It's a long, perhaps unending, journey to self-identification. Writer and AIDS activist, Joseph Beam http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_F._Beam used the title "In the Life" for the first anthology of writing by Black Gay Men in 1986. Lesbians (for once in our lives) were somewhat ahead of that game. Having been closed out of mainstream publishing so thoroughly women created the Women in Print Movement which gave birth to magazines and publishers such as "Ache`" and Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press.
With the urgency of the AIDS crisis Joe understood the importance of getting the lives of Black gay men into print. That legacy was key both to the cultural survival of next generations but also an important building block for political activism. As was true with any movement (If I can paraphrase myself from my play "Waiting for Giovanni,") finding one's own name is the first step toward liberation.
Unfortunately historically-speaking all the words have been wrong. 'Homosexuality' is a medical term, really, and puts the emphasis on 'sex' obscuring the many elements that make up a gay life. Although I've always favoured it 'gay' sometimes sounds too 'lite' as if we're always at a party. (Would that were true!) And because of media bias gay quickly came to be identified only with white males. More recently 'queer' has been rescued from its negative past to be used as the umbrella term for all the initials: LGBTQIA, etc. I like it but it does contribute to the tendency for women/lesbians to be minimized
So Joe turned to a historical term, "in the life," which has been around in the African American community for generations. In my neighborhood it could mean you were a lady of the evening or gay. I liked it because it suggested that being in the life was an active experience. It was something you were doing, not a passive or victim experience.
I'm bumping up against the same issue as I work on LEAVING THE BLUES. How do I describe Alberta and her lover, Lettie? (who's a composite character) The language is problematic because people worked so hard to not say it out loud. Staying hidden was how individuals stayed safe from persecution.
I've recently been working on how two characters can come out to Alberta and it's a challenge. The two characters are from two different generations--one gay man born in the early 1900s; the other a lesbian born in the 1940s.
The male/female experience is definitely different and the generations make a difference in the language they'd use. I'm still researching and exploring what I might create; but it reminds me how crucial language is to our personal and our social liberation. Each of us has to find the names that suit us. I think one reason Alberta was never happy to say out loud who she was grew out of a problem with the words available to her. Whether it's our multiple ethnicities, our class origins, our sexual orientation or gender identity...finding the specific words to express all of who we are is the first stop on the train that takes us to freedom.
