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Comment by rhapsodic | Hacker News Reader

  > “Our communications — which Reitman now claims
  > constituted sexual harassment — were between two
  > adults, a gay man and a queer woman, ..."

I was under the impression that gay and queer meant basically the same thing. This seems to imply that there's a distinction of some sort. Does anyone know which is correct?

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Gay can specifically mean male homosexual (why there is both an “L” and a “G” in LGBTQ) or homosexual more generally; queer can encompass any distance from strict heterosexuality or stereotypical gender expression. The terms aren't mutually exclusive, but they aren't identical. And people whose sexuality is substantially identical may identify differently given that the terms aren't mutually exclusive crisp categories, and a tradition of respect in the community is to use the label the subject identifies with not to interpose your own categorization.

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