If homosexual women are "lesbians," what are homosexual men?

Gay, or homosexual could be used to refer to both genders. Is there a specific word, that means just males?

Homosexual can refer to either sex but usually means men. Lesbian means women. The word homosexual dates from 1895, lesbian is more recent.

Homosexual refers to both sexes, however, Lesbian derives from the word Lesbos which is an island off Greece. Lesbos was home to Sappho a famous poet who loved women and wrote many poems for women one of which was The Ode to Aphrodite. Many of her love poems are now lost. (I am really bad at history and have a hatred of dates sorry). In the same was ‘gay’ became a popular word referring to male homosexuals in the early 19th century. So each word was spurred by the culture of the times. I think that lesbian became used as an insult towards a female (as many words do they change over time) so females took on the word gay as it sounded in both cases referring to both males and females a lot happier (!).

During the time the word gay was used homosexuality became a lot more accepted. However, people obviously have started to use the word gay as an insult too.

Gay. That’s the term used these days for men. Back in the day I was told gay is for men and lesbian is for women. That might have changed now. I’d have to ask some lesbians I guess. Maybe it’s like woman now use actor not actress to identify themselves.

LGBT separates out lesbian and gay, so I’m thinking gay is supposed to be just for men still. I’m no authority though.

‘Abomination in the eyes of the Lord.’

Gays is generally used for men and lesbians is used for women.

While “gay” can be used to refer to both sexes, it seems old-fashioned to me, and I rarely hear it used that way. We don’t have a cool Greek island name to refer to ourselves, but “gay” works just fine. I tried “Zakynthian”, but it didn’t catch on :P

^Zakinthian?..

Happy with not being called anything.

There isn’t a word just for gay men. It’s an artifact of the “male as default” tendency that affects certain parts of the English language and makes words that might be male specific in some contexts gender neutral in other contexts (e.g., “mankind” or even “guys”).

P.S. Zakynthos is a Greek island on the opposite side of the mainland relative to Lesbos.

I’d personally feel very comfortable being labelled as “fabulous” if I were gay

@ragingloli Fuck the lord.