The fallacy of Political Correctness
In our endeavour to become a tolerant and excepting society we have unwittingly isolated ourselves from each other. There are many different people who identify in many different ways, you have homosexual, gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans gender, two spirited, inter sexed, queer, questioning, cis female and cis male and the list goes on and on. For the LGBT community it is hard enough to manage understanding the concept of all of the names and trying to use the appropriate words and gender in our speaking, in the heterosexual world it is completely baffling. In our endeavour to include everyone we have completely missed. If people in the LGBT community don't know how to refer to each other, how are we supposed to be approachable to someone who is questioning or heterosexuals who just want some answers. People have suggested using the term Queer. We should recapture it and make it positive. I highly disagree. When I was out recently with someone who is 80 plus she used the word queer in meaning something out of the ordinary, not normal, or just plan odd. While I myself am out of the ordinary my sexuality is not. Even the term sexuality is a misnomer as it goes far beyond sexual attraction.
I prefer the term gay. I've been told that it is of exclusive use for men, but I do not believe that is the case. Gay means happy. I am happy in whom I love and choose to share my life with. Gay is a non offencive word all around and I believe that in claiming it we are expressing our happiness with ourselves.
I urge people of the lgbt community to become disentangled with labels and become more approachable. After all, we should be able to answer a few questions. If you aren't comfortable with a term that someone has referred to YOU as, let them know that you prefer _____ but this is only you. Feel free to explore the uniqueness that is you, but please don't force the rest of the community in embracing terms that we are not comfortable with.
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