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And so, self mockery becomes a form of defence against the strictures of the priests and preachers. What is also interesting is the way in which sexual outcasts could adopt terms of abuse used for them and turn them into terms of endearment for each other - as my friends and I did in the 1980s when we called ourselves fags. And as they did so then, they still do so now. While these terms were used to mark their difference, this did not prevent males from that same polite society from using the good services of prostitutes and homosexuals when it suited them. The terms I’ve illustrated were used by the majority to exclude prostitutes and homosexuals from “polite” society. Gangs and groups, them and us, and in the case of sexual preference, there are the straights, the “normals”, if you like, and the others, the sexual outcasts. Humans have been doing this from the outset. In other words, they are the “outsiders” of sociologist Norbert Elias’s important work from the mid-1960s. Terms of abuse are a way of distinguishing those whom we choose to marginalise because we do not like the look of them or because we were there first. According to one of writer Keith Vacha’s interviewees, nellies were “common queens” by which he meant: “ones with bleached blonde hair and plucked eyebrows”.Īnd finally, perhaps to the consternation of some of today’s toughs, there is “punk,” which according to Rudolph Trumbach was once the slang term for both prostitute and sodomite.
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“Nance” and “nancy boy” as well as “Nelly” and “nellies” were terms used by both gays and straights also connoting effeminacy or youthfulness. More arcane terms include “ganymede” (a young male) which was used by Oscar Wilde and his contemporaries and “Marianne” and “Molly” from the earlier 18th century, again connoting an effeminate (or passive) male. Historically-specific, it connotes the style of gay men mid-1970 to mid-1980s (moustache, short hair, faded, baggy Levis and pocket and/or neck handkerchief) as exemplified by the lead singer of the Bronski Beat at the time of their hit single, Smalltown Boy. The words gays use for themselvesīecause of the sardonic nature of gayness, all of the above would have to be included also in the vocabulary of gay men and queers.Īs well, there are community-specific terms, such as “clone”. Much later, historians such as Chad Heap and George Chauncey found similar intermingling in the underground bars that operated in New York and Chicago during Prohibition in the US. This tendency for the words for prostitute to be later used for homosexual dates from 18th-century England when they often shared common social spaces, argues gay historian Rictor Norton.
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Why the fixation on prostitution? As Trumbach explains, there is a “long tradition in English usage” of words that are used to designate a prostitute being appropriated one generation later to describe sodomites. “Fairy” and “queer” had similar origins between the world wars. “Fruit” was, like faggot, according to US historian Randolph Trumbach, a term first used in the 18th century for a prostitute and then a sodomite. “Cat” from “catamite” is ancient Roman with connotations of effeminacy, prostitution, and the passive role in a sexual encounter. Meanwhile, as the documentary Deep Water revealed, the literal bashing and killing of poofters caught at it in public parklands was something of a pastime. In 1970s Australia, the ubiquitous “poofter” covered all forms of deviancy including men who had sex with other men, poor-performing sportsmen, politicians and motorists. In 1920s New York, it described an effeminate homosexual who sought social/sexual relations with “normal men”, according to George Chauncey while a “flaming faggot” was an extremely obvious, flamboyant gay man. In eighteenth-century London it was first a term for prostitute then for homosexual. “Faggot” has had different meanings according to where and when it was used. "Homosexual” (or “homosexualist”) has similar 19th-century origins and was originally coined in 1869 by a Hungarian doctor, Karoly Maria Benkert. “In the past one asked if a woman was "gay,” much as today one might ask if she “swings,”“ wrote White. And “gay-house” was the term for a brothel. Its pedigree is longer and according to Edmund White originally applied to women and meant loose or immoral, as in a prostitute. Let’s begin with the most common term, “gay”, which baby-boomer homosexuals appropriated for their liberationist cause in the late 1960s and early 1970s. But words used by others to define gay people can say a great deal more about them than us.