Slang Terms for Homosexuals English
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4 SIXTEENTH-CENTURYLEGISLATION group of miscellaneous statutes having the scores of victims of the law cannot be nothing remotely to do with this subject) compared with the hundreds and thou- was motivated by theReformersl intent to sands who were executed or simply killed prosecute the monks for "crimes against just for holding "heretical" beliefs during nature" and then to dissolve the monaster- the Reformation conflict in the sixteenth ies and confiscate their property. Dissolu- century. In fact, the really significant fea- tion of monasteries and enactments ture of the English legal development is its against sodomy were two different issues. lateness in both directions: the criminali- The unique features of the Eng- zation of sodomy only in 1533, the aboli- lish tradition in this sphere are first, the tion of the death penalty only in 1861, and use of the term buggery as the legal desig- the retention of the offense in the criminal nation for the crime, though in ordinary codes of the English-speaking world long speech in England the word was long after the influence of the Enlightenment considered obscene and offensive; and and of classical liberalism had reshaped second, the frequent commutation of the almost every other area of the law. But few penalty of death by hanging (not burning as the executions may have been, they left at the stake, as some wrongly assume) to an enduring stamp on public opinion. And exposure in the pillory, which was de- the United States Supreme Court's fateful scribed by contemporary observers as decision in Bowers v. Hardwick (1986) worse than death because of the ferocity denying the right of privacy to consensual with which mobs, and particularly women adult homosexual behavior keeps alive eager to punish enemies of their sex, pelted the legal tradition that stems from the law the defenseless sodomites with missiles of 1533, reinforced by the unrelenting and filth of every kind. It is uncertain just hostility of religious conservatives and how and when this penalty began, but fundamentalists. there is evidence that the pillory was used See also Canon Law; Law, Feudal to punish sexual immorality well before and Royal; Law, Municipal. the reign of Henry VIII, possibly even as Warren Johansson early as the time of Richard U (late four- teenth century). The standard histories of English law begin in medias res by relating SLANGTERMS the abuses to which the pillory led in the FOR HOMOSEXUALSIN mid-eighteenth century and then its aboli- ENGLISH tion for all offenses except perjury in 18 16. The several national varieties of In Great Britain it was finally abandoned English offer hundreds of slang terms for in 1837, and the United States Congress homosexuals, a few of them traceable to followed suit in 1839. the seventeenth century, but most dating The sixteenth-century sodomy from the nineteenth and twentieth centu- statutes remained on the books until the ries. Some may be heard wherever English thinkers of the Enlightenment, beginning is spoken (e.g., gay, queer); many more are with Cesare Beccaria in 1764, denounced limited in their area of use ("jasper," the death penalty as a relic of medieval "poofter," "moffie"). Nearly all these terms superstition and intolerance. were devised by heterosexuals and so tend The number of persons executed to express in their meaning or derivation for "buggery," "crime against nature," and the hostility, the contempt, the hatred, the like in jurisdictions subject to the and the fear that straight people have felt British crown was probably no more than toward gay sex and those who practice it. three a yearforthewhole period from 1561 The corpus of slang also reflects to 1861, when the death penalty was abol- long-standing and still prevalent misun- ished in favor of life imprisonment. Thus derstandings of homosexuality. Recent SLANG 9 exposures of and challenges to these mis- ism flow crude popular notions of male conceptions have made as yet little im- and female sexuality generally and an pression on the language, and although erroneous conception of homosexuality individuals may have modified their us- that has not yet been completely dis- age, offensive, misconceived, and other- pelled. It is the belief that for a man to wise objectionable terms continue to be renounce the "active," definitively male used. role of penile penetration and submit to Gay people have themselves the "passive," female role of accepting the adopted many of these terms, becauseuntil intromission of a penis, he must be a recently their understanding of themselves female, either psychically or both men- and their sexuality differed little from the tally and behaviorally. views of the society in which they lived. Slang embodying this simple ac- Basic Categories. Almost all tive vs. passive categorization according terms for male homosexuals fall into four to roles in sexual activity can be found simple categories: first, those taking or reduplicated again and again, in different