What does gay mean

The ‘gay’ word: what does it mean when young people use it negatively?

Armed with a camera and an overdraft, I made a documentary about what young people mean by ‘gayness’ and why older people find it so upsetting

Amy Ashenden speaks to young men for her documentary The Gay Word

Amy Ashenden speaks to young men for her documentary The Gay Word

When I was growing up, I noticed something about the word “gay”. The more prevalent it became, the more negative its connotations. A word that originally meant happy and carefree became a neutral label to describe homosexuality, and ended up being a term used to pinpoint something people don’t like, find embarrassing, or want to distance themselves from.

But does this mean that young people are more homophobic than ever before?

Alex Newton is programmes manager at Stonewall, an LGBT campaigning organisation that encourages people to “get the meaning straight”. He says: “We find schools have high levels of casual homophobic language, and high rates of homophobic bullying. It’s incredibly damaging.”

However Durham sociologist Mark McCormack argues the way the word “gay” is being used does not carry homophobic intent.

“Young people today aren’t saying it in the same way,” he says. “But it’s very hard for people who heard ‘gay’ as being solely homophobic, like I did growing up, to see that it can mean something different to a different generation.

“The problem with saying ‘that’s so gay’ is that even though you and your friends might know you’re not being homophobic, if you’re using it in a public or semi-public space, other people might see you as homophobic,” he adds.

With just my student overdraft as my budget, I decided to make a documentary exploring how this piece of language had evolved, and speak to people both gay and straight to see how they felt aboutthe word taking on a negative meaning.

Some gay people I spoke to were content with the word evolving, while there were straight people who were outraged. Younger people, whom we might have expected to have more awareness of what it means to identify as gay because of media coverage, were often the demographic defending the negative use of this word.

Many older people I spoke to felt strongly that it should it not be allowed to be used negatively. The language we use, consciously or subconsciously, can reflect our feelings towards minorities.

In making this film, I’ve learned just how much of a loaded term gay is.

Saying “eurgh, that’s gay” reveals a lack of collective understanding of what it means to identify as gay. Equal marriage legislation may suggest that society has advanced in its thinking, but there remains a gap in its grasp of gay identity, culture and sexuality.

In the week leading up to the premiere of my documentary, The Gay Word, its trailer was shown in a London cinema. Staff noticed how the audience’s body language often shifted and became awkward on just seeing the word gay projected on screen.

In Soho, I handed out stickers promoting the film and reactions were mixed. Despite being in a famously gay-friendly area, one person hastily said: “I’m not gay”. In making this film, I’ve learned just how much of a loaded term gay is.

So what is the solution? I believe LGBTQ-inclusive education in schools would be a great start.

What Does «Gay» Mean?

There is not one right answer

Many educators are unsure how to respond when a student asks you what does gay mean. It is better to try to answer than to respond with silence or evade the question.

Practice different responses with colleagues, just as you practice other things that you want to learn. Figure out what you feel comfortable saying.

Responses will vary by age and developmental stage of the student. Your comfort in answering these questions will set a welcoming tone in your class and school community.

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What Does «Gay» Mean?

Keep it simple

An answer can be as simple as: “‘Gay’ means two people of the same gender who love each other – two women or two men.” Try to answer the question honestly without overloading a student with information. Throughout elementary school a student’s ability to understand what “gay” means and what your explanation means may increase with development.

Focus on love and relationships

A discussion with elementary-age students about the meanings of “gay” or “lesbian” is a discussion about love and relationships. You can just clarify that people love each other in different ways. Some women love and want to be partners with a man and some women love and want to be partners with a woman. It can be helpful to give concrete examples, such as “Tanya and Angela love each other, and they want to be family to each other.”

Understand what the student is asking

If a second-grader says to you, “Alexia said that Ricardo is gay. What does ‘gay’ mean?” You could begin with, “Do you know why Alexia said that?” Or a student could say, “I heard that Omar’s dad is gay. What does that mean?” Listening first gives you a good idea of what your student wants to know and needs to know. Will your answer be about name-calling, defining what it means to be gay, different kinds of families or some combination of answers?

Think about what messages you want to share

Sample responses to “What does gay mean?”

A person who loves, in a very special way, someone who is the same gender. For example, a gay man wants to be involved with and love another man. A gay person may choose to have a special relationship with someone and share a home and have a family together.

Definitions for gay
geɪ gay

Here are all the possible meanings and translations of the word gay.

