han my bele chose.Slang meaning "homosexual" (adj.) begins to appear in psychological writing late 1940s, evidently picked up from gay slang and not always easily distinguished from the older sense:
After discharge A.Z. lived for some time at home. He was not happy at the farm and went to a Western city where he associated with a homosexual crowd, being "gay," and wearing female clothes and makeup. He always wished others would make advances to him. ["Rorschach Research Exchange and Journal of Projective Techniques," 1947, p.240]
The association with (male) homosexuality likely got a boost from the term gay cat, used as far back as 1893 in American English for "young hobo," one who is new on the road, also one who sometimes does jobs.
"A Gay Cat," said he, "is a loafing laborer, who works maybe a week, gets his wages and vagabonds about hunting for another 'pick and shovel' job. Do you want to know where they got their monica (nickname) 'Gay Cat'? See, Kid, cats sneak about and scratch immediately after chumming with you and then get gay (fresh). That's why we call them 'Gay Cats'." [Leon Ray Livingston ("America's Most Celebrated Tramp"), "Life and Adventures of A-no. 1," 1910]
Quoting a tramp named Frenchy, who might not have known the origin. Gay cats were severely and cruelly abused by "real" tramps and bums, who considered them "an inferior order of beings who begs of and otherwise preys upon the bum -- as it were a jackal following up the king of beasts" [Prof. John J. McCook, "Tramps," in "The Public Treatment of Pauperism," 1893], but some accounts report certain older tramps would dominate a gay cat and employ him as a sort of slave. In "Sociology and Social Research" (1932-33) a paragraph on the "gay cat" phenomenon notes, "Homosexual practices are more common than rare in this group," and gey cat "homosexual boy" is attested in Noel Erskine's 1933 dictionary of "Underworld & Prison Slang" (gey is a Scottish variant of gay).
The "Dictionary of American Slang" reports that gay (adj.) was used by homosexuals, among themselves, in this sense since at least 1920. Rawson ["Wicked Words"] notes a male prostitute using gay in reference to male homosexuals (but also to female prostitutes) in London's notorious Cleveland Street Scandal of 1889. Ayto ["20th Century Words"] calls attention to the ambiguous use of the word in the 1868 song "The Gay Young Clerk in the Dry Goods Store," by U.S. female impersonator Will S. Hays, but the word evidently was not popularly felt in this sense by wider society until the 1950s at the earliest.
"Gay" (or "gai") is now widely used in French, Dutch, Danish, Japanese, Swedish, and Catalan with the same sense as the English. It is coming into use in Germany and among the English-speaking upper classes of many cosmopolitan areas in other countries. [John Boswell, "Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality," 1980]
As a teen slang word meaning "bad, inferior, undesirable," without reference to sexuality, from 2000.
(http://etymonline.com)
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Gays did not choose to be refereed to as Gay. Society refereed to them that way for so long that they eventually just accepted the title. Its like when Europeans call Americans YANKS(Yankees). It might be the fact that people think of gay men as "Flamboyant" and there often seems to be a distinction between Females which we refer to as lesbians, and Gay(often used only for males). However I seen Gay used interchangeably.
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Yup that's absolutely correct.
That's why they refer to themselves as FAGGOTS in "gay bars" kind of like a rights of passage but I don't believe they'll ever be adopting the term Sodomite any time soon as that one has too much history behind it not to mention the MAX negative connotation behind it.
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Who used the word Sondimite besides super old fashioned Christians? Even modern Christians dont still use that term. They use the term Homosexual. They wouldn't adopt something that is hardly ever used. That is like saying "Humans will never call themselves Homo sapiens". Well no crap, most people will not come across that term in their culture or life time why would they adopt something so rarely use as an accepted term?
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Like you were saying, homosexuals didn't ask to be called "gay" that's what society referred to them as and like the word FAGGOT they have embraced it as a right of passage, kind of like how people use to call black-folks NIGGERS, they have accepted it which is why many of them call eachother "niggas", same as queers calling eachother FAGGOTS in gay bars. They won't be calling themselves Sodomites in the same since they currently call themselves Faggots.(sorry i had to loop that) I agree.
I wasn't talking about Christians but the reason homosexuals are called FAGGOTS is because of Genesis in the Bible where "god destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah with fire and brimstone"
It is their acceptance that they are "faggots" as black-folk acceptance they are Niggers (niggas) by referring to themselves as such.
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I've heard guys using terms like this, as well as "poop chute" and "chocolate channel" , etc. while they were denigrating homosexuals and it always made me think they had an unnatural fixation with the things that gay men do together for pleasure, and it always made me wonder if the speaker using those terms was actually queer himself!
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Poop chute just means your bum hole idiot. A lot of people just use that term when they refer to something relating to the butt. Where does the suppository go? Into your poop chute. What happens when I get a colonoscopy "They put a camera up the poop Chute". It just is a nicer way of saying asshole.
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I said "while they're denigrating homosexuals", so that puts the word into a sexual context, which has nothing to do with colonoscopy, or suppositories, nor rectal thermometers either!
I don't know why some people are so damned quick to pounce on somebody and call names. Do you have many friends?
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Your not very bright. I never said that the term "Poop Chute" has to do with those things. I said it means "Butt hole". For the love of god are you dense as fuck. Gay men do it in the butt. That is the key thing here. You are mixing up the effect with the cuase, and its just makes you sound really ignorant.
Just because those things fall under "What one can do with a butt hole" does not mean they are all related. I dont understand how anyone can really be stupid enough to think so but weirder things have happened. That is like saying since all men poop all men must be gay. Not how it works at all.
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