I have been reading this exchange quietly while trying to figure out why my computer is logging multiple copies. I thought Henry Jenkins's posting was interesting and valid. Stephen's response to Mary seemed excessive. I think that stridency and anger slam a lot of doors -- perhaps understandably but also unnecessarily. I suppose I might make a mistake and say something like "sexual preference" just because I haven't thought about it, I haven't considered the semantics. I don't think that makes me either an evil person or a hopeless fool, just unaware. So, educate me. Having been married to a teacher for ten years I know that destroying the pupil is not a great educational technique. I appreciated Henry Jenkins's laying out why he dislikes "orientation." While I, in fact, would NOT have used "preference" I had not seen any pitfalls in "orientation." PC has gotten a bad name but I agree that the desire not to hurt people is an admirable one. Words carry great weight. Which is probably why I wince when I read the word "queer." I don't think of my gay friends as "queer," because to ME, just as a reader of words, queer means "odd, not right." My cousin who died of AIDS was not queer to me. I have just read a great book called THE FAMILY HEART: A Memoir of When Our Son Came Out, by Robb Forman Dew, which I think should be required reading for mothers. For a straight mother, particularly of sons, it is painful and tender and enlightening reading... because Dew makes every crazed, emotional, wrong-headed assumption AND THE FAMILY LIVES THROUGH IT. Well, this has little to do with film but couldn't resist. Selden West