Princeton’s WordNet (5.00 / 1 vote) Rate this definition:

homosexual, homophile, homo, gay adjective

someone who practices homosexuality; having a sexual attraction to persons of the same sex

cheery, gay, sunny adjective

bright and pleasant; promoting a feeling of cheer

«a cheery hello»; «a gay sunny room»; «a sunny smile»

gay, jocund, jolly, jovial, merry, mirthful adjective

full of or showing high-spirited merriment

«when hearts were young and gay»; «a poet could not but be gay, in such a jocund company»- Wordsworth; «the jolly crowd at the reunion»; «jolly old Saint Nick»; «a jovial old gentleman»; «have a merry Christmas»; «peals of merry laughter»; «a mirthful laugh»

given to social pleasures often including dissipation

«led a gay Bohemian life»; «a gay old rogue with an eye for the ladies»

brave, braw, gay adjective

brightly colored and showy

«girls decked out in brave new dresses»; «brave banners flying»; «`braw’ is a Scottish word»; «a dress a bit too gay for her years»; «birds with gay plumage»

gay, festal, festive, merry adjective

offering fun and gaiety

«a festive (or festal) occasion»; «gay and exciting night life»; «a merry evening»

gay, queer, homophile(a) adjective

homosexual or arousing homosexual desires

Wiktionary (0.00 / 0 votes) Rate this definition:

from the word gay, «joyful»; rare today.

. Also a shortened form of Gabriel, Gaylord and similar names, or transferred from the surname.

An English surname, originally a nickname for a cheerful or lively person.

A female given name from English from the word gay, «joyful»; rare today.

A male given name from English. Also a shortened form of Gabriel, Gaylord and similar names, or transferred from the surname.

Etymology: : From Pitman kay, which it is derived from graphically, and the sound it represents. The traditional name gee was considered inappropriate, as the Pitman letter never has the sound of that name.

Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary (0.00 / 0 votes) Rate this definition:

Etymology: gay, French.

1. Airy; chearful; merry; frolick.

Smooth flow the waves, the zephyrs gently play;
Belinda smil’d, and all the world was gay. Alexander Pope.

Ev’n rival wits did Voiture’s fate deplore,
And the gay mourn’d, who never mourn’d before. Alexander Pope.

A virgin that loves to go gay. Bar. vi. 9.

An ornament; an embellishment.

Etymology: from the adjective.

Morose and untractable spirits look upon precepts in emblem, as they do upon gays and pictures, the fooleries of so many old wives tales. Roger L’Estrange.

Webster Dictionary (0.00 / 0 votes) Rate this definition:

excited with merriment; manifesting sportiveness or delight; inspiring delight; livery; merry

brilliant in colors; splendid; fine; richly dressed

loose; dissipated; lewd

Freebase (5.00 / 1 vote) Rate this definition:

Chambers 20th Century Dictionary (5.00 / 1 vote) Rate this definition:

Suggested Resources (0.00 / 0 votes) Rate this definition:

British National Corpus

Rank popularity for the word ‘gay’ in Adjectives Frequency: #718

What does ‘Be Gay, Do Crime’ mean?

David Hudson is the Deputy Editor of Gay Star News,…

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I attended Leeds Pride last weekend in the north of England. Covering the event for Gay Star News, I shot video of part of the parade. One person’s placard stood out as they walked past. It said ‘Be Gay, Do Crime’

It lodged in my mind because I didn’t understand its meaning.

Leeds Pride, 5 August 2018 (Photo: David Hudson)

My curiosity deepened the next day when former Scissor Sisters frontman Jake Shears posted a photo to his Instagram [top]. It was ostensibly to promote the release of his new single, but what caught my attention was the fact he was standing in front of a graffitied wall bearing the same message: Be Gay, Do Crime.

Nails by @kj_nails_it (Photo: @kermit_suicide | Instagram)

I have not been able to track down where the Be Gay, Do Crime slogan originated, but a quick search reveals its use has grown exponentially over the last couple of months. Especially so in the San Francisco area.

A search of Google Trends reveals that the term has been getting sporadic searches dating back to February 2011.

The summer of Be Gay, Do Crime

However, its use jumped exponentially in June. Much of this can be linked to a couple of tweets.

On 2 June, Twitter users @citizenion tweeted an illustration. It was an adaptation of an 1880 political cartoon by Thomas Nast. A skeleton bearing a banner saying ‘communist’ and a burning torch representing ‘anarchy’ bears a scroll with a message about California politics. Only, on the amended image, the scroll bears the legend ‘Be Gay Do Crime’.

This image by Io Ascarium is an adaptation of an 1880 political cartoon

It has been re-tweeted over 6,500 times.

‘Belongs to nobody’

Io Ascarium tells Gay Star News they added the quote on the bottom from the zine, Black Mask.

