[Ads-l] Antedating of "Lavender" (Homosexual)

[Shapiro, Fred]

Although the Bart Spicer citation is misdated, the 1927 McGill citation is valid and remarkably early.  Terrific discovery, Bill !

Fred Shapiro


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From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> on behalf of Bill Mullins <amcombill at HOTMAIL.COM>
Sent: Monday, October 24, 2022 4:32 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Subject: Re: Antedating of "Lavender" (Homosexual)

1913 Bart Spicer Act of Anger 227

"You can't go about killing for such a reason.  Not saying the lavender boys aren't offensive.  Stench in the nostrils, as a matter of actual fact.  But if buggering a boy were a killing matter, half the people I went to school with would be dead long ago."

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1927 McGill Daily 16 Feb 2/3

Lesbians and lavender men
Do not attract each other;
Why is it?
I have asked the Students' Council
But they will not tell me --
Or they do not know

Why lavender men do not attract
Lesbians . . . . . . . . . .
            Euphorian (Texas)

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And I recall that, in The Maltese Falcon, Joel Cairo's handkerchief was "lavender-barred".





----

On Sat, Oct 22, 2022 at 9:07 AM Shapiro, Fred <fred.shapiro at yale.edu> wrote:

> lavender, adj. (homosexual) (OED 1973)
>
> 1932 Hollywood Reporter 7 Jan. 2
>

Fred neglected to give the text of the cite -- I tracked it down on
ProQuest:

---
Hollywood Reporter, Jan. 7, 1932, p. 2, col. 1
Despite the "law" against nance entertainers, the hottest speakeasy spot in
N.Y. is on Sixth Avenue, with fifty lavender boys serving the likker --
Greta Garbo, Fifi Dorsay and Joe Schenck among its patrons.
---

I see this is quoted in Laura Horak's book _Girls Will Be Boys:
Cross-Dressed Women, Lesbians, and