Queer theorist Michael Warner says in his book The Trouble with Normal that language used to “classify one’s sex, these apparently neutral terms are of relatively recent vintage, and only make sense against a specific background.” This quote reminds us that while language might seem to be about the business of uncovering something “essential” about what it is describing, but in actuality it represents more the culture that created it than the thing it describes. While we argue over the ever-expanding acronym for Queer community vs. going “without labels” we forget that language isn’t really telling us about our identity but rather telling the story of how identities are trying to be understood.
The invention of “homosexual” was less about individual people and more about putting together a list of characteristics that would explain to straight people how and what these new “homosexuals” did together. It didn’t actually tell “homosexuals” anything about themselves. Yet somewhere along the way “homosexual” became an identity that was applied to folks with and without their consent. In this same way “gay,” “lesbian,” and “transgender” created shared concepts about groups in order to explain and connect and in a way became even more dangerous because their birth came out of the communities that used them. Dangerous because once again they were used as markers for “identity” and without their historical background began to substitute for individual people.
Words are born within a particular history. They say only what the society that created them allows them to say. There is nothing fundamentally "true" or "natural" in them and, as such, can only approximate rather than define. This is especially true of words like "gay" "lesbian" "heterosexual" or "transgender" in that they can only give a nod to the time period that created them and cannot really define a person; who exists as a subset of 1.