Origins of the word "gay" (was Re: Crime on the Internet)
Jeffrey Blutinger
>Lee Parsons (lpar...@capecod.net) wrote:
>: mha...@bmtc.mindspring.com (Mike Hardin) wrote:
>
>: >And the word "Gay" did not always mean "homosexual". Only in recent
>: >times.
>
>: Actually, its been in use for more than 130 years to refe to
>: homosexuality according to one author, and another reference
>: I found claimed its use since the 1600's.
>
>I've been trying to track this one down for quite a while, and so far
>have had no luck. Unless your sources are very good (in which case,
>please cite), I think the jury is still out. I'm really curious about
>how this term was coined (in particular, whether gays came up with it
>themselves or it was first used by non-gays to refer to gays, and then
>picked by gays, in the same way that chicano was first used as an
>insult and is now used as a term of pride).
In George Chauncy's "Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture and the
Making of the Gay Male World 1890-1940," he sets out the history of the
word "gay":
"Originally referring simply to things pleasurable, by the seventeenth
century *gay* had come to refer to more specifically to a life of
*immoral* pleasures and dissipation (and by the nineteenth century to
prostitution, when applied to women), a meaning that the 'faggots' [a
term used by gay people to refer to themselves at the turn of the
century] could easily have drawn on to refer to the homosexual life.
*Gay* also referred to something brightly colored or someone showily
dressed -- and thus could easily be used to describe the flamboyant
costumes adopted by many fairies [another term used by gay people to
refer to themselves at the turn of the century], as well as things at
once brilliant and specious, the epitome of camp." Chauncy, "Gay New
York" at 17.
Chauncy quotes a gay man who describes being a "faggot" in 1937 in a
Jewish working class section of New York:
"A group of us would hang out at a park in the Bronx where older boys
would come and pick us up. One boy who'd been hanging out with us for a
while came back once, crying, saying the boy he'd left with wanted him to
suck his thing. 'I don't want to do *that*!' he cried. 'But why are you
hanging out with us if you aren't gay?' we asked him. 'Oh, I'm *gay*,'
he exclaimed, throwing up his hands in the air like an hysterical queen,
'but I don't want to do *that*.' This boy liked the gay life -- the
clothes, the way people talked and walked and held themselves -- but, if
you can believe it, he didn't realize there was more to being gay than
that!" Chauncy, "Gay New York," at 16-17. See also, Cary Grant's famous
line in the 1938 film, "Bringing Up Baby," where after putting on a
woman's nightgown declares "I just went gay all of a sudden."
Over time, however, the word "gay" moved out of the slang of the
effeminate gay men (the self-described fairies, faggots and pansies) and
was used more and more as a code word by the non-effeminate gay men (the
self-described "queers"). As one gay writer explained in 1941:
"Supposing one met a stranger on a train from Boston to New York and
wanted to find out if he was 'wise' or even homosexual. One might ask:
'are there any gay spots in Boston?' And by slight accent put on the
word 'gay' the stranger, if wise, would understand that homosexual
resorts were meant. The uninitiated stranger would never suspect,
inasmuch as 'gay' is also a perfectly normal and natural word to apply to
places where one has a good time.... The continued use of such *double
entendre* terms will make it obvious to the initiated that he is speaking
with another person acquainted with the homosexual argot." Chauncy, at
18.
Having moved from being part of the "fairy" slang to a "queer" code
word, the meaning of the word changed again, and became not an adjective
but a noun -- an identity.
"While such men spoke of 'gay bars' more than of 'gay people' in the
1920's and 1930's, the late 1930's and especially World War II marked a
turning point in its usage and in their culture. Before the war, many
men had been content to call themselves 'queer' because they regarded
themselves as self-evidently different from the men they usually called
'normal.' Some of them were unhappy with this state of affairs, but
others saw themselves as 'special' -- more sophisticated, more knowing --
and took pleasure in being different from the mass. The term *gay* began
to catch on in the 1930's, and its primacy was consolidated during the
war. By the late 1940's, younger gay men were chastising older men who
still used *queer*, which the younger men now regarded as demeaning. As
[one man], who came out into the gay world of Times Square in the 1930's,
noted in his diary in 1951, 'The word "queer" is becoming [or coming to
be regarded as] more and more derogatory and [is] less and less used by
hustlers and trade and the homosexual, especially the younger ones, and
the term "gay" [is] taking its place. I loathe the word, and stick to
"queer", but am constantly being reproved, especially in so denominating
myself."
"Younger men rejected *queer* as a pejorative name that others had
given them, which highlighted their difference from other men. Even
though many 'queers' had also rejected the effeminacy of the fairies,
younger men were well aware that in the eyes of straight men their
'queerness' hinged on their supposed gender deviance. In the 1930's and
1940's, a series of press campaigns claiming that murderous 'sex
deviates' threatened the nation's women and children gave 'queerness' an
even more sinister and undesirable set of connotations. In calling
themselves *gay*, a new generation of men insisted on the right to name
themselves, to claim their new status as men, and to reject the
'effeminate' styles of the older generation. Some man, especially older
ones, continued to prefer *queer* to *gay*, in part because of *gay's*
initial association with the fairies. Younger men found it easier to
forget the origins of *gay* in the campy banter of the very queens whom
they wished to reject." Chauncy, at p. 19.
Thus, a word which began to have sexual connotations in the
seventeenth century became a word used by homosexuals in the nineteenth
century and then to describe homosexauls in the twentieth century. Now,
of course, we have younger gay men trying to resurrect the word "queer"
in opposition to the word "gay."
Chauncy's book is excellent and I highly recommend it.
Jeff.