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
• DICK LESCH’S GUI TO SEVENTI GAY SLANG
• THIS SECRET LANGUAGE ALLOWED GAY MEN TO COMMUNITE WHEN HOMOSEXUALY WAS ILLEGAL
• THE LOST GAY LANGUAGE OF BRA'S '60S
• THE HISTORY OF THE WORD “GAY”
• GAY SLANG OM THE 1970S
• DO YOUR GAY SLANG KNOWLEDGE REVEAL YOUR AGE?
• FROM CLOSET TALK TO PC TERMOLOGY : GAY SPEECH AND THE POLICS OF VISIBILY
• GAY SLANG 101

POLARI: THE LANGUAGE GAY MEN ED TO SURVIVE

”That may seem like a strg of nonsense words om Dr Sss’s The Cat the Hat or Anthony Burgs’s A Clockwork Orange but ’s a real-life greetg gay men the UK would say to each other the 1950s and 60s. 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.

But the Onle Slang Dictnary c 1960s gay male culture as the earlit known source, particularly rtoonist Joe Johnson’s characters “Miss Thg” and “Big Dick”, which appeared early issu of The Advote.

”In 1959, when Lesch was twenty-four, he left his fay home, Kentucky, for New York Cy, where he found work as a pater, a bartenr, a rator, a journalist, and as the unpaid print of the Mattache Society, one of the first gay-rights anizatns. When the Stonewall rts broke out, three years later, he was the only openly gay reporter on the scene, verg the event for a new gay-focsed magaze lled The a recent Friday eveng, Lesch’s buzzer rang. ” Some of the fns were more nuanced: an “ntie, ” Lesch had wrten, was “an ageg or middle aged homosexual, offtim effemate character, ” or “a person of settled meanor who utns agast temperate acts.

THE FOTTEN SECRET LANGUAGE OF GAY MEN

Photograph by Rebec FudalaNext up was Lesch’s llectn of magaz and newsletters, cludg After Dark (“Oh, bls you—they’re real llector’s ems, ” Bmann said); Christopher Street (“We have the archiv”); Female Mimics (“That’s fabulo”); the 1969 Time issue on homosexualy (“Cute”); and the monthly bullet for the Mattache Society. Ntie – bear – benr – bottom – bum band – bum chum – bumr – bummer – butch – butt hugger – rpet muncher – tcher – chaser – chickenhawk – chicken hawk – cub – drag kg – dyke – fag – faggot – Fairy – femme – flamer – u – fudge packer – gay – gaylord – girliend – GLBT – hasbian – homo – homo thug – the closet – jobby jabber – lemon – lez – lipstick lbian – mge muncher – mo – nellie – nelly – Peter Puffer – pole smoker – poof – Poofter – power top – puff – queer – shirt lifter – sister – versatile – wasbian.

Oz magaze published piec about gay rights, notably so issue 23 which ran an extract om The Homosexual Handbook (1969) by Angelo d’Arngelo among a uple of other featur; the UK’s first gay magaze, Jeremy, advertised regularly Oz and IT; later issu of Oz rried ads for another gay mag, Follow Up, and there’s a letter one issue om a gay eak plag about the state of the few gay pubs London where the clientele was apparently not eaky enough. Rodgers’ book was reissued 1979 as Gay Talk: A (Sometim Outrageo) Dictnary of Gay Slang (Formerly entled The Queens’ Vernacular) but has been out-of-prt ever sce, unsurprisgly sce so much of is now pletely outmod.

DICK LESCH’S GUI TO SEVENTI GAY SLANG

Jt as the Dictnary of the Vulgar Tongue (1811) by Francis Grose giv a more-or-ls unmediated sight to the liv of the workg and crimal class of 18th-century London, so Rodgers’ dictnary tells somethg about the way gay people, pecially gay men the US, were talkg to each other for much of the 20th century. Gay slang has been ed and ed by those wh the gay subculture who themselv feel the most opprsed—the flagrant wrist benrs, the screamg queens, the men who look like women, the women who don’t shave their motach. Gay ants would like to see go, and argue rightly that gay jargon is yet another lk the cha which holds the homosexual enslaved and opprsed—yet s wispread e and plex vobulary dite that gay liberatn has still along battle ont of .

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

Referrg to each other as “Mary” and “girl” (which evolved to “gurl” to distguish between the real al and a reference to a feme gay person) beme part of gay culture — and soon a part of the way gay men were stereotyped and nigrated as well.

And while the followg vio offers a lightful tr of olr fellas tryg to gus what some of the curant gay termology refers to, we’re pretty sure that if you gathered up a handful of gay lennials and asked them to intify what “spaghetti” means, what part of the anatomy was once lled “blds, ” or what you were nfidg to someone if you nfsed an appete for “angel food, ” they’d draw a few blanks, too. 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 LOST GAY LANGUAGE OF BRA'S '60S

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.

THE HISTORY OF THE WORD “GAY”

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. 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. Polari was never signed to pe notice, but was often nontative: ‘Even when travellg the sgular, we weren’t averse to shriekg a quick get you, girl at some menacg naff27… We flnted our homosexualy.

GAY SLANG OM THE 1970S

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.

DO YOUR GAY SLANG KNOWLEDGE REVEAL YOUR AGE?

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.

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

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). 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.

GAY SLANG 101

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.