My mother, and my (gay) self.
Contents:
MOTHER’S DAY FOR GAYS
While the signifince of mothers our liv is impossible to ny, Mother's Day for gays n stir up a range of emotns. * mother gay culture *
Fai typilly don’t live together anymore, but ballroom’s mment to helpg at-risk gay, trans and genr-nonnformg youth has stayed the same. ”Jon “Ambh” Nja met his ballroom mother, Akayla Nja, while attendg vogug class hosted by the Dallas-based nonprof Uned Black Ellument, which supports Black gay and bisexual young men. From 1720s London to RuPl’s Drag Race, gays have been “motherg” for much longer than you thk.
When the song dropped earlier this month, one fan tweeted that s “mother” le was “enough to send my gay heart to overdrive”. When GAY TIMES’ entertament edor Sam Damshenas asked Sarah Michelle Gellar about her passnate LGBTQ+ fanbase at a January lnch event for her new seri Wolf Pack, she psed to ask him: “Can someone please expla ‘mother’ to me?” Gellar has sce fully embraced this term of enqueerment by updatg her Instagram b to simply read “Mother”.
GAY MEN AND THEIR MOTHERS: IS THERE A SPECIAL CLOSENS?
In fact, the term, “has been a key ncept gay muni for s, if not centuri,” says Pl Baker, Profsor of English Language at Lanster Universy and thor of Fabulosa!: The Story of Polari, Bra’s Secret Gay Language. Baker pots out that Margaret Clap, a “formidable” 18th-century cishet woman whom we would probably now refer to as an “ally”, was beg lled “Mother” by gay men 1720s London. “She ran a ffee hoe that served as a base for men who had sex wh men – or ‘molli’ 18th-century parlance,” Baker tells GAY TIMES.