$16.95
ISBN 1551521512
available through
Amazon
Reviewed by Jean Roberta
(03/03/04)
Psst! Wanna learn some dirty words? Memorizing entries from this long, thick book of terms from the cultures of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and transgendered folk won't guarantee you a date. However, this book is guaranteed to increase your knowledge, no matter how you define your own sexuality or how much you already know.
In his introduction, the author explains some of the distinct challenges of compiling an up-to-date queer thesaurus: "Queer language is in a state of near constant flux much in keeping with the ever increasing visibility of gays and lesbians in contemporary culture, and a growing acceptance (by both gays and straights) of the validity of queer sexuality in all its guises. Pick up a lesbian erotic anthology more than ten years old and try to find a reference to 'girl-cock.'"
Peterkin goes on to explain that the need for secret "passwords" in more homophobic times gave rise to such elaborate identifying markers as "the secret male language called Polari (more or less from 'parlare,' to speak in Italian) used by gay men in London from the 1930s to 1970s. The language of Polari contained some 500 words about sex, the body, physical appearance, meeting places, straights and gays...some Polari terms, like 'bod,' 'trade,' 'troll,' basket,' and 'cottage' are still used today, and many have been absorbed into mainstream vocabulary as well."
According to Peterkin, the increased acceptance and visibility of queer culture since the birth of the "Gay Rights" movement in 1969 has not decreased the need for specialized vocabularies, especially as new sexual identities and sub-communities have emerged. The author claims: "As an example, in the 1990s we saw the emergence of bear culture and terminology to describe hirsute, physically large gay men and their admirers."
Peterkin claims that books by the brave transgendered authors Kate Bornstein and Leslie Feinberg have influenced current queer culture, although in this reviewer's experience, transgendered individuals still seem to be widely seen by other "queers" as maverick personalities rather than as representatives of a cultural type. Be that as it may, one of the newer terms listed in this book is "ping," meaning a transgendered person's recognition of another transgendered person who is trying to "pass."
The author warns: "The terms you'll find in this book are often challenging. They insist there is a sophistication to our desire, a sense of humour, a complexity, an ability to take even the most pejorative, nastily-implied word and do exactly whatever we want with it."
The alphabetical entries begin with "abdomen," "androgyne," "anus," "aphrodisiac," and "aroused." The synonyms for "androgyne" include "morphodite," a mysteriously insulting word that this reviewer remembers being used by other teenagers in rural Idaho in the 1960s, regardless of whether they knew what it meant. (The word was applied to male "sissies" and female "tomboys" in a rigidly gendered culture.) Peterkin confirms my suspicion that it is a corruption of "hermaphrodite," originally the name of the child of Hermes and Aphrodite in Greek mythology.
Queer words meaning "aroused" include "having a pash for" (which was used as early as World War I, although usually in a heterosexual context) as well as "hot as a firecracker," which the author describes as a Canadian term first used in the 1920s.
Strangely enough, "Canadian" is listed as a euphemism for any gay male. Perhaps it is not surprising that this use of the word seems unknown in Canada, although "Lebanese" for lesbian (which was widely used in the 1980s on the Canadian prairies, where actual immigrants from Lebanon were rare) is not listed at all. The author explains that the word "lesbian" itself was originally based on a place-name, since the ancient Greek poet Sappho, who wrote about love between women in the seventh century BC, came from the island of Lesbos. Presumably any native of that island can still be called a Lesbian, regardless of sexual identity.
According to this book, the use of place-names to indicate queer sexuality or queer culture continues in references to San Francisco (no surprise there) as well as to less-obvious locations such as Santa Fe. References to ethnicity or culture are included in traditional terms such as "the English vice" as a (non-British) term for BDSM (bondage/discipline/dominance/submission/sadism/masochism) and "French letter" as a (non-French) term for a condom. More recent references to culture in queerspeak include terms for those who are attracted to a particular race or ethnicity, such as "rice queens" (gay men who prefer Asian partners) and "Zebras" (white queers who prefer black partners and vice versa).
Other listed words for those whose sex practices are unusual or controversial even in the queer community include "Butcher boy" for a gay man who has sex with lesbians, "vampire" for a gay man who steals other people's partners, "Gillette blade" for a bisexual woman, and "switch hitter," derived from baseball terminology, for a bisexual woman or man. (This is also the title of a groundbreaking anthology of lesbian erotica written by men and gay male erotica written by women.) "Beard" is listed as a term for a woman who dates gay men to demonstrate that they are straight. Besides being notable as a term used in Chaucer's "The Miller's Tale" (written in Middle English in the 1380s) to mean a practical joke (as well as a sly reference to a woman's pubic hair), this use of "beard" seems similar to "fag hag," except that a "hag" is usually assumed to initiate friendships with gay men for her own reasons.
As the author explains somewhat apologetically in his introduction, more queer terms (especially those that refer to the body and to specific sex practices) apply to men than to women. Considering this, it is notable that the word "gay" itself (which literally means happy) first seems to have been used as a sexual term in Shakespeare's time to refer to women who were thought to be promiscuous. Like other feminine terms which have been appropriated by feminine men, "gay" came to apply to men who were also considered slutty because they were homosexual (even if monogamous). The extension of this use of the word to lesbians brings it back to women by a roundabout route. This book includes a more recent woman-centric term (which could possibly be extended to males) to mean "aroused:" the cute acronym "NDL" for "nipples don't lie."
Even a long review cannot do justice to this intriguing reference book. Like a dictionary for elementary-school children, it has illustrations to break up the big blocks of print. Many of the black-and-white photos in this book for grownups, however, are vintage porn images from yesteryear. Even the photos that are not sexually suggestive have a certain camp appeal. It would be an ideal gift for a wide variety of readers, and it deserves to be added to the growing library of scholarly material on queer culture through the ages.