‘After I photoshopped it up I made prints of my version to give to a few people who supported a comic book anthology done by queer prisoners called ABO comix and have kept printing them since then.’

‘As far as I know “Be Gay Do Crime” is from the communal grab-bag of anti-assimilationist queer slogans. Like “ACAB” or “Stonewall was a Riot” it was pulled from the chaotic ether, originated nowhere and belongs to nobody.

‘But I guess you could claim this meme popularized it further? After it was released to the internet I suddenly started seeing it used way more on banners at Pride, tagged on more walls, heard it shouted as people jump train turnstiles.’

A Be Gay, Do Crimes pin (Photo: craftordiofficial | Instagram)

Countering fascism

Ascarium went on to explain what Be Gay, Do Crime means to them.

‘So what else should we do besides thumb our nose at the very idea of law? We’re still out here risking arrest, filling up the frontlines, countering fascists in the streets.

‘We’re still out here risking arrest just to stay fed, housed and alive while waiting to drown in boiling sea water and no cis-gay winning elected office has done a whole lot to change that material reality. But expropriating entire shopping carts worth of video games, art supplies and baguettes to redistribute amongst all the poor gay kids like faggot Father Christmas has at least brought us some comfort.

‘So I guess the slogan means we’re done negotiating with mainstream gays over respectability. We realized being a gay criminal is the coolest thing you could be and war on bourgeois morality is the coolest thing you could do.’

The kids are alright

Two days after Io’s tweet, Twitter user @isislovecruft posted the following tweet.

‘Just saw two teenage girls hop the bart turnstile and run up the stairs and start making out and i couldn’t resist the urge to shout BE GAY DO CRIMES and they raised their fists and shouted back STONEWALL WAS A RIOT so i am informing you that the kids are in fact alright.’

just saw two teenage girls hop the bart turnstile and run up the stairs and start making out and i couldn’t resist the urge to shout BE GAY DO CRIMES and they raised their fists and shouted back STONEWALL WAS A RIOT so i am informing you that the kids are in fact alright

— isis agora lovecruft (they/them) (@isislovecruft) June 4, 2018

That tweet has been retweeted over 13,000 times and been liked 71,000 times.
Isis Agora Lovecruft says they’d heard the term before. They first saw the slogan in a tweet back in January, which had a photo of graffiti.

— michelle bachmann-turner overdrive (@AliceAvizandum) January 13, 2018

‘It quickly became a LGBTQ+ slogan that we’d yell at each other whenever a queer friend did anything mildly mischievous.,’ says Lovecruft, who is based in San Francisco.

‘Soon after, I spotted both Nazi and Proud Boy [alt-right] graffiti around San Francisco so I went and bought sparkly glitter spray paint and asked my girlfriend @nicoles on our second date by sending her a picture of the Nazi graffiti and another of the spray paint with the caption “want to be gay and do crime”.

‘She said yeah, so we used a laser cutter to make a stencil of a unicorn and went around town giggling and holding hands and making out and covering up the Nazi shit.’

Lovecruft’s Twitter describes them as an ‘anarchist; hacker’, and the slogan – going by its appearance on Tumblr, Instagram and Twitter – appears to have been adopted by those with a taste for queer anarchy.

The ‘Be Gay, Do Crimes’ graffiti photo in that January tweet was first posted on Instagram in September 2016 by @absentobject, who snapped it in Marseille, France.

A post shared by 🔪 Frey Kwa Hawking 🔪 (@absentobject) on Sep 15, 2016 at 3:44am PDT

‘LGBT+ culture and politics should be anti-capitalist and transgressive’

‘I took the picture in the summer of 2016,’ Frey Kwa Hawking (@absentobject) told GSN.

‘The picture blew up when I submitted it to the blog queergraffiti.

‘It’s funny to see the photo in fan edits and on strangers’ profiles. Online it’s been a thing for years now. Mainstream awareness is probably a little behind. There are variations on it everywhere, which is great, but I think the clunkiness of “do crimes” makes this version charming.

Be Gay, Do Crimes embroidery! (Photo: @brynnestagramm | Instagram)

‘People like it because it’s catchy, but a lot of the people who are into it aren’t really that political at all, nor radical, and are really quite liberal and forgetful of our history, which is disappointing.

‘I’d give a long speech about how LGBT+ culture and politics should be anti-capitalist and transgressive rather than conservative but there’s a lot of people out there happy to be complacent who think we’re safe: we’re not.’

T-shirt by @davidmaddox (Photo: @pacogiurfa | Instagram)

San Francisco

This summer, the slogan has been spreading far and wide.

