The Fotten Secret Language of Gay Men - Atlas Obscura

Contents:

• POLARI: THE LANGUAGE GAY MEN ED TO SURVIVE
• THE FOTTEN SECRET LANGUAGE OF GAY MEN
• THE LOST GAY LANGUAGE OF BRA'S '60S
• THIS SECRET LANGUAGE ALLOWED GAY MEN TO COMMUNITE WHEN HOMOSEXUALY WAS ILLEGAL
• A BRIEF HISTORY OF LBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, AND TRANSGENR SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
• THE HISTORY OF THE WORD “GAY”
• FROM CLOSET TALK TO PC TERMOLOGY : GAY SPEECH AND THE POLICS OF VISIBILY
• PNEERG PHOTOGRAPHS OF GAY LIFE THE 1960S

POLARI: THE LANGUAGE GAY MEN ED TO SURVIVE

In the late ‘60s, as gay liberatn groups were fightg for regnn and equaly, Polari h mastream Brish pop-culture the form of Julian and Sandy, two flamboyant, not-officially-but-pretty-obvly gay characters on a BBC rad show lled Round the Horne. Many untri around the world have their own versn of queer slang, om Brish gay slang rived om the rhymg slang Polari to beki – the Philipp’ queer language that borrows om a slew of sourc, cludg pop culture, Japane, Spanish, and the untry’s lol languag.

Where homosexual activy or viance om tablished genr rol/drs was banned by law or tradnal ctom, such nmnatn might be munited through sensatnal public trials, exile, medil warngs, and language om the pulp. However, throughout 150 years of homosexual social movements (roughly om the 1870s to today), lears and anizers stggled to addrs the very different ncerns and inty issu of gay men, women intifyg as lbians, and others intifyg as genr variant or nonbary.

THE FOTTEN SECRET LANGUAGE OF GAY MEN

Such eyewns acunts the era before other media were of urse riddled wh the bias of the (often) Wtern or Whe observer, and add to beliefs that homosexual practic were other, foreign, savage, a medil issue, or evince of a lower racial hierarchy. The European powers enforced their own crimal s agast what was lled sodomy the New World: the first known se of homosexual activy receivg a ath sentence North Ameri occurred 1566, when the Spanish executed a Frenchman Florida. Biblil terpretatn ma illegal for a woman to wear pants or a man to adopt female drs, and sensatnalized public trials warned agast “viants” but also ma such martyrs and hero popular: Joan of Arc is one example, and the chillg origs of the word “faggot” clu a stick of wood ed public burngs of gay men.

” In Wtern history, we fd ltle formal study of what was later lled homosexualy before the 19th century, beyond medil texts intifyg women wh large cloris as “tribas” and severe punishment s for male homosexual acts. Their wrgs were sympathetic to the ncept of a homosexual or bisexual orientatn occurrg naturally an intifiable segment of humankd, but the wrgs of Krafft-Ebg and Ellis also labeled a “third sex” generate and abnormal.

The blu mic of Ain-Amerin women showsed varieti of lbian sire, stggle, and humor; the performanc, along wh male and female drag stars, troduced a gay unrworld to straight patrons durg Prohibn’s fiance of race and sex s speakeasy clubs. This creasg awarens of an existg and vulnerable populatn, upled wh Senator Joseph McCarthy’s vtigatn of homosexuals holdg ernment jobs durg the early 1950s outraged wrers and feral employe whose own liv were shown to be send-class unr the law, cludg Frank Kameny, Barbara Gtgs, Allen Gsberg, and Harry Hay.

THE LOST GAY LANGUAGE OF BRA'S '60S

Awarens of a burgeong civil rights movement (Mart Luther Kg’s key anizer Bayard Rt was a gay man) led to the first Amerin-based polil mands for fair treatment of gays and lbians mental health, public policy, and employment. Studi such as Aled Ksey’s 1947 Ksey Report suggted a far greater range of homosexual inti and behavrs than prevly unrstood, wh Ksey creatg a “sle” or spectm rangg om plete heterosexual to plete homosexual.

In 1951, Donald Webster Cory published “The Homosexual Ameri, ” assertg that gay men and lbians were a legimate mory group, and 1953 Evelyn Hooker, PhD, won a grant om the Natnal Instute of Mental Health to study gay men.

Throughout the 1950s and 60s, gay men and lbians ntued to be at risk for psychiatric lockup as well as jail, losg jobs, and/or child ctody when urts and clics fed gay love as sick, crimal, or immoral. Fstrated wh the male learship of most gay liberatn groups, lbians fluenced by the femist movement of the 1970s formed their own llectiv, rerd labels, mic ftivals, newspapers, bookstor, and publishg ho, and lled for lbian rights mastream femist groups like the Natnal Organizatn for Women.

THIS SECRET LANGUAGE ALLOWED GAY MEN TO COMMUNITE WHEN HOMOSEXUALY WAS ILLEGAL

And polil actn explod through the Natnal Gay and Lbian Task Force, the Human Rights Campaign, the electn of openly gay and lbian reprentativ like Elae Noble and Barney Frank, and, 1979, the first march on Washgton for gay rights. The creasg expansn of a global LGBT rights movement suffered a setback durg the 1980s, as the gay male muny was cimated by the Aids epimic, mands for passn and medil fundg led to renewed alns between men and women as well as angry street theatre by groups like Aids Coaln to Unleash Power (ACT UP) and Queer Natn. In the same era, one wg of the polil gay movement lled for an end to ary expulsn of gay, lbian, and bisexual soldiers, wh the high-profile se of Colonel Margarethe Cammermeyer publicized through a ma-for-televisn movie, “Servg Silence.

