I always HATED crap like life partner, life mate, significant other, and all those other euphemisms.
I’m glad the media is finally just calling the spouse of a gay man his husband, or the spouse of a lesbian her wife. Everyone knows what these terms mean, and it helps to normalize the relationship. Making up whacky newspeak euphemisms did nothing but isolate and otherize the couples.
I’m sure The Gays will be relieved to know how you feel.
Everybody you can relax, grude has released his view on the subject!
Nah but seriously I hated for years all these bizarre euphemisms used by the media, when everyone knew exactly what was meant.
I think “husband” and “wife” have been in use for some time here in Canada. I don’t think I’ve heard “life partner” or “life mate”, and I’ve heard “significant other” in various contexts, mostly in the context of someone’s unmarried partner, gay or straight.
Well, the whole “legally married” stuff is still pretty new so it is not surprizing that the terms for married people are just lately being applied.
In my opinion, we still do not have a good term for unmarried long-term committed persons.
I’m amused by it. The first time a man mentioned his husband to me, I did a mental double take. “Oh, right. That’s possible now.”
I was also amazed that, in a local political campaign, one attack ad mentioned that the candidate “took money from his husband.” Though the race was a hard-fought one, with plenty of dirt, this was the only reference to his being gay. Obviously, people picked up on it, but his opponent did not use that as a point of attack.
I like the word spouse which accurately describes the relationship without the need to delineate sexual orientation, whether they are/are not formally married. I like it!
Same here. I’ve been using it for years even with couples who never quite settled on a description for themselves. It just always seemed to have the right fit and intent.
I’ve always liked ‘‘partner’’ myself, as it works for people who seriously committed but not married regardless of gender or sexual orientation.
In a known situation of married persons I will say ‘‘husband/wife.’’ But if you’re asking a generic question of couples who may or may not share marital status or sexual orientation, ‘‘partner’’ works really well.
Unless you have a business partner. I’m never sure when people use partner.
I’m with you on this one. A year or two ago, my mother and I were talking about a mutual (gay) acquaintance, and she something about “he and his partner”, and I thought “wait a minute, isn’t he a teacher? Since when do they have partners?”. We have ‘girlfriend’ and ‘boyfriend’, terms that not only cover unmarried people, but are orientation-neutral. I posit that we would benefit from a term to cover those with whom we’re in a long-term relationship but aren’t married to (that is, between ‘girl/boyfriend’ and ‘husband/wife’), but we have the terms, let’s use 'em. “Partner”, even when it’s not confusing, seems so generic to me. Kinda sterile and lifeless.
I thought the term most used was “significant other”.
Naw, I think “I now pronounce you husband and husband” just sounds weird.
And can you imagine a gay man walking up to group of married women talking about their husbands and saying “yea my husband is also like that”.
Yes, I can.
You’ll get over it.
Yes.
Oh, was that supposed to be some off-the-wall hypothetical?
You need to get out more.
I’ve always used “lover.” I never heard straight people use this; I guess, they don’t think about it that way?
Of course, “lover” doesn’t work in cases like the classic example in Spanish:
Ella es mi esposa, pero ella es mi amante.
“She is my wife, but she is my lover.”
But why would gays and lesbians want to use terms associated with straights?
Wouldnt you want something… I dont know… maybe with a more queerish twist to it? A guy calling another man his husband just sounds boring to me.
Yeah, probably more a hypothetical. I guess there might be gay men so “in” with the straight married women his relationship would be looked at as the same.
Although from my experience when one gender gets together into a group and talks, the second someone opposite joins the conversation always changes.