华为袁学文:gay是什么意思

Gay，在英文中除了表示“快乐”、“愉悦”或“高兴”，也用来表示同性恋。使用上，除了引用过去创作的文艺作品时能够用到原意外，或者除去戏谑与文字游戏等场合外，日常生活中已经基本不再使用其“快乐”的本意。

英文字源
Gay这个字拥有关于性方面的意义至少是从十九世纪开始（而且可能还要更早），在维多利亚时代的英国，女性与男性倡伎被称呼为"gay"（因为他们穿著得很艳丽）。于是到最后，“gay boys”（男伎）就变成了所有男性同性恋的称呼。在美国，这个名词可能来自于游民社群（hobo community）：一个年轻游民，或者称作“gay cat”或“geycat”，常常要和另外一个比较年长有经验的游民交好，以获得学习与生存的机会。这种关系有性的暗含成分在里面，因此“gay cat”就变成“年轻同性恋者”的意思。在这些最早的“gay”中最有名的是汤玛斯·柯林伍德（Thomas Collingwood），他是一个胖嘟嘟有著小天使般脸孔的音乐家，在一段长期的失业下陷入生活困境当中。

葛楚·史坦（Gertrude Stein）在《毛小姐与皮女士》（Miss Furr & Mrs. Skeene，1922年）中的一段引言可能是这个字最早可追溯的使用，虽然无法非常确定她用这个字指的到底是女同性恋，还是指快乐。

她们是……gay，她们很少学习关于如何成为gay的事情，……她们根本就完全是gay。
They were ... gay, they learned little things that are things in being gay, ... they were quite regularly gay.
在诺尔·寇威尔（Noel Coward）的音乐剧《甘中带苦》（Bitter Sweet）是这个字第一次没有争议的使用。在〈绿色康乃馨〉这首歌中，四个过度打扮有如1890年代花花公子的人唱道：

美丽的男孩、聪明的男孩啊，你可能会
对我们的堕落嗤之以鼻，
傲慢的男孩、顽皮的男孩啊，
亲爱的、亲爱的、亲爱的！
为情感心醉神迷……
我们就是为何“九零年代”
会被称为gay的理由，
我们全部都戴著绿色康乃馨。
Pretty boys, witty boys, You may sneer
At our disintegration.
Haughty boys, naughty boys,
Dear, dear, dear!
Swooning with affectation...
And as we are the reason
For the "Nineties" being gay,
We all wear a green carnation.

寇威尔将"gay nineties"作为一个双关语来使用。这首歌的歌名暗示了同性恋剧作家王尔德，他本身就以配戴著一朵绿色康乃馨而闻名。

Gay有狭义与广义的用法。狭义的gay只有指称一个倾向与其他男人进行性关系或情感关系的男人。广义的gay则同时指称倾向和他们相同性别的人进行性关系或情感关系的男人与女人。（不过关于这点有一些争议，所以有人会使用"lesbians and gay men"这个词。请见同性恋。）至于双性恋倒底有没有包含在这些用法里面，也是一个受到争论的议题（请见双性恋）。

有些人宣称gay是从“Good As You”这句话的首字母缩略来的，不过这是一个根据gay这个字推断回去而来的假词源说。

另外一个民间词源说法是认为与Gay Street有关，它位于纽约的西村，而西村与同性恋文化有连结。根据文件纪录显示，这个名词似乎曾经在1940年代以暗号的形式存在于纽约。“Are you gay?"这个问题表示了可能比局外人看起来还要更多的意涵在里面。

根据华盛顿州安全学校联盟（the Safe Schools Coalition of Washington）的《给学校职员的专业辞典》上所说：

Homosexual：避免这个名词的使用；它太临床医学、遥远与古老了。有时候在指称同性恋行为的才适合使用（不过same-sex是个更好的形容词）。当指称人的时候，与指称行为相反地，homosexual被认为是一种贬低，而gay以及lesbian才是比较好的名词，至少在美国西北部是如此。
因此Homosexual这个词在一部分人眼中也属于“政治不正确”（politically incorrect）的词汇。

