Over the months I've been blogging, there's been a living anthropological experiment going on. We've formed a little society, and it's been kind of hard to define. Initially people seemed to call it "the gay Mormon blogs" or "the gay Mormon bloggernacle," borrowing the title from the larger group of LDS blogs. But this didn't seem to stick and seemed sort of long.
My wife called it the "queerosphere" one day and this term was popularized by Ty Babysfield and the Queen of Queers (to my best recollection). But I'm still giving credit to Mrs. L. The trick about the term queerosphere is that it doesn't explicitly say Mormon anywhere in there. How is this group of blogs to be differentiated from any other crowd of creative writing gays?
I've also seen the term "Gormon" used as an abbreviation for gay Mormon, but that was on a myspace blog that pretty much nobody here reads, and it didn't catch on because, hey, it's stupid.
Now, enter "MoHo". This is a catchy abbreviation for Mormon Homosexual coined by Tito and/or some combination of his friends. I think (and correct me if I'm wrong), that it was initially used to contrast "HoMos" from "MoHos" with the first syllable reflective of a person's personal priorities. I.e., if the person is Mormon first and foremost and still trying to live within the constraints of faithful church membership, they were a MoHo, otherwise they were a homosexual Mormon--a HoMo. This nomenclature makes sense to me, is clever, and actually seems to come in handy in some of the conversations I've had.
The problem is, without a lesson on the etymology of MoHo, how are people supposed to even know that's the meaning? There have been a few interesting conversations about who can be called Mormon or MoHo, and I'm not too eager to voice a strong opinion on that. So, I've caved to what seems to be the more popular usage and used MoHo in my sidebar to generically refer to one who self-identifies as same-gender attracted, homosexual, or gay and who has a connection to Mormonism. Maybe I'll have to break my sidebar links into multiple sections to clarify the distinction and use the term more aptly from now on! Or, I could just take the term off altogether. I hate to tinker with my blog... ;-)
7 comments:
I can't get behind the term "HoMo." To me "homo" is faggot, once removed.
I often catch the podcast of KPBS A Way With Words. This would be an interesting question for them, if anyone wants to call in...
I think homo is a lot more respectable than faggot. Lots more. It's a subjective thing, I suppose, but homo is just homosexual shortened and that's just an accurate word.
Just wanted to let you know (since I'm not supposed to do this without first getting permission) I linked this article to the wikipedia article.
Back in the late '90s and early '00s, we used to use the expression "Moho" for the BYU guys who discovered they were gay and started having sex with any guy they could. Thus, they were gay "Mormon hos" or whores.
That's why it seems kind of hard to accept it in a less racy context now. Heh.
I can't call myself MoHo.
How about MoMo?
Well, the Mormon Matters post is gone, leaving only a few links out, such as this one.
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