"gay: (was Quentin Crisp)

GEORGE THOMPSON thompsng at ELMER4.BOBST.NYU.EDU
Mon Nov 22 19:31:58 UTC 1999


Barry says he will atttempt again to antedate the specialization of
the word "gay" to the meaning of "homosexual".  It is of course well
known that in the 19th century the slang sense of the word indicated
prostitution (on the part of women) and in general the sort of
raffish lifestyle enjoyed by prostitutes and the men who associate
with them.  (I don't have "gay" in this sense in my lexicographical
notes, though I have seen it in, for instance, the National Police
Gazette of the 1880s; in my New York City history notes I have a
young prostitute in the early 1820s pleading with a judge not
to send her to prison as a disorderly person, by acknowledging that
she led a "free life" but asserting that she had "more real modesty
than commonly supposed" and that she was raising her younger sisters
in the paths of virtue.  Regretably, the judge wasn't moved, and the
newspaper editor who quoted her words was toasted by his rivals for
being soft on sinfulness.)  It is also well known that the earliest
record of the word with the specialization to homosexuality is a
lexicon compiled by the late Gershom Legman in 1941.

George Chauncey, in his "Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the
Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940" [BasicBooks, 1994] discusses
the word "gay" over pp. 14-21.  The historical information he offers
supports the notion that the sense was rather a novelty when Legman
recorded it.
        Queer, fairy, trade, gay and other terms each had a
specific connotation and signified specific subjectivities, and the
ascendancy of gay as the pre-eminent term (for gay men among gay men)
in the 1940s reflected [something].  (14)
        Fag was widely used in the 1930s, but almost exclusively by
"normals" (the usual word then for those who were not queers); gay
men used the word faggot instead, but it was more commonly used by
blacks than whites.  (15, illustrated with examples)
        While gay white men also used the term faggot (although less often
than blacks), they rarely reffered to themselves as being "in the
life," a phrase commonly used by black men and women.  (15)
        While the terms queer, fairy, and faggot were often used
interchangeably by outside observers (and sometimes even by the men
the observed), each term also had a more precise meaning among gay
men. . . .  (15)
        [Discussion of the words "queer" and "trade", (15-16)]
        Ultimately men who detested the word fairy and the social category
it signified were the ones to embrace gay as an alternative label for
themselves.  (16)
        [A man] recalled in 1951 that the word gay "originated with the
flaming faggots as a 'camp' word, used to apply to absolutely
everything in any way pleasant or desireable (not as 'homosexual'), .
. . [and only began] to mean 'homosexual' lter on."  [Chauncey's
ellipsis and paraphrase.]  (17)
        [Chauncey quotes a man who recreates a conversation he had had in
1937 in which he uses the word "gay", but I suppose that we shouldn't
be over-confident that the man interviewed wasn't transporting the
later word into the earlier time. (17-18)  On the other hand,
Chauncey also quotes passages from several "camp" novels of the mid
1930s that suggest that this sense was already known.]  ". . . you
look positively gay in the new clothes.  Oh, said Harold, you're
lovely too, dear. . . ."  A chorus boy gushed to his friend in
another, . . . "I'm lush.  I'm gay.  I'm wicked.  I'm everything that
flames."  (17-18, quoting from "The Young and Evil" of 1933 and
"Butterfly Man" of 1934)
        And Cary Grant's famous line in the 1938 film Bringing Up Baby
played on several of these meanings: he leapt into the air, flounced
his arms, and shrieked "I just went gay all of a sudden," . . .
because he was asked why he had put on a woman's nightgown.  (18)
        As one gay writer explained in 1941, ***  One might ask [of a
strange man]: "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.  ***  (18, citing a typescript in
the Kinsey Institute)
        And in the early 1930s a speakeasy on East Twenty-eighth Street
seeking gay patronage noted suggestively that it was located "in the
Gay 20's."  (19; a note on p. 379 says "the speakeasy's invitation is
preserved in an unidentified lesbian's scrapbook [in the Kinsey
Institute]).

So, it does not seem likely that the history of this sense of the
word can be pushed much further back than the presently accepted
date, and then only with luck.

Charles Kaiser's book "The Gay Metropolis, 1940-1996" [Houghton
Mifflin, 1997] has nothing to contribute.

GAT



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