I was just responding to a friend’s post about the trials of explaining things to a new lover who doesn’t speak fluent english. I’ve been in a similar place, with a close friend whose English, while better than my Thai, isn’t terribly good for subtleties of meaning that I’m used to.
We’re so privileged, here, so many of us, native speakers of English, and queer in the United States. We get the privilege of being able to use so many words for who we are: “Gay”, “fag”, “queer”, “lesbian”, “dyke”, “femme”, “top”, “bottom”, so many others. We don’t often run into the cases where the first, second and third ways to explain are all misunderstood or elicit blank stares. Our language, and our culture have had words for things, and we’ve been creating meanings for words for a while.