What's with "those gays"...

I love that we're getting more comments now on our posts...

Just got one asking why the heck we say "the gays" all over the place and that if it's a joke then it's not funny.

To answer the question, I say it out of a habit and joking about how I've heard people refer to "the gays", and thought it was sadly amusing. Kind of like when I heard a grandmother talking about her grandson smoking "the" marijuana. Who actually talks like that? And, maybe if we're really the insiders we say we are then we might not resort to self-referential "outsider" terms. But what the heck, it's all in fun.

Lemme take a minute to get all "multicultural studies" on the topic: on a technical note, it's called "re-appropriation" when a group takes a slur or denigrating word and hijacks it (re-hijacks it?) for their own use. This, in turn, weakens the negative uses of the word. Here's more on re-appropriation from an AlterNet post about the film Birth of a Nation:

...Although the black community pioneered the revolutionary act of "taking back" hurtful words, many other communities have now followed their example. Besides the use of "Paki" by British South Asian youth, Australian immigrants have started a gleeful website called "WogLife" and for the Jewish community there's the in-your-face magazine "Heeb." The mainstreaming of gay culture came through "Queer Eye For The Straight Guy," "Queer Nation," "Queer Theory" and the slogan that started it all: "We're Here/We're Queer." Gay activists now argue in The Advocate that "queer" is more inclusive than "gay" or "LGBT." Playwright Larry Kramer has now taken it one step further with his new book Faggots... [AlterNet]

What do y'all think?