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SuperSneak
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In the land of the one-eyed
Jun 2000
time: 21:26
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I'd like to report a hate crime myself.
Before we were married, my wife took me to the "Silverado", a gay bar here in Portland. Now, there were men of every type in there, but somehow, I must have been exuding a decidedly straight vibe (I swear I didn't have my cheeks clenched, but I may have been looking around warily) as I didn't get one invitation to dance all night! Toward the end of the night I was really starting to get conflicted about my attractiveness (though no one talking to me was exactly what I had hoped for in the first place!).
Well, this one scurvy guy started sidling up to me and I noticed he only had one arm!
If that isn't an assault on me based on my sexuality, I don't know what is!
Personally, I think this stuff really is abominable. I can't even begin to understand it at all...sheer, total ignorance and fear. If someone did that to one of my gay friends, I'd be totally incensed. I'm sorry it still happens, although the frequency does seem to be abating somewhat.
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Boris Godunov
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Portland, OR
Aug 2001
time: 00:26
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quote:
Originally posted by SlowwHand
Why did Gays take on "Gay" as the name.
It was already a word, following up on Boris' note. |
http://www.wordorigins.org/wordorg.htm#gay
quote:
Gay
Much commentary about this adjective referring to homosexuals exists, mostly having to do with usage. Our concern here, however, is etymology and two mistaken notions prevail. The first is that gay, meaning homosexual, originated as an acronym for Good As You. The second is that it is of relatively recent origin, dating only to the late 1960s. Both of these ideas are in error.
Many, believe that gay came to mean homosexual only in the late 1960s with the Stonewall riot and the rise of the gay rights movement. This is not the case. The error these people are making is confusing the adoption of the term by the heterosexual community, and thus the English language as a whole, with its origin. The term is in fact much older, being used by homosexuals to refer to themselves with certainty as early as the 1920s, and possibly as early as the 1860s.
Lighter gives the earliest usage cite as a 1922 quote from Gertrude Stein's "Miss Furr & Mrs. Skeene" which appeared in Vanity Fair. It is uncertain, however, if Stein's use of gay in this case is a reference to lesbianism or to the [then] conventional sense of gay meaning happy:
"They were ... gay, they learned little things that are things in being gay, ... they were quite regularly gay."
The first unequivocal written use of gay to mean homosexual is in 1929, in Noel Coward's musical Bittersweet. In the song "Green Carnation," four overdressed, 1890s dandies sing:
Pretty boys, witty boys, You may sneer
At our disintegration.
Haughty boys, naughty boys,
Dear, dear, dear!
Swooning with affectation...
And as we are the reason
For the "Nineties" being gay,
We all wear a green carnation.
The penultimate line refers to the the 1890s, which were commonly called the gay nineties. In general usage, this appellation had nothing to do with homosexuality, but in this context, Coward uses it as a double entendre.
Gay appears again in 1933 in Ford and Tyler's Young & Evil. In 1938 in the movie Bringing Up Baby, the character played by Cary Grant, when asked why he is wearing women's clothing replies, "Because I just went gay all of a sudden." In retrospect, this is obviously a joke intended to slip past the censors. In their 1941 book Sexual Variations, Gershon Legman and G.V. Henry cite gay as a slang term for homosexual, which indicates that it was in use for some time prior.
Lighter also indirectly cites an 1868 song by female impersonator Will S. Hays titled, Gay Young Clerk in the Dry Goods Store. The lyrics do not explicitly link the word with homosexuality, but they can be interpreted that way, especially if sung by a man in drag. Then again, that may be reading too much into the lyrics. You be the judge:
"It's about a chap, perhaps you know,
I'm told he is 'Nobody's beau,'
But maybe you all knew that before,
He's a lively clerk in a Dry-Goods Store.
"O! Augustus Dolphus is his name,
From Skiddy-ma-dink they say he came,
He's a handsome man and he's proud and poor,
This gay young clerk in the Dry-Goods Store."
OK, so gay was definitely in use in the 1920s, and perhaps earlier, but how did the term come to be associated with homosexuals? Several possibilities exist, but the acronym for "Good As You" is not one of them.
The most likely explanation is that it derives from gaycat or geycat, a slang term for a tramp or hobo who is new to the road. Gaycats were commonly in the company of older tramps, implying a homosexual relationship. The term, according to Lighter, dates to at least the 1890s. Gaycats were employed as lookouts while other hoboes committed crimes. The OED2 cites the 1935 Underworld & Prison Slang by N. Ersine as defining geycat as a homosexual boy. The origin of gaycat is unknown. Green, however, says a gay cat was a tramp who offered sexual services to women.
Another possible origin is the late nineteenth century slang usage of gay to mean promiscuous. A gay house meant a brothel. This sexual sense of the term could have become associated with homosexual promiscuity and the heterosexual sense lost.
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04-03-2003 00:19
Crazy world we live in...
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