Misuse of words, or Did she really out him?

[karmyn75.livejournal.com]

As we all know, LKH has a strange way with words and misusing them in amusing ways. There's the infamous lose/loose, the new air/err, and my new favorite, the overuse and abuse of 'homophobe'.
I'm the first to admit I have no sort of gaydar at all. I mean, even after I saw a photo of a friend in a newspaper story about the university glbt club I still wasn't sure he was gay. Now he's in the middle of a sex change.
Anyway, it seems to me that LKH is misusing the word homophobe. When Richard is uncomfortable at seeing JC naked, Anita says he's homophobic. Maybe he just doesn't like seeing other men naked all the time. Nothing homophobic about that. The use of the word homophobe heavily implies that JC is totally and completely gay. Of course the readers know he and the other men are, but LKH has been denying this all along. Now she outs him.

Comments

[windiain.livejournal.com]

Exactly! I'm sympathetic to the cause, but realistically it's not going to happen. Society would have to re-educate itself, and I'm just not sure that's possible at the moment, if at all. Hell, a lot of people haven't even heard of transsexualism, let alone third genders. We're talking about a society that thinks men in drag is shocking, much less men who want a sex change. Not to mention the fact that there are people out there who can't even spell gendered pronouns properly. Throw in a third set, their brains would break.

Sometimes I think it would be better to be an amoeba.

I like the idea of being a ball of electricity or something. I could still surf the net then. :D

[windiain.livejournal.com]

I'm kind of envious at their ability to apply makeup so well - I was hopeless at it as a teenager, and I was presenting as female back then. O_o

[jycaegima.livejournal.com]

Oddly, he looked exactly like one of my dance instructors in that movie. I kept wanting to call him Deanna.

/digression

[rinkori.livejournal.com]

There's always the singular "they," which is my default pronoun for people whose gender I don't know or who identify as genderless.

Yeah, the etiquette is a little complicated, isn't it? Haha.

Really it's not so much whether you slip up and use the wrong pronoun as whether you correct yourself afterward. My partner is much more likely to forgive a wayward "she" if it's immediately corrected than if the pronoun-slipper-upper just blithely continues on.

[windiain.livejournal.com]

I prefer 'they', to be honest. It's far less confusing, because it's already established in the english language anyway. Most people can work out what you mean, too.

And yes, the correction does at least show that the person is making an effort, which is really appreciated.