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From: kgdykes@watbun.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.motss
Subject: re Gays, deafness, and problems of Linguistics
Message-ID: <928@water.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 21-Oct-85 17:04:08 EDT
Article-I.D.: water.928
Posted: Mon Oct 21 17:04:08 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 22-Oct-85 05:13:29 EDT
Sender: daemon@water.UUCP
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 32


> From: joe@emacs.UUCP (Joe Chapman)
> ...suddenly occurred to me that I've never seen the word ``homosexual'' in
> American Sign Language.  When I talked with a deaf friend a few years
> ago we invented a sign for ``gay''.  I believe the Jerry Falwell
> interpreter spells the word, though I rarely tune in and have never
> caught a really homophobic eisegesis.  Nothing, either, in the big
> dictionary with every sign imaginable in it....
> 
> ... [ If anyone's curious, the sign Pat and I used for ``gay'' was an
> effeminate flick of the wrist:  hardly politically correct, but it lent
> itself well to a common method of word-construction.  Words like
> ``king'', ``emperor'', and ``queen'' [regina] are signed with an
> identical motion, but with the hand held in a position corresponding to
> 
 I have seen this as a "regional" dialect situation. (I dabble in ASL,
I know (well, more like "Hi" in a coffee shop) a couple hearing-impaired
people.)
Locally the two most common forms of ASL "gay" is the limp-wrist as
you mentioned above, or
the finger-spelling "F" symbol tapped to the cheek. (F for Fag?)
In my visits to Boston I met/saw what I considered a surprising number
of gay/deaf persons (ASL sure is convenient in loud discos! :-)
But in other areas (Oklahoma city, Los Angeles) I never particularly
noticed gay/deaf people. (maybe I just didnt stumble on the right social venue)
In Toronto (near where I live) you see them once in a while, but it just
doesn't strike me as prevailent as in Boston.

          - Ken Dykes
            Software Development Group, U. of Waterloo
            Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.  N2L 3G1  (+1 519) 885 1211
            {ihnp4,decvax,allegra,utzoo}!watmath!watbun!kgdykes