From Closet Talk to PC Termology : Gay Speech and the Polics of Visibily

Contents:

• GAY SLANG
• FROM CLOSET TALK TO PC TERMOLOGY : GAY SPEECH AND THE POLICS OF VISIBILY
• “RH” IS TROYE SIVAN AT HIS GAYT, SWEATIT, AND MOST INTIMATE. HE TELLS VOGUE ALL ABOUT HIS NEW SGLE AND UPG ALBUM
• NICKI MAJ AND YUNG MIAMI ARE IN A WAR OF WORDS OVER ‘GAY SLANG’ AND DIDDY GOT DRAGGED INTO IT
• HOW TO USE TR DIFFERENTLY FOR GAY
• DICK LESCH’S GUI TO SEVENTI GAY SLANG

GAY SLANG

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. The scene also fostered a kship system of “ho”—chosen fai wh anoted ‘mothers’ and ‘fathers’ who gui and support their ‘children’—and uplifted a llective rejectn of both whe supremacy and Black homophobia. Read more: Why Black Trans Women Are Essential to Our Future In June 2019, on the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Rts that sparked the Gay Liberatn movement, Layleen Cubilette-Polan, an Ao-Domin trans woman and member of the legendary Ballroom Hoe of Xtravaganza, was left to die at the same prison, after havg an epileptic episo while solary nfement.

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As our age note on the term stat, “up until 1973, homosexualy was listed The Diagnostic and Statistil Manual of Mental Disorrs (DSM), psychiatry’s standard reference on the classifitn of mental illns. In his current rearch, Leap is lookg at Harleme, the language of the Harlem Renaissance, where he c a rich and dynamic queer prence and a manner of speakg that, while beg not exclively queer, has fluenced both gay and mastream language to this day.

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

She-g appears almost universally and across centuri gay language, om Pe to the Philipp to South Ai (where gay slang is lled Gayle), to Israel (lled oxtch, rived om an Arabic word meang "my sister"), to Soviet-era Rsia. But Put's Rsia, where the environment remas extremely hostile for LGBT people, the webse, acrdg to a paper by rearcher Stephan Nance, lists a urse on how to speak prent-day Rsian gay, a slang lled goluboy -- om a word related to the bluish lor of a dove -- prumably to help gay Rsians intify one another.

“RH” IS TROYE SIVAN AT HIS GAYT, SWEATIT, AND MOST INTIMATE. HE TELLS VOGUE ALL ABOUT HIS NEW SGLE AND UPG ALBUM

") Denis Provencher, partment head of French and Italian at the Universy of Arizona, has yet to intify a siar argot as Polari or rearch to gay-specific slang French, where disurse, typil French fashn, operat as more waltz than stri. " While vobulary might be the most fun part of lavenr lguistics for the layperson, scholars are ncerned wh aspects such as tone, flectn, and gturg, as well as the polil and cultural implitns of language -- how the prs wre about LGBT issu, for example, or how queer people munite wh each other privately and at work, or how gay language is learned.

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. 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. 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.

NICKI MAJ AND YUNG MIAMI ARE IN A WAR OF WORDS OVER ‘GAY SLANG’ AND DIDDY GOT DRAGGED INTO IT

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.

HOW TO USE TR DIFFERENTLY FOR GAY

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. The yearly gay pris which take place most Amerin ci, the midst of ribbons, lorful paras, and mil shows, are a clear signal, as the name dite, that there is pri beg members of the « fay », a term the gay muny sometim appli to self39. In this ebullience, Bce Rodger’s landmark The Queen’s Vernacular was released (1972), followed, to mentn jt a few, by Joseph Hay’s « Gayspeak » (1976) and « Language and Language Behavr of Lbian and Gay Men » (1978‑1979), Leonard R.

Pl Baker himself, who has nducted terviews among the Brish LGTB populatn, rearched gay archiv and d gay and lbian chats on the ter, released Fantabulosa: A Dictnary of Polari and Gay Slang 200242, wh 1, 700 entri rived om terviews, archiv, and gay and lbian web chats43. The ter has s share, upon which the prent study has been partially based, such as the onle Dictnary of Gay Slang and Historil Terms, Flampeak, Queer Slang the Gay 90, Rebec Stt’s A Brief Dictnary of Queer Slang and Culture (1997), Matt & Andrej Koymasky’s GLTB Slang Dictnary (last updated 2005), and Robert Owen Stt’s prehensive Wizard Gay Slang Dictnary (last updated 2003)44. Whereas the 1960s gay and lbian scholars took a stake the polil advancement of homosexuals, directly enuragg the olr generatn to e the Lavenr language, gay youths cid to avoid what they nsired a relic of the past ( England, some claimed Polari to be « silly, femisg and outdated »45).

DICK LESCH’S GUI TO SEVENTI GAY SLANG

In the mid-1970s and 1980s, however, the divisns between homosexuals flated, strengtheng the hn of the muny as well as a new approach of homosexualy which was fed terms of opprsed mory inty: after the manner of Ain-Amerins who promoted Black English vernacular, LGBT people found logil to adopt a specific language, although as we noted before, gayspeak has always been more a lexin than a language wh s proper grammatil and phonologil l.

Sce the late 1980s, the inty-based mol of homosexualy has been s turn challenged, for beg excsively foced on rpectabily, th excludg some margal liftyl—sadomasochists, workg-class femme lbians, Ain-Amerin drag queens, and bisexuals—wh the gay muny self.

In an effort to reawaken the spir of activism om the post-Stonewall era, Queer Natn adopted a somewhat nontatnal approach and purposely ed the word queer for s shock value while rejectg the term gay, which for some had bee too mastream49. First ed to scribe the participants New York drag balls the 1890s, fa(i)ry beme a mon pretg term the 20th century ed to qualify effemate gays ( the mid-1900’s fairy ladi was applied to femme lbians)58.

It was possibly rived om the French fagot, a bundle of sticks and twigs bound together, ed for burng heretics and wch at the stake, or om an abive term for women, or reference to younger boys who performed duti for senrs Brish public schools, where homosexualy was viewed as enmic.

« The label ‘homosexual’ », Norton explas, « stead of beg generated by society to ntrol people, was self-generated by gay (or gay-iendly) men to empower dividuals and set them on the road to eedom rather than enslavement »62. The existence of the term lbian probably acunts for such perceptn, as do the ep-rooted belief that homosexualy was mostly a male phenomenon (studi and reprsive legislatns have been mostly about gay men).

Whereas the neteenth century gay signated male and female prostut65, is now advantageoly displayg LGBT flamboyance, wh ls technily than the term homosexual and wh an assuredly ls explic lk between sexual activy and gay inty regardls of the genr66.