[Ads-l] Pan = pansexual

[Benjamin Barrett]

This brings to mind the trick question in the early 1970s: Are you a homo?

If yes, you're a homosexual?
If no, you're not a homo sapien?

Spell check says that "sapien" isn't a word, so they might have said "a 
homo sapiens."

AFAIK, it was a short-lived trick question.

Benjamin Barrett
Formerly of Seattle, WA

Learn Ainu! https://sites.google.com/site/aynuitak1/home

> Ben Zimmer <mailto:bgzimmer at GMAIL.COM>
> May 29, 2015 at 7:33 PM
>
> I haven't looked too deeply into this, but my impression is that
> "homo" could once be used as a not-necessarily-pejorative alternative
> to "hetero". One early (reported) example occurs in _My Father and
> Myself_, the memoir of J.R. Ackerley (1896-1967), in which he recalls
> a conversation with a Swiss friend named Arnold Lunn in 1918:
>
> "Almost the first mischievous question he shot at me was 'Are you homo
> or hetero?' I had never heard either term before; they were explained
> and there seemed only one answer."
> https://books.google.com/books?id=hxerchUMqXAC&pg=PA153
>
> Then again, Ackerley describes Lunn as "a mocking and amusing fellow"
> (who was hetero), so perhaps it was derogatory even then.
>
> --bgz
>

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