How come the word homosexual might (with some squeamishness to be sure) be applied to gay guys, but gay girls are called something else.

I use it for both.

Use what for both

The term homosexual. I use it for both genders.

I am unaware of a gender specific word for male homosexuals. We are simply called gay, unless someone is using a derogatory term.

Personally, I don’t mind the word homosexual at all.

I’ve never noticed a difference in female/male reference to the term homosexual. If people want to be more gender specific…they’ve usually used the terms gay (male) and lesbian (female). However, I’ve also heard the term gay used as a blanket term for homosexuality. I think that blanket term is becoming more common. I’m female, and I tend to refer to myself as gay.

My gay male friends call themselves “gay” as do my female gay friends. So, I follow suit.

I haven’t heard that, but there is a tendency to only think of gay males when the word “homosexual” is brought up. Homosexuality itself seems to bring images of male/male homosexuality more often than it does female/female homosexuality. This probably has to do with the mainstream idea of the flamboyant gay guy and the idea that gay guys are “gross” while lesbians are “hot”.

A homosexual is a person that is sexually attracted to the same sex. Male or female doesn’t matter. I’ve never heard of someone disliking this word, though.

Same with gay, but I think gay is used most often with men and lesbian with women. I can’t think of another term to describe a gay man that isn’t potentially derogatory. I say potentially because I’ve noticed some gay men use the words queer or even fag to describe themselves and each other, but others may be offended by those words.

Gay, lesbian, homosexual – they’re just words.

I use “gay” for both. To my ears, “lesbian” and “homosexual” sound derogatory.

My male and female homosexual friends call themselves a lot of things. I figure whatever they call themselves is what I should call them.
Some of my mostly younger gay friends (men and women) call themselves queer. To me that seemed a little alarming because the old meaning of the word is “strange” “wrong” “not normal”, etc. It’s a proud taking-back of a word that was used derogatorily. It’s a tactic, to consciously embrace words intended to put us down.
Good that you asked. Learn or die.

I use the word gay to refer to both men and women. I don’t think most gays have a problem or find derogatory the words homosexual or lesbain but to me it sounds almost clinical. I find the term gay to be more vernacular and user friendly. Of course it doesn’t matter what term I like. Either one is ok with me and seems to be ok with my friends who are gay.

It’s funny that this came up today of all days because just this morning I was reading about the bohemian culture in England during Victorian times. They were very accepting of homosexuality. Unfortunately, with the Oscar Wilde trial a new wave of homophobia took shape in England. There male homosexual conduct was illegal, but lesbianism wasn’t. Part of it was that in order to make it illegal they would first have to convince Queen Victoria that there was a way that women could have sex with each other. Sort of funny. Like, technically speaking, how could they have sex? No one wanted to be in the position of explaining that to the Queen. At least, that is what it said in my book. So while it wasn’t openly accepted at least it wasn’t a prosecutable offense.

When the homophobic reaction started some of it had to do with the attitude that the “decadence” and lack of “virility” was weakening England at a time when it needed to fight a war, that is WWI. Gay culture went underground a bit more even amongst the Bohemian element. People took off their green carnations, an early symbol of gay pride and new euphemisms were invented in order to not openly use the word homosexual. One of the terms they used was “so”, short for sodomite. I had never heard that before until this morning. By the 30s other words being used, those we now consider derogatory like pansy, fairy (this was an American term), queer, pouf, tapette, and he-vamp. The book doesn’t explicity state which of these words were just euphemisms used to avoid openly saying homosexual and which were considered derogatory.