In our system, we feel that words have meanings, but also that the meanings of those words can be expanded, changed with time, or bent. This is especially true of words for identities or that may have originated when certain types of identities or situations were not as well-known or understood.

However, if you're using a word in a way that is VERY unusual for the conventional meaning of the word, you should probably have a good reason. That said, most people who do use words that way DO have a good reason and have thought about the alternatives and think their current word choice is best.

We feel this way about the word "gay". While we do think it should generally refer to same gender attraction in some way and should generally not be a synonym for "queer" (especially if the desire is to avoid saying "queer"), we also think there are more identities that can be described as "gay" other than just binary (wo)men attracted solely to the same binary gender.

This is especially true if you call yourself an "mspec gay" or a "bi lesbian" or some other terminology that emphasizes you aren't just using "gay" to mean "not straight" but actively use an mspec label too.

However, in our system, it's also important to our gay people to understand that some people are only attracted to one gender, or are not attracted to certain genders, and they should not be expected to be attracted to multiple genders. While we don't see the increased use of "gay" to refer to mspec identities as a problem, we have sometimes run into situations where people who self-identified as "gay" but were mspec found it unusual or dysfunctional that our gay people were attracted strictly to the same gender.

At the same time, though, orientation words don't just refer to what genders you are attracted to but what attraction you intend to act on. Some members of the system are bisexual men who, at least in their timelines, had a history of dating women but discovered their attraction to men later on. Since they are no longer in their relationships from their timelines and are currently only interested in dating men, they feel it might be confusing if they predominantly identified as bisexual, even though they are.

Therefore, in the system, it's common for people to use "mspec gay" to mean "mspec but only dating the same gender as themself at this time", or "gay for the same genders or gender categories as themself but would date a different gender alignment (e.g. demiboy4demigirl)". Most headmates who feel they have "gay attraction" but are actively attracted to and would date/etc. members of genders other than their own tend to simply call themselves bisexual or mspec and leave it at that.

That means there ARE times we use "gay" to refer to people who might also be described as "mspec gay" and we do NOT find it important to distinguish that they are mspec.

These would be situations of genderqueer binary-leaning people who are attracted to that same binary gender as well as to unaligned genderqueer people, or genderqueer with alignments they also share. We know of the terms "uranic" and "neptunic", but we generally prefer to use "veldian" or "lesbian" for this, due to feeling that all of the attraction in question is gay, if it's all for genders and gender alignments that we share. And since we're not gay in a way where we're actively attracted to genders we consider the opposite, we do not always find it important to label this as "mspec gay".

However, someone with an identity like that might describe themself as a "torenamoric veldian" or a "cenelian lesbian", depending on the particulars.

Basically, in our system, if someone calls themself "gay" and does not use mspec labels, it means they are attracted to the same gender and/or gender alignment as themself, and they are not actively attracted to genders and/or gender alignments they do not consider themselves to have.

If someone DOES call themself mspec gay, however, they still probably do not date genders they consider different than their own, which is why they use "gay" and not just "mspec" or "bi". While we don't have a problem with less narrow uses of the label "mspec gay" outside the system, this is just to clarify and explain that that label DOES tend to mean something more specific in Local Void, and therefore something different than it usually means.