Johns Hopkins LGBTQ Glossary Refers to “Non-Men”

You know how we’re all on our own journeys in life, experiencing experiences, feeling feelings, thinking thoughts, and then something happens that is a turning point in our perspective on the universe?

This is my turning point. This radicalized me.

This is from the Diversity & Inclusion website at Johns Hopkins University, which includes an LGBTQ glossary. (That the list of LGBTQ terms has expanded beyond five is in and of itself a point worth pondering, but I digress.) Where “gay man” is defined first and foremost as “a man who is . . . attracted to other men” (emphasis added), whereas “lesbian” is “a non-man attracted to non-men” (emphasis added). 

Uh. . .

WHAT

This struck me as so unbelievably, blatantly, unapologetically EFFED that I immediately assumed there HAD to be more to it. Surely this was disingenuously presented. Is there an entry for “gay”? “Lesbian woman”? “Gay woman”?

HA. NOPE.

There is NOTHING comparable to the “gay man” definition for women, nor to the “lesbian” definition for men. (Other highlights include “biromantic” and “bisexual” being defined as having attraction to two or more genders, the prefix “bi-” notwithstanding.)

What we have here, folks, is active erasure of women. There’s no amount of mental gymnastics to get away from that. Gay men are men, lesbians are non-men. And to those of you who think it’s not a big deal, I have two things to say:

1. None of this is happening in a vacuum
2. “Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten.”

Not to be a libertarian meme, here, but this is literally 1984. In fact, here’s an even more poignant passage:

“It’s a beautiful thing, the Destruction of words. Of course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well. It isn’t only the synonyms; there are also the antonyms. After all, what justification is there for a word, which is simply the opposite of some other word? A word contains its opposite in itself. Take ‘good’ for instance. If you have a word like ‘good’ what need is there for a word like ‘bad’? ‘Ungood’ will do just as well – better, because it’s an exact opposite, which the other is not.”

Take “man,” for instance. If you have a word like “man,” what need is there for a word like “woman”? “Non-man” will do just as well.