assumed to take the "active," masculine English-speaking countries, in different role, the insertor role, in anal intercourse; periods, and in specific close knit or exclu- secondly, the "passive," feminine role, the sive groups. In particular, whenever men receptor role, in anal intercourse; thirdly, are kept in isolation from women, it is effeminate men who may be gay (there is likely that asystem of slang corresponding some overlap between the latter two to this pattern will arise. Examples of such categories). Finally, for United States masculine worlds in which situational English, a category of fellator (cocksucker homosexuality occurs are prisons, navies engaged in oral activity) is needed. (and other armed forces to a lesser extent), A similar typonymy, without a boarding schools, among seafarers and ho- fourth category corresponding to fellator, boes. Even today there are relatively few applies to terms for lesbians. First, mascu- slang terms that do not assign or imply a line, "active"; secondly, (ultra-)feminine, role in sexualactivity, and these-"queer," "passive"; and, thirdly, mannish women "homo," "poof(ter)," "les," "lez," "lez- who may be lesbian. Again, there is some zie," "gayu-have usually become general overlap between the first and third catego- only recently. A few other words are ries. Even though early sexology distin- sometimes neutral when used by guished cunnilinctrixes from tribades, homosexuals: fag(got),queen, dyke. calling the former "sapphists" and "Les- Male Terms. By far the largest bian lovers" (this original sense became number of male slang terms fall into the obscured when these terms became ge- categories of male passivity and effemi- neric for female homosexuals), English nacy, which imply the renunciation of slang does not seem to have developed one's maleness. By contrast, the active similar categories. There are many slang insertor terms seldom imply femininity or terms for those who perform oral sex on the loss of masculinity. Very often they women ("cuntlapper," "-licker"; refer expressly to taking the active role in "muffdiver," "plater"; "gamahucher," anal intercourse: "arse-king," "arselass- ilgamah~cker,""gamarucker," and so bandit," "arse-burglar," "booty-bandit," forth) but none is specifically homo- "bud sallogh" (Irish, "shitten prick," obso- sexual in application. lete), "backdoor('sj man," "gentleman of These categories mirror the tradi- the backdoor," "backgammoner," "inspec- tional equation of biological sex and gen- tor of manholes," "dirt-trackrider," "turd- der role, whereby male anatomy entails packer," "dung-pusher," "poo-jabber." The masculinity and female anatomy feminin- Australian prison slang for the active part- ity. From this psychobiological determin- ner "hock" has the same implication, for it is rhyming slang on "cock." One of the "morphodite," "morphydite," "morphro- equivalent American terms, "jocker," is dite," and in South Africa "moffie." It has likewise probably derived from "jock," also yielded "freak." which means "fuck" as a verb and "cock" One of the most prolific sources as a noun. In the case of the synonym of femininewords has beenmalepmstitu- "wolf" the association is the same but tion. Evidence of this phenomenon inLon- metaphoric rather than direct. don exists from the Middle Ages, and late The key to understanding a large nineteenth-centurywriters on homosexu- number of passive/effeminate terms is the ality such as Havelock Ellis and "Xavier supposed reversal of gender and sex roles: Mayne" (E. I. Prime-Stevenson)state that the adoption of behavior deemed "natu- it was widespread throughout Europe and ral" or appropriate to the opposite sex. A the United States. The prostitution took man who is passive must in some sense be two main forms. Highly masculine men, a woman; even one who is raped is judged especially soldiers, who were poorly paid, to have "lost his manhood" and becomes made themselves available as "active" de facto a woman. Many slang terms for partners. The older tradition involved very the passive homosexual directly personify effeminate men, often cross-dressers, who him as avagina or an anus: "gash," "pussy," frequented certain taverns or bars; some- "gentleman pussy," "sea-pussy," "boy- times their activity was outright arse- pussy," "boy-snatch," "b~y-cunt,"~~bum-peddling, but often it seems to have been boy," 'lpoonce" (from Yiddish for "cunt" J, sex in return for a good time paid for by the "brownie-queen,""browning-sister" or"- masculine male. In the seventeenth and queen," "mustard-pot," "jere." eighteenth centuries such effeminate men Another common procedure is to were called mollies (from "Moll," the pet- apply a word that has female reference. form of Mary, which meant "harlot" or The most direct method is to use a female "hussy") and the places where they oper- name. The oldest known slang term ated were molly-houses. "Molly" is an example, and "Marjery," The semantic transition from "Mary-Ann," and "Charlotte-Ann" are "harlot" and/or "slatternly woman, hussy" further obsolete instances.