Sometimes, fairness trumps concision. That's the message I'd give to Guardian journalists when the noun "homosexuals" is used instead of "gay people" in reporting. The latter may contain one whole extra word – but it also contains infinitely less insidious prejudice.

The theme for this year's National Anti-Bullying Week, which has been running all this week, is "Stop and think – words can hurt". It's a lesson we can learn beyond the school gates. So let's stop and think and examine why "homosexual" may be a hurtful word.

To stop prejudice-based bullying, gay people need to be normalised - not distanced by language. Plain English dictates that we use "people" instead of Homo sapiens so it follows that "gay people" is less stigmatising than "homosexuals". The noun "homosexual" is equally dehumanising and cold. Reporting needs to be neutral. To be clear, I'm not advocating saccharine and perfunctory warmth to replace this coldness – "those fabulous, wonderful gays!" – but the entirely neutral "gay people".

There's a deeper, more important reason to scrap this pernicious noun. It's loaded with discriminatory baggage. "Homosexual" was the carefully chosen oppressive medical vernacular employed to describe gay people as mentally ill. The American Psychiatric Association officially declassified it as a mental illness in 1974; the World Health Organisation eventually followed suit in 1992. But the hangover effect lives on: some medical professionals still use it as a justification for carrying out so-called "homosexual-cure" therapies. As such, "homosexual" can never be thought to come from a neutral position.

This archaic word has no place in the Guardian's reporting: it's stuffy. It jars when you read it here. By and large, the Guardian avoids it and instead uses "gay people". But this isn't consistent. Take this example – reported in the paper this year. One thing spoils this touching story: the unnecessary use of "homosexual" as a noun. The tone shifts slightly and uncomfortably – from neutral to subtly (and probably unintentionally) hostile. Such stuffiness is predictably trotted out by the Telegraph, which insists on using "homosexual" as a noun. That said, it has become increasingly inconsistent – and started introducing "gay" into reporting. But that seems to be for no other reason than it uses up fewer characters in a headline as in this typical example where "homosexual" is used everywhere but the headline as a noun. In this case, it seems fairness is incidental to concision.

At a time when newspapers are being hyper-scrutinised, the Guardian has an opportunity to raise standards. Progress towards gay equality has been so rapid and recent that it isn't always easy to get it right. Even gay publications face questions over the language they use to report. Last week the author Stella Duffy tweeted that she was bemused by pinkpaper.com referring to her as "openly gay", stating that the phrase is "as offensive as 'self-confessed'" and suggesting they'd been "taken over by the Daily Mail". Pinkpaper.com responded by asking its readers in an online poll; 97% said they didn't find the phrase offensive. As someone who has never been secretly gay, Stella doesn't feel the phrase is suitable to her. But applied to an industry such as Hollywood, the phrase "openly gay" – used when describing the very few un-closeted actors such as Sir Ian McKellen – seems more appropriate. Hopefully "openly gay" will one day become as eccentrically archaic as "homosexual" – but we aren't quite there yet.

As a gay person, my feeling is we need to pick our lexical battles. Ban too many words, and we'll leave ourselves open to the "PC gone mad" brigade having few terms left at their disposal other than insults such as "faggot" and "dyke" – remarks that are heard in schools by 80% of teachers, according to YouGov polling for Stonewall. The same polling found that 95% of teachers hear the phrases "you're so gay" or "that's so gay" in schools. Erasing the negative, emotional connotations to "gay" will make it no less loaded than an adjective such as "tall" – and the perfect neutral precursor for "people".

Outright anti-gay insults are easy to spot. The insidious nature of "homosexuals" makes this word trickier to challenge. But I'd encourage us to do so because it sounds as if the "homosexuals" are being observed for a GCSE science experiment by the very same students who are growing up thinking "gay" is a perfectly acceptable street synonym for anything inadequate. It's not just during Anti-Bullying Week that we should reflect on how words can hurt.