‘This was pretty much adopted as the unofficial slogan during San Francisco Pride this year,’ says Marke Bieschke to GSN. Bieschke is co-owner of The Stud, curator at the GLBT History Museum and publisher of news site 48 Hills.

‘You saw it everywhere on social media and read it on t-shirts; posters of it were plastered in rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods like the Mission and the Tenderloin.’

A prominent banner bearing the slogan was also carried at the city’s Dyke March.

A banner held during the Dyke March in San Francisco in June (Photo: @lasara_firefox_allen | Instagram)

‘The cozy relationship between the police and Pride’

Bieschke is also uncertain where it came from. He points to a 2009 issue of a Milwaukee anarchist periodical called Total Destroy. It makes mention of activists with a banner saying ‘IT’S OKAY TO BE GAY! BASH BACK!’ and wonders if that evolved into ‘Do Crime.’

Whatever its origin, he can understand its appeal.

‘I think it answered a desire to counter the polished, corporate narrative of Pride in these very unsteady political times, when we’re seeing so much progress rolled back in terms of trans and other queer rights,’ says Bieschke.

‘It also addresses the increasing realization that the cozy relationship between the police and Pride is up for question.

‘As more and more young people discover radical queer history and the role the police played in their forebears’ oppression – and as they see the current situation with the Black Lives Matter movement speaking out against unchecked police violence and an increasingly militarized and over-armed police force – they’re starting to take real pride in the law-breaking resistance that gave birth to the contemporary queer movement.’

Image: @m_scandy | Instagram

Breaking the rules

Be Gay, Do Crime means breaking the rules and challenging authority. At a time when ‘gay’ has been used as a slur to mean weak or lame, this repositions it as rebellious and dangerous.

Whether it be mischievous, anarchic or encouraging people to openly break the law, it’s unsurprising it’s been embraced by many in the queer movement. Given the rise of the far-right in the US, a new generation are discovering that resistance may sometimes require breaking the law.

Today, trends are co-opted and exploited at dizzying speed. At a time when every corporates slaps a rainbow flag on its products for Pride month, ‘Be Gay, Do Crime’ is a slogan far less easy to hijack.

A fire hydrant graffitied with the Be Gay, Do Crime slogan (Photo: @angel_o_sin | Instagram)

When Did the Word ‘Gay’ Stop Meaning ‘Happy’ and Start Referring to Homosexuals?

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Today we’re taking a deep dive into the backstory of the word gay. Specifically, when did it become a term referring to homosexual people?

Well, the word gay has a variety of uses that date back as far as the 13th century. These range from “a person being described as joyous” to also saying that something is “brightly colored.”

But there are also other, lesser-known meanings. “I did a quick etymology rundown on the word gay and found some now rare and out-of-date uses that are also pretty cool,” says Danielle Bainbridge, who created a video (below) about the history of the word gay. “One meaning was to be fine or showily dressed. Another was ‘noble, fine and excellent.’ Another still was light-hearted.”

When did the word gay become associated with sexuality?

Before the word gay was linked to same-sex attraction, it was actually just linked to sexuality in general, heterosexual or homosexual. Starting around the 16th century, some early meanings of gay included being “hedonistic” or “frivolous,” and in the 18th century, “gay houses” was another term for brothels (and not necessarily brothels where same-sex relations were happening).

So when did the word gay start referring to same-sex attraction?

Before the word gay, the more common term to describe people who enjoy same-sex relationships and experience same-sex attraction was homosexual. This began in the 19th century. But, as Danielle’s video describes, the term was linked to the common belief at the time that same-sex attraction was a psychological disorder that could be treated and cured. This also led to many anti-gay (sodomy) laws that sought to criminalize same-sex relationships.

“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,” Bainbridge explains. “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 lists homosexual as an offensive term in their media reference guide supplementing gay as the appropriate stand-in.”

Around the mid-20th century, use of the word gay to describe homosexuality, primarily for men, became more common practice.

The word began to be used as a way for queer people to communicate with each other without having to use the word homosexual or any other word that listeners or straight people may be able to interpret.

From the video: “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’ in queer communities often operated as a code so that people could express same-sex desire through language without being picked up on by others who would respond negatively to them.”

Later, in the 1960s, the word gay became the word used by gay liberation activists arguing for the decriminalization of same-sex relationships and equality in all aspects of public life. This helped to bring the use of the word as a symbol of pride into wider use, as it was repurposed and taken up in a positive context of self-identification and group communication.

A lexicon of slang among queer people is obviously still very much a thing today, and queer people have assigned double meanings to many terms (think “shade” or the “bear” community) that lots of non-queer people aren’t aware of.