For much of the 20C 'fairy' was ed to mean 'gay'. Where do this sense e om and when was first ed? Probably the US's east ast the late 19C.
Contents:
HOW GAY CULTURE BLOSSOMED DURG THE ROARG TWENTI
* fairies gay history *
Gay Fairi: When and Why. But somewhere down the list is a gay man. But there are, fact, a number of works of cultural history that make somethg of the fairy = gay nnectn.
The Longer Oxford English Dictnary has, as s fifth and fal meang for fairy: ‘A male homosexual. But how much earlier did ‘fairy’ mean homosexual? This cis wh what is known of the peculiar societi of verts [homosexuals].
Jt recently I heard a iend of me tell how the e of fairy to refer to a gay male me om the time when men were typilly ed to play female parts plays and the type of male who would take the part was more effemate and often a homosexual.. Could fairy have been extend om there to mean homosexual?
The gay scene of New York Cy was promently thst to the public eye 1969, after rts at a Greenwich Village bar. But existed long before that. * fairies gay history *
Third, blogger Lisa Spangenbeg wr tentatively that fairi = gay bee fairi are barren. Homosexual culture is not, by any means, a simple effort for men to bee women: but the ey of neteenth-century society this is what homosexualy was.
I’d back gay ‘fairi’ g om this sense of the word.
An old iend of this blog, Leif wr, 16 Mar 2018: Why are gay men referred to as fairi?
Durg Prohibn, gay nightlife and culture reached new heights—at least temporarily. * fairies gay history *
But is trigug to nsir that the term may have origated wh the homosexual unrworld of the ‘Yellow Neti’, perhaps as a kd of word. Third, the fairy/gay associatn did exist the lerary world of the Yellow Neti. Arthur Machen’s novella ‘The Hill of Dreams’ impli a homosexual enunter between a real fairy ( this se a fn) and a mortal.
WHEN FUTURE GENERATIONS look back on gay liberatn’s role the greater creatn of human nscns, and what ias helped shepherd civilizatn om s most primive tennci to more noble evolutnary possibili, they will, my opn, have to spend substantial time studyg the Radil Faerie movement, which was lnched 1979.
They will fd particularly rmative, I image, to see how two petg historil acunts would emerge about who the Faeri were and what beme of them: one gay-centered and psychologil, the other seemgly gay-centered but vertly anti-psychologil, foced on a sentimental and revanchist portrayal of how the Faeri were formed.