Ways of Talking

Abstract

There are a number of terms that people use when they talk about gender. Many of these, such as ‘heterosexual’ and ‘homosexual’, seem self-evident and we tend to think that such terms have always existed. It’s often surprising to discover that many of the terms we take for granted are relatively new, coined only in the nineteenth century. Somehow their Greek etymology (heterosexual using the Greek heteros meaning ‘other, different’; homosexual using the Greek homos meaning ‘same as’) makes them seem much older. In this chapter, we explore many of the terms which recur in our discussions of gender and sexuality, to discover what their actual history is and how this history reflects and shapes attitudes and values. We also begin to look at how subjectivity is formed, and provide some of the initial terms that you will need to navigate through the complex terrain of the various hypotheses on what processes govern the formation of the self. To think about gender is to think about the self, or the subject, in formation. Let us start with the most obvious term: gender.