Indeed, and using "gay" as a noun sounds offensive to my ears. "He's a gay," or "He's one of those gays," are examples of usage that often flag a homophobic speaker — for precisely the reason you mentioned, that they reduce an entire person to one characteristic.

However, the use of gay as a noun is creeping into the vernacular in a more positive sense. Sometimes even in mainstream LGBTQ publications, you'll see somebody referring to "the gays" as a collective in a positive way.

Often, there's a touch of irony to the usage, which is where I think it got its start, but sometimes now that irony is lacking, and the usage is both sincere and positive.

I'll even sometimes hear people self identify by saying something like "I'm a gay," which really grates on my ears, but language evolves, and there you are.

Conversely, I've started to see people using lesbian as an adjective more often. Recently in Prism & Pen, somebody wrote, "I'm a lesbian woman," a usage I see now more often than I used to. I was the editor for that particular article, and my first instinct was to leave a note that lesbian is a noun so cannot be used to modify other nouns.

Then I thought better of it. I'm not the grammar police, and it's not my job to dictate usage. If lesbian is on its way to becoming an adjective, that's got nothing to do with me. Maybe it's for the better.

Still, these sorts of things are highly personal. I don't feel so sanguine about gay being used as a noun, because to me it feels personally insulting. That's not a voluntary reaction on my part. It's just how I feel.

And how I feel about the aesthetics of the word lesbian is kind of like how you feel. I don't think it's an attractive word. Something about the combination of sounds is off-putting.

Or is it?

I admit that the sound combination at the beginning of the word is less than attractive, but what if I'm really reacting to the fact that "lez" and "lezzie" were commonly used as ugly slurs when I was growing up?

Is that why the sound combination sounds ugly to me?

Could be, but maybe not.

I do know many queer women (and others) find the word lesbian at least somewhat distasteful. While others embrace the word as a powerful identity label.

Indeed, the word's history is fascinating. Sappho of the Greek island Lesbos was one of the most impactful women in all Antiquity. Plato celebrated the philosopher/poet as the tenth muse.

Modern women began to claim sapphic and lesbian as labels to honor or recognize her contributions, which stood out even in an almost exclusively androcentric world — just as our own androcentrism began to be recognized for what it was.

For all my life, though, it has felt like the word lesbian just might be on its way out, even as sapphic remains popular.

I'm glad to hear your perspective. Thanks for this story!