GAY-BASHING etymology

[George Thompson]

Did Waugh make clear what "tin-bashing" consisted of?  Rough noise?
Was he speaking of a practice of tin-workers?

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.

----- Original Message -----
From: RonButters at AOL.COM
Date: Thursday, November 30, 2006 12:18 pm
Subject: GAY-BASHING etymology

> Others have pointed out the early Australian usage "ear-bashing"
> (not in the
> sense of physical abuse, however) and the early Brit. "Paki-
> bashing." Two
> comments on -bashing in the 1950s suggest a plausible etymology:
>
> 1. Robert A. Hall in AMERICAN SPEECH (31.2 [1956]: 83-88):
>
> p84 [the '4' indicates a footnote]:
> EAR-BASH.4 Anon.: ' . . . occasional bemedalled drinkers . , . who
> have
> wanted . . . to
> air-bash somebody or orher.' Australian Magazine, Jan. 4, 1955, p.
17.
>
> 4. In colloquial Australian English, an 'ear-bashing' is a long-
> winded
> monologue to which
> a speaker subjects his hearer(s): e.g., 'He gave me an awful ear-
> bashing
> about his exploirs in the war.'
>
> 2. Sir Arthur Waugh in a letter to the editor in FOLKLORE 74.2
> (1963):
>
> p415:
> That is very relevant when we consider ‘modern’ folklore,
> particularly the
> growing volume of industrial folklore; for folklore it undoubtedly
> is. As an
> example, may I quote a practice in a modern factory not far from
> London? [¶]
> When an apprentice leaves to take up a regular job, he is seen off
> to a
> tremendous ‘tin-bashing’. Nobody can say when or how the custom
> arose; but it is
> rigorously observed. It may date from the nineteenth century or
> earlier.
> It is only a few years later that we find "Paki-bashing" in the
> same locale,
> and shortly after that that "gay-bashing" is recorded on the same
> side of the
> Atlantic. It does not seem to me to be too much of a stretch to
> assume that
> the early Paki-bashers were working-class folks--and that "Paki-
> bashing" may
> have been a sardonic extension of "tin-bashing."
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org