In today’s WTF Friday edition, I have to ask: WTF is “homo”?
The first is “Ain’t No Homos Gonna Make It To Heaven.” Some member of the Apostolic Truth Tabernacle Church has made young children perform a discriminatory song that these children do not have an understanding of and, hence, cannot give informed consent to perform. What’s worse, the performance is videotaped and is uploaded for the world to see, as a public message of hate.
My strongest reaction to this was the term “homo” itself. I don’t identify with the term. I feel that using the word ‘homosexual’ to describe me, even to claim that “homosexuals are people too,” makes me feel like an outsider. An alien species.
‘Homosexual’ is a really inadequate term for representing my choice to identify with gay and queer culture in Canada. I’m a first-generation immigrant from Hong Kong and I self-identify as a gay and queer person. That is the respectful way of speaking to how people navigate our society and their lived experience, not to dehumanize them into a label that is single-faceted.
I observe that the majority of people who have a strong preference of being described as ‘gay’ and ‘queer’ over ‘homosexual’ are from or have spent a considerable amount of time in North American urban centres.