Durg the last of the 20th century, lns of Amerins watched as actrs Ellen DeGener me out on natnal televisn April 1997, heraldg a new era of gay celebry power and media visibily—although not whout risks. Wh greater media attentn to gay and lbian civil rights the 1990s, trans and tersex voic began to ga space through works such as Kate Boernste’s “Genr Outlaw” (1994) and “My Genr Workbook” (1998), Ann Fsto-Sterlg’s “Myths of Genr” (1992) and Llie Feberg’s “Transgenr Warrrs” (1998), enhancg shifts women’s and genr studi to bee more clive of transgenr and nonbary inti.

The possible reprsn of inty which may have played a role the killer’s choice of target has generated new attentn to the price of homophobia—ternalized, or culturally exprsed— and beyond the Uned Stat.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF LBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, AND TRANSGENR SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

Milant tout tant que ludique, ce langage se vt également le défensr d’un certa style vie, cherchant à exprimer, manière la pl visible, poliquement rrecte et effice qui so, la richse s portements et s cultur du mon gay.

2Funny and provotive as may seem, this msage posted on Kks & Queens, a gay Swedish webse, not only reveals a visibily and culture that the Lbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgenr muny was long pelled to hh, but also nfirms the existence of a lexin not que like standard English.

THE HISTORY OF THE WORD “GAY”

From the darker ag when homosexualy was at s bt a s and/or a perversn until the prent environment of rabow flags and gay pris, gayspeak has been ed to transgrs social norms, articulate particular needs and emotns, as well as renstct, or re-terpret, realy. When to elaborate polilly rrect fns of the « queer » universe, pk talk displays an extraordary plexy of sexual orientatns and subcultur, a possible means to pensate for lguistic ficiency and to claim a gay space on the social spectm. Most male homosexuals therefore kept their sexual orientatns very much the closet unls amidst their k when they lled each other female nam—« Miss Kten », « Cha Mary », « Primrose Mary », and « Dip-Candle Mary »3—, a practice still faiar among ntemporary gay men.

FROM CLOSET TALK TO PC TERMOLOGY : GAY SPEECH AND THE POLICS OF VISIBILY

Until World War Two, rearch on what was then labeled the « language of homosexualy » foced on genr versn, wh homosexualy beg regard as a pathology characterized as sexual viance or perversn: whereas heterosexual language equated wh the appropriate genr, homosexual language displayed equent aquaci between the physil genr and the lguistic genr of the speaker. In the reprsive and secury-ncerned Cold War environment4, to talk about themselv, most gays and lbians relied upon phemisms such as « iends of Dorothy(‘s) », (after The Wizard of Oz, 1939, a classic mil popular wh gay dienc), « whoopsi », « (s)he’s is a ltle... Dpe the achievements of gay rights, the stigma attached to a « love that dare not [always] speak s name », to quote Osr Wil, ocsnally lgers the way some gays e « them » to refer to their partners and « refully word speech to hi explic genr referenc »16.

For many Lbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgenr—or LGBT17—people today, pk talk works as a hive force agast discrimatn, although they also adm that gay exprsns have actually shifted om the physil nfement of the 18th century molly ho to a lguistic nfement. 5Sce 1993 [, ] the Amerin Universy Washgton DC has been home to annual nferenc on Lavenr Language and Lguistics, wh Lavenr19 Language beg fed as the way « lbians, gay men, bisexuals, transgenred persons and queers e language everyday life »20.

Leap mentned two other « betiful exampl »: whereas gay speech « pcher » intifi the sexually active dividual and « tcher » the receptive person, « If we say pcher or we say tcher, an ordary nversatn, I thk ’s unlikely that [straight people] would read anythg else to . 6Conceived to exprs the needs of a socially reprsed group, Polari was also, as Profsor Baker explas, « a form of humour and mp25 performance, … a way of iatg people to the gay or theatre subculture »26.

PNEERG PHOTOGRAPHS OF GAY LIFE THE 1960S

Whereas some lbians tend to speak at a lower pch than straight women—and their range of pch is lser than that of straight women29—the typil high pched disurse and adorned talks of some gay men, not necsarily of the effemate type, is another equent give-away.

Food metaphors are not unmon, such as seafood (gay sailors) and related sailor queens (men whose primary tert is sailors), tuna (young gay sailors), jam (younger men), angel food (gay men the air force), rice queens (men attracted to Asians), ernment spected meat (a gay man the armed forc) to be found meat racks (gay male cisg areas). Apts of the Scene (the gay club circu) attend whe parti, where Amy-Johns (after Amazons), lipstick lbians35 (stylishly drsed a tradnally feme way), and chapstick lbians (who do not wear make-up and are very much to sports)36 meet wh leather dyk, tomboys, and lemons (lbians).

As for gym bunni/queens (gay men who work out a gym), and mcle Mari (more effemate gym queens) who are a h among mcle queens (men who prefer mcular men), they will jo flamers (effemate gay men), baby Crocketts (psdo-wboys), and label queens (signers’ fashn victims)37.