Astrolinium wrote:Alleniana wrote:I've never thought of it that way. I have no problem with saying that I am an ethnic Chinese, and many pro-LGBT+ publications and entities have used it in that context. To each their own, I suppose.
Well, I mean, people used to use rather a lot of words to refer to black people that they later came to recognize were words they ought to stop using. Basically, no one ever says, "Oh, straights are upset about marriage reform sweeping the nation", or "the whites are getting uppity" -- so why on earth would we say, "the gays are getting portrayed in media at last" or "gays tend to have sex with other gays"? Well, the reason is to paint gay people as being strange, as being abnormal, as being "other" than the default, which is white and straight. It says that the individuals' homosexuality is more important than their existence as people.
Yes, nobody does, because at least in the environment where English was developed, those have always been perceived as "normal", but frankly, I wouldn't see the issue even if they were used like that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adjectival_noun in some cases, as in "the rich people" vs "the rich", it even sounds more normal, leaving aside bonuses to laziness and succinctness.