gender of blond / brunet / gay ?

Hi Manuel,

Didn't you already get a satisfactory answer to these questions in your previous thread?

Best wishes, Clive

Okay then, here's one more opinion:

That blond over there is my new boyfriend. That blonde over there is my daughter. He has blond hair. I have blonde hair. Blond(e) can be a noun or an adjective.

I have never, ever seen, used, or heard brunet for a male outside of this forum, regardless of what the dictionary says. Brunette for a girl, in my experience, is only a noun. My other daughter is that shorter brunette. She has brown hair. I'm sure there are others who do use brunette as an adjective though.

I never use "gay" as a noun, but as an adjective, I do apply it to both sexes. (I seem to recall from the past that gay was supposed to be for males and lesbian for females, but once I heard my lesbian friends use gay for themselves, I thought it would be okay to do so as well.)

Hi guys,

I, too, do not hear a man described as a blond, and I only hear women described as brunettes.

I hear 'gay' used for both sexes.

Clive

Thank you everyone for your replies!

In case someone's interested, this is what I wrote in my dissertation:

There is a dissimetry in the usage of these nouns describing a person’s hair colour (the same does not apply to the homographic adjective, though). Although the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary establishes the spellings blond/brunet when used of a male and “usually” blonde/brunette when used of a female, the fact is that those nouns seem to be relegated almost exclusively to describing females. Although it would be theoretically possible to read “He's a blond,” it would be much more likely to see “He has blond hair” or no reference to his hair colour at all. On the other hand, the masculine spellings blond and brunet can also be found as referring to females (see “(...), explained Melissa Maron, 25, a blond with creamy Vermeer skin who was having her hair teased and curled at Fekkai last Thursday at 7 p.m.” from Singer, Natasha “These Salons Forgo Beauty Sleep” In New York Times April 5, 2007 “Schwartz and her husband, David H. Schwartz, pointed to (...) speech she delivered in June (...). Schwartz, a brunet, said, "Most of the girls were blue-eyed blonds who looked like Cheryl Tiegs.” from Sherwood, Tom “Schwartz's Life a Tale of Drive and Prejudice” In Washington Post October 20, 1986; p. A01). This implies that blonde and brunette must be treated as female-specific nouns but that blond and brunet should not be blindly taken for granted as male-specific.

Links (from quality American newspapers):
blond as masculine noun
blond as feminine noun
brunet as masculine noun
brunet as feminine noun

Thanks again.
Manuel