Guest Post: The Dangers of Redefining "Homosexual"

The dictionary as a source of misinformation

The Cambridge dictionary recently expanded its definition of the word female. The word is formally “used in technical or scientific writing to refer to a woman or girl,” it says, with an addendum: “Except in scientific writing, most people find this usage of female offensive.” (Nothing offensive about “male,” though.)

There’s no citation for this note, so I’m not sure where they got the idea that most people find it offensive. It may be that, thanks to social media, the writers have the perception that a majority objects, when it’s really a minority with a lot of media presence.

How important are dictionary definitions—how much do they affect what goes on outside their pages, electronic or paper? It’s hard to say. The dictionary’s job is to reflect common usage, so this shift reveals how an obscure idea leaked from academia and activism into the some part of the world that etymologists observed, and perhaps mistook for common sentiment. Perhaps now the dictionary, rather than reflect common usage, will shape common usage.

I thought of this after a friend sent me the piece below, about the redefining of the word homosexual. Much to think about here. She prefers to remain anonymous. I’ll open comments to all readers.

—LD

PS: I’m looking to interview people who’ve felt they can’t express themselves in therapy, or have had conflicts or issues due to the imposition of critical social justice (aka “wokeness”) onto psychology and therapy. Please email if you’re willing to talk, especially if it’s on the record. Thanks!

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I pay $2.99 a month for full access to the Oxford Dictionary app because I value precise language. So I was dismayed to find out this weekend that the OD was defining “homosexual” to mean attracted to members of one’s own “sex or gender.” 

I could compile links to articles about how sexual orientation turns on biological sex, which is to say, not gender. But instead I’ll just point you to OD’s definition of “heterosexual”: it refers only to sex and not gender. When it comes to straight people’s sexuality, OD doesn’t mess around.

So what? Why shouldn’t we describe homosexuals a little inaccurately? I’ll explain.

I came out as a lesbian 19 years ago, or 20 years ago if you count drunken confessions retracted the next day as “coming out.” Around that time I admitted to myself that I wasn’t just attracted to girls but also that I wasn’t attracted to guys. They left me cold, even when they left me covered in their sweat in a Twin XL dormroom bed. 

I’d procrastinated coming out because I thought there was no point: I didn’t know any other available lesbians to hook up with on my southern college campus (I saw some around but they smoked and had scary piercings). But it turned out there was a point. I loved not pretending anymore to care about guys, just smiling and shrugging when my friends cooed over one confident galoot or another. It was way more fun than what I had been doing since 5th grade, something I’ll call “motivated heterosexuality:” preoccupying myself with dating boys out of a desire to fit in.

But that freedom from motivated heterosexuality didn’t last.

I knew before I came out that women tended to be disbelieved when they said they weren’t straight, especially if, like me, they had long hair. I was actually guilty of doubting Madonna (bi, apparently) and Anne Heche myself. So, after I came out, I responded politely when friends teased me about being a LUG (lesbian until graduation), or when a guy asked how lesbians could reject men yet embrace strap-ons, or when a woman suggested that maybe I’d just had a painful experience with men, or when friends I’d agonized about coming out to simply “forgot” I was gay.  But all the ambient skepticism and ignorance grinded on me. It wasn’t easy to belong to a micro-minority, with no close lesbian friends or hope of finding a lesbian therapist (we’re 1% of the population).

Meanwhile, the option of a straight life was always just a few unfalsifiable lies away.

Maybe I could be attracted to a man, I thought. Maybe a pretty one? While I never backed off lesbian identity, I’d go along sometimes when a not too bulky, not too hairy guy came onto me. Maybe, I’d think, and I’d slide into motivated heterosexuality once again. Making out with the guy, though, I’d feel as cold as ever. 

I finally cut it out around my mid-twenties, but I’ve known women who called themselves bi or even straight deep into their thirties, despite never having fallen for a man. To our friends who know what we get up to, we probably serve as proof that lesbianism is a myth, or that all female sexuality is fluid. The truth, I think, is that many homosexual women live dishonestly for years or decades because of the unique pressure we feel to pretend that our sexuality is blurry—that, for example, we’re drawn not just to the female sex but to feminine gender (OD’s definition: “having qualities or an appearance associated with women or girls”; my definition: “stereotypes about women or girls”). That pressure comes from our friends and family, dumb pop culture tropes, the remnants of patriarchy, our own loneliness, trendy theories about gender, and now the necrophiliac Oxford Dictionary.

Is necrophiliac not the right word? Please excuse me, I recently gave up my dictionary subscription. Maybe…perfidious?

I can’t write about attraction to sex vs. gender without addressing the “cotton ceiling” discourse: the argument over whether lesbians who won’t date transwomen are bigots. The answer is: we’re not. Pheromones don’t emanate from gender identity, for example, and “bottom surgery” wouldn’t help matters because I feel turned off by males even when they’re wearing pants. Nevertheless, some young lesbians report feeling pressured to hook up with transwomen. This is outside my experience because I’m 38. The closest I’ve been to cotton ceiling discourse was when a young woman I supervised pressed me on whether I would date a transwoman. I was a normie at the time, totally unaware that she was summoning me to an international debate named after underpants; I thought she was trying to set me up with a transwoman she knew. “Maybe,” I said, “except that they’d have to be short. I only date women who are really short, like under 5-2. That’s my type, very petite.” This was a lie. I’m into tall muscular women, gender be damned. (Also petite women.)

Some have argued that even if people are attracted to sex and not gender, they should shut up about it because it’s demoralizing to trans people. I see it differently. Trans teenagers are out there on the internet trying to decide whether to permanently alter their bodies. They should be allowed to find out how that will affect their dating pool, if at all. While it’s impossible to predict who will be attracted to them, it is easy to predict who won’t be: homosexuals of the opposite sex. No one should mislead kids about this, especially not the Oxford Dictionary.

The OD’s definition of homosexuality probably won’t inspire any 15 year old lesbians to blow a guy. But it’s one voice in a chorus of nonsense drowning out the reality of gay life. Please, OD and anyone else who talks about sexuality in public: stop psyching out young homos with misinformation. Let them have the same self-confidence as Straight dudes—NOUN: people who are attracted to women and not to men.

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