What's in a word?

So, I'm new to blogging, but I am going to try to embrace this relatively new media form. Any constructive criticism or feedback is welcome.

I have been thinking about the class discussion we had on Monday about proper terminology regarding the LGBT community. We addressed the issues of how to refer to lesbians and gays, but did not say much about heterosexuality. While we did touch on the idea that the term “homosexual” is fairly scientific and removes the human element, we spent little time discussing the scientific nature of “heterosexual”. I know the focus of the class is on LGBT issues, but knowing how to refer to the opposite side of the spectrum is important is well.

I know that there are not nearly as many terms to refer to heterosexuals as there are to refer to homosexuals, but the one that is most commonly used--“straight”-- makes me quite uncomfortable. While some people in the class expressed distain for the term “homosexual” due to its scientific nature, I prefer the term “heterosexual” as a way to refer to men who have sex/relationships with women and visa versa. The reason for this is tied to the other definitions of the word “straight”. Upon thinking about this issue, I looked up the exact definitions as used by many popular resource websites. As I expected, straight was defined in many ways, including “to describe a person who does not participate in "dangerous" activity such as drugs, alcohol, sex or criminal activity. A good girl/guy”. This definition suggests that being straight is “correct” or “good” and not being straight is incorrect and bad. The term straight is also linked with terms such as truthful, honorable, right, and unbroken . Using this term to define heterosexuality reinforces heteronormativity in a subtle and often unthought of way by defining one group of people (those who have sex with people of the opposite gender) as being “right” and everyone else as being “wrong”, thus making me very hesitant to define anyone’s sexuality by such a term. This may seem like a very basic idea, but I think it is one worth pointing out and possibly discussing further.