Language is complicated and messy. There’s plenty to suggest that for the people that coined the term, they meant for gay to apply to all genders. Then a prominent group of gay women claimed the term lesbian as a specific type of gay woman.
We can argue that lesbian was a specific group of women, not meant to mean all gay women. However, because there’s no equivalent ‘male only’ gay, over time their usage drifted to mean all homosexual men and all homosexual women respectively.
Since language is descriptive, not prescriptive, we can’t say the new usage is wrong, just that it’s different from what the terms used to mean.
Aren’t lesbians gay as well? I thought it was a gender neutral term
I think ‘Dudes’ is being used as a gendered term for men in the meme
Yes
Language is complicated and messy. There’s plenty to suggest that for the people that coined the term, they meant for gay to apply to all genders. Then a prominent group of gay women claimed the term lesbian as a specific type of gay woman.
We can argue that lesbian was a specific group of women, not meant to mean all gay women. However, because there’s no equivalent ‘male only’ gay, over time their usage drifted to mean all homosexual men and all homosexual women respectively.
Since language is descriptive, not prescriptive, we can’t say the new usage is wrong, just that it’s different from what the terms used to mean.
Didn’t know that. I guess I only know the modern definition