The Word ‘Gay’ and the Failure of Meaning

- A cultural autopsy in four acts

Words lie. Or rather: people lie through words. They give them shape, color, a veneer of certainty — and then throw them around as if they’re self-evident. Few words illustrate this better than gay. Once an innocent descriptor of joy, then a euphemism for shame, later a badge of pride, now a battlefield. It has meant everything and nothing. It has served progressives and conservatives alike, been celebrated, derided, commodified, and diluted. And somewhere along the way, it became hollow.

Let’s start in the 1980s. A decade of fear dressed as morality. The word gay existed, but its use came at a cost. To say it — out loud, about oneself — was an act of defiance, or recklessness, depending on whom you asked. In mainstream culture, gay became synonymous with AIDS, perversion, and decline. Right-wing pundits treated it as a symptom of Western moral collapse. Leftist circles, meanwhile, romanticized it — turning suffering into a performance of political identity. No one questioned whether the word itself could bear the weight of these projections.

Then came the 1990s. Visibility increased, but understanding did not. The word gay turned fashionable — a shorthand for flair, rebellion, or sometimes just a good haircut. TV shows embraced the flamboyant stereotype, as long as the characters remained sexually neutered. Gay became both joke and commodity. It was tolerated, even celebrated, so long as it remained apolitical. The left praised the rise in representation. The right warned of indoctrination. Both mistook surface for substance.

By the 2000s, the West had begun to legislate gayness. Marriage equality, adoption rights, anti-discrimination laws. The word gay was now bureaucratic. It featured in policy documents, HR guidelines, and UN resolutions. The queer subject was absorbed into the system, sanitized for public consumption. Pride parades got permits and sponsorships. Banks and tech companies rebranded themselves as allies, while quietly funding political parties that rolled back other rights. Gayness was safe, corporate, and utterly depoliticized.

And yet — beneath the rainbow decals — real tension brewed. Within the community, fractures emerged. Was gay too male? Too white? Too Western? The once-liberating term began to feel narrow, even exclusionary. A younger generation embraced words like queer, fluid, nonbinary, rejecting not just the label but the systems it was tied to: patriarchy, capitalism, nationalism. For them, gay was no longer a beacon. It was a relic. A word that had traded radicality for recognition — and lost its soul in the process.

Which brings us to the now — and the approaching decades. The polarization we see in the wider world is mirrored, almost mockingly, in the gay community. The right reframes gayness once again as threat — to children, to tradition, to national identity. The left continues to fragment into ever-smaller identity enclaves, competing for attention in a culture addicted to performance and grievance. Meanwhile, the word gay limps along — too loaded to be neutral, too vague to be radical. It has become a placeholder, used more out of habit than belief.

What can we expect from the 2030s and beyond? Probably more of the same. Shifting terminologies. Social media wars over semantics. A parade of corporate allyship every June, followed by legislative apathy the rest of the year. Perhaps gay will be reclaimed again. Or perhaps it will dissolve entirely, replaced by algorithm-friendly micro-labels optimized for engagement.

But let’s be honest: this isn’t about a word. This is about our collective inability to hold contradiction. Gay is both a target and a shield. A statement and a marketing tool. It stands for liberation — and for lifestyle branding. It’s been used to resist violence, and to sell vodka. The tragedy isn’t that the word changed. The tragedy is that we keep expecting language to do what politics and people won’t.

Gay was never just about desire. It was about power. About who gets to name whom — and why. And as long as that game continues, the word will continue to fail us.

And yet — even if the word is tired, even if the discourse is fractured, even if meaning keeps slipping through our fingers — people still want to speak. To say something about who they are. Sometimes with theory. Sometimes with eyeliner. Sometimes with silence.

That’s where this space comes in.

Batalanto doesn’t pretend to fix the word gay, or define it once and for all. It doesn’t promise a moral compass, a community consensus, or an ultimate truth about identity. What it offers instead is something rarer: a place where contradiction is allowed to breathe. Gayness, after all, isn’t one experience. It’s a constellation. A chaos. A mood. A mess. And sometimes, a mirror.

So no, this isn’t about reclaiming gay or burying it. It’s about tracing its echo — and adding your own.

Because in Batalanto, it is not about building a flag but  building a landscape.