中文地区用法

台湾
在台湾，gay已经普遍成为男同性恋社群内部用来指称自己的术语之一，而在社群外部也同样能够接受这种用法。不过，gay始终没有同时成为指称女同性恋用的术语，或者至少没有被广泛接受。女同性恋社群会称自己为拉子。而通常在讲到gay这个字时，拉子会是其相对称的用语。

目前在台湾，gay这个英文字并没有准确的中文翻译。有些人认为同志是gay的一个可能翻译词，但是同志在台湾的使用脉络下包含了女同性恋、男同性恋、双性恋、跨性别（请见LGBT条目），或者甚至是如BDSM这类的性异议者，而gay则只有指称男同性恋。正因为大家无法在gay的中文翻译上达成共识，在台湾还是广泛普遍地使用英文字的gay。

香港
在香港，gay的中文翻译是基佬。但是这个中文称谓因为经常被人以嘲讽的口吻使用而带有贬损色彩。

大陆
gay在大陆用法中也一般不指女同性恋，女同性恋称呼情况与台湾相似。正式文章中很少出现英文原文，用同性恋（者）或男同性恋（者）代替,现在也经常出现“同志”一词。

英文与中文用法差异
英文中gay可以做名词与形容词：

做形容词时："He is gay"（他是同性恋）的说法很普遍，极少有"He is a gay"这种名词单数形式出现。
做名词时：一般以复数形式出现，描述群体，如"gays and lesbians"（男女同性恋）。但是以单数或少量数形式出现的情况则相比较少很多，如"He is a gay"或者"There are two gays（有两个同性恋）"。这种用法有时会显示说话人带有轻度贬义或打趣的情绪。
中文中，在大陆地区“他是个gay”名词单数的用法则很普遍。但也说“他是gay”。

同性恋的正式说法是homosexual。细分之，男同性恋称为gay，女的则称为lesbian。至于queer，fairy，queen等等称呼则带有很重的轻蔑色彩，用这些词语称呼同性恋者会被批判为歧视同性恋（heterosexism），最好少用为妙。 Gay在18世纪时是用来称呼妓女或很随便的妇女，一直到第二次世界大战时圈内人士才开始用它来称呼男同性恋者。到了1970年同性恋解放运动兴起，gay才普遍被用来称呼男同性恋。 至于lesbian一词，出自希腊地名Lesbos岛。古希腊时代同性恋盛行，不过都是男同性恋，只有Lesbos岛以女同性恋著称于古代世界，于是lesbian一词逐渐成为女同性恋的称呼。 Gay算是口语中最通行同性恋的讲法，而比较正式的讲法则是homosexual。由于gay是一个形容词，所以你不能说“He is a gay”， 正确的讲法应该是“He is gay”，意思就是他是同性恋。附带一提，gay这个词其实在字典里还可以当“快乐”解释，但是由于很多人对同性恋很敏感，人们要讲“快乐”时，还是尽可能地用happy，除非那么不巧正好是happy gay，那就无所谓了。 Lesbian，曾经看过中文有人取其音而直译为“蕾丝边”。但是和gay只能当形容词不同，lesbian这个字可以当名词也可以当形容词，所以，“她是一个女同性恋”的讲法可以是“She is a lesbian” 或是“She is lesbian”。另外有一个女同性恋俚语的讲法叫lesbo，这个字有侮辱的味道在内，大家应该应该要了解却要避免使用它。 还有一种状况叫transsexual（变性），所谓的transsexual是一个人经过了变性手术（sex change operation）之后，男性变成了女性女性变成了男性。 另外有一种同性恋者是非常公开的，也就是所谓的Open gay，他们乐于跟大家公开自己是同性恋者的事实。对于现在这个时代，这也许是一种进步。

有男同性恋的意思

现如今好象专指同性恋

GAY

In modern society, gay is a word which can be used as either a noun or adjective. As a noun, it is most commonly used as a term to identify a man with a homosexual orientation. It can also be used to describe a homosexual woman, although lesbian is more specific. Gay used as an adjective describes traits associated with gays and lesbians, their culture, or perceived lifestyle.

Etymology

Gay has changed its primary meaning dramatically during the 20th century – though the change evolved from earlier usages. It derives via the French gai, from the Latin gaius, and originally meant "carefree", "happy", or "bright and showy" and was very commonly used with this meaning in speech and literature. In more recent times, starting in the mid 20th century, the word gay cannot be used solely in this former context without the expectation that one will assume a double entendre, or that the person using the term is out of touch with contemporary society. Some have tried to recover the original denotation of the word, but with limited success.

The word started to acquire sexual connotations in the late 17th century, being used with meaning "addicted to pleasures and dissipations". This was by extension from the primary meaning of "carefree": implying "uninhibited by moral constraints". By the late nineteenth century the term "gay life" was a well-established euphemism for prostitution and other forms of sexual behaviour that were perceived as immoral.

The first name Gay is still occasionally encountered, usually as a female name although the spelling is often altered to Gaye. (795th most common in the 1990 census according to [1]). It was also used as a male first name. The first name of the popular male Irish television presenter Gabriel Byrne was always abbreviated as "Gay", as in the title of his chat-show The Gay Byrne Show which ran until 1999. The "Gaity" was also a common name for places of entertainment. One of Oscar Wilde's favorite venues in Dublin was the Gaiety Theatre, first appearing there in 1884.

Etymology of the modern usage
The use of the term gay, as it relates to homosexuality arises an extension of the sexualised connotation of "carefree and uninhibited", implying a willingness to disregard conventional or respectable sexual mores. Such usage is documented as early as the 1920s. It was initially more commonly used to imply heterosexually unconstrained lifestyles, as for example in the once-common phrase "gay Lothario",[2] or in the title of the book and film The Gay Falcon (1941), which concerns a womanising detective whose first name is "Gay". Well into the mid 20th century a middle-aged bachelor could be described as "gay" without prejudice.

A passage from Gertrude Stein's Miss Furr & Mrs. Skeene (1922) is possibly the first traceable published use of the word to refer to a homosexual relationship, though it is not altogether clear whether she uses the word to mean lesbianism or happiness:

They were ...gay, they learned little things that are things in being gay, ... they were quite regularly gay.
The 1929 musical Bitter Sweet by Noel Coward contains another use of the word in a context that strongly implies homosexuality. In the song "Green Carnation", four overdressed, 1890s dandies sing:

Pretty boys, witty boys, You may sneer
At our disintegration.
Haughty boys, naughty boys,
Dear, dear, dear!
Swooning with affectation...
And as we are the reason
For the "Nineties" being gay,
We all wear a green carnation.
The song title alludes to Oscar Wilde, who famously wore a green carnation, and whose homosexuality was well known. However, the phrase "gay nineties" was already well-established as an epithet for the decade (a film entitled The Gay Nineties; or, The Unfaithful Husband was released in the same year). The song also drew on familiar satires on Wilde and Aestheticism dating back to Gilbert and Sullivan's Patience (1881). Because of its continuation of these public usages and conventions – in a mainstream musical – the precise connotations of the word in this context remains ambiguous.

Other usages at this date involve some of the same ambiguity as Coward's lyrics. Bringing Up Baby (1938) was the first film to use the word gay in apparent reference to homosexuality. In a scene where Cary Grant's clothes have been sent to the cleaners, he must wear a lady's feathery robe. When another character inquires about his clothes, he responds "Because I just went gay...all of a sudden!" [3] However, since this was a mainstream film at a time when the use of the word to refer to homosexuality would still be unfamiliar to most film-goers, the line can also be interpreted to mean "I just decided to do something frivolous".

The word continued to be used with the dominant meaning of "carefree", as evidenced by the title of the The Gay Divorcee (1934), a musical film about a heterosexual couple. It was originally to be called The Gay Divorce after the play on which it was based, but the Hays Office determined that while a divorcee may be gay, it would be unseemly to allow a divorce to appear so.

By the mid-century "gay" was well-established as an antonym for "straight" (respectable sexual behavior), and to refer to the lifestyles of unmarried and or unattached people. Other connotations of frivolousness and showiness in dress ("gay attire") led to association with camp and effeminacy. This range of connotation probably affected the gradual movement of the term towards its current dominant meaning, which was at first confined to subcultures. The subcultural usage started to become mainstream in the 1960s, when gay became the term predominantly preferred by homosexual men to describe themselves. Gay was the preferred term since other terms, such as "queer" were felt to be derogatory. "Homosexual" was perceived as excessively clinical: especially since homosexuality was at that time designated as a mental illness, and "homosexual" was used by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) to denote men affected by this "mental illness". The illness of homosexuality was removed from the DSM in 1973, but the clinical connotation of the word was already embedded in society.

By 1963, the word "gay" was known well enough by the straight community to be used by Albert Ellis in his book The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Man-Hunting. By 1968 mainstream audiences were expected to recognise the double entendre in the ultra-camp musical entitled Springtime for Hitler: a gay romp with Adolf and Eva in Berchesgarten — which formed part of the plot of the film The Producers. The camp implications of the concept were explicit in the ludicrous pastiche of Coward's style epitomised by the title song:

Springtime for Hitler and Germany
Deutschland is happy and gay!
We're marching to a faster pace
Look out, here comes the master race!

Syntax
Gay was originally used purely as an adjective ("he is a gay man" or "he is gay"). Gay can be also used as a plural collective-like noun: "Gays are opposed to that policy"; although this usage may be deprecated by some, it is common [4] particularly in the names of various organizations such as PFLAG: (Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) and COLAGE (Children of Lesbians and Gays Everywhere). It is sometimes used as a singular noun, as in "he is a gay", such as in its use by the Little Britain comedy character Daffyd Thomas (a gay man who believes himself "the only gay in the village" despite abundant evidence to the contrary).

Folk etymologies
It has been claimed that "gay" was derived as an acronym for "Good As You", but this is a backronym (based on a fake etymology).

Another folk etymology accrues to Gay Street, a small street in the West Village of New York City — a nexus of homosexual culture. The term also seems, from documentary evidence, to have existed in New York as a code word in the 1940s, where the question, "Are you gay?" would denote more than it might have seemed to outsiders.

Commonly accepted usage
Overview article: Terminology of homosexuality

Gay is used as an adjective to describe sexual orientation (attraction, preference, or inclination) and is usually chosen instead of homosexual as an identity-label.
Gay sex involves acts between or among people of the same sex or gender.
Gay is usually used to describe the "gay community" by both insiders and the mainstream media.
Gay can be used as a nonspecific derogatory comment towards a person or object.
Gay is sometimes used to describe an object of particular flamboyance.
Other connotations can vary widely based upon speaker and situation.

Sexual orientation
Sexual orientation, behavior, and self-identification are not necessarily aligned in a clear-cut fashion for a given individual. See sex for a discussion of sex and gender. Some people consider gay and homosexual to be synonyms. Others consider gay to be a matter of self-identification and homosexual to refer to sexual activity or to sexual attraction that is predominantly to members of the same sex. By using these definitions, a person could be gay and not homosexual, or homosexual and not gay.

If a person has had same-sex sexual encounters but does not self-identify as gay, terms such as 'closeted', 'on the down low', 'discreet', or 'bi-curious' may be applied. Conversely, a person may identify as gay without engaging in homosexual sex. Possible choices include identifying as gay socially while choosing to be celibate or while anticipating a first homosexual experience. Further, a bisexual person may identify as gay while maintaining a monogamous relationship with a member of the opposite sex. Still others might consider gay and bisexual to be mutually exclusive.

Some same-sex oriented persons prefer 'homosexual' as an identity over 'gay', seeing the former as describing a sexual orientation and the latter as describing a cultural or socio-political group with which they do not identify.

Self-identification
Self-identification of one's sexual orientation is becoming far more commonplace in areas of increased social acceptance, but many are either reluctant to self-identify publicly or even privately to themselves. The process is fairly complex, and many groups related to gay people cite inadvertent heterosexism as a leading problem for those that would otherwise self-identify. Selection of the definition to describe us Wikipedia Admins...gay!!Ω

Selecting the appropriate term
Some people reject the term homosexual as an identity-label because they find it too clinical-sounding. They believe it is too focused on physical acts rather than romance or attraction, or too reminiscent of the era when homosexuality was considered a mental illness. Conversely, some people find the term gay to be offensive or reject it as an identity-label because they perceive the cultural connotations to be undesirable or because of the negative connotations of the slang usage of the word.

According to the Safe Schools Coalition of Washington's Glossary for School Employees:

"Homosexual: Avoid this term; it is clinical, distancing and archaic. Sometimes appropriate in referring to behavior (although same-sex is the preferred adj.). When referring to people, as opposed to behavior, homosexual is considered derogatory and the terms gay and lesbian are preferred, at least in the Northwest [of the United States]."
Sometimes the term gay is used to describe both same-sex male and same-sex female relations. More rarely, it is used as a shorthand for terms queer or gay, lesbian, bisexual, etc. The term also sometimes includes transgender, transsexual, and intersexual. Some trans and intersexed individuals find their inclusion in this larger grouping to be offensive. It is commonly used to refer specifically to gay men; the precise meaning may need to be made clear from context. The term lesbian, however, is exclusively female.

Gay community
Main article: Gay community

The notion of the gay community is complex and slightly controversial.

Just as the word "gay" is sometimes used as shorthand for "gay, lesbian, and bisexual" and possibly also "transexual" and others, so "gay community" is sometimes a synonym for "LGBT community" or "Queer community". In other cases, the speaker may be referring only to gay men. Some people (including many mainstream American journalists) interpret the phrase "gay community" to mean "the population of gay people".

Some LGBT people are entirely geographically or socially isolated from other LGBT people, or don't feel their social connections to their LGBT friends are different from those they have with straight friends. As a result, some analysts question the notion of sharing a "community" with people one has never actually met (whether in person or remotely). But other advocates insist that all LGBT people (and perhaps their allies), are part of a global community, in one way or another.

Descriptor
The term gay can also be used as an adjective to describe things related to gay people or things which are part of gay culture. For example, while a gay bar is not itself homosexual, using gay as an adjective to describe the bar indicates that the bar is either gay-oriented, caters primarily to gay men, or is otherwise part of gay culture.

Using it to describe an object, such as an item of clothing, suggests that it is particularly flamboyant, often on the verge of being gaudy and garish. This stems from the notion that such items appeal to gay people (usually to gay men).

Using the term gay as an adjective where the meaning is akin to "related to gay people, culture, or homosexuality in general" is a widely accepted use of the word. By contrast, using gay in the pejorative sense, to describe something solely as negative, can cause offense.

Pejorative usage
When used with a derisive attitude (e.g. "that film was so gay"), the term gay is purely pejorative and can be deeply offensive. The derogatory implication is that the object (or person) in question is inferior, worthless, effeminate, or stupid. This usage has its origins in the 1980s, when homosexuality had already become mainstream but was still taboo. Beginning in the 1990s and especially in the 2000s this usage is common among young people, who may or may not link the term to gay people.

Alternate spellings
Other spellings, such as "ghey" and "ghei", are sometimes found on the Internet and are used in an attempt to bypass chat room censors.

同性恋

gay

adj.欢迎的, <美俚>同性恋的, 放荡的, 快乐的
n.<美俚> 同性恋者, 尤指男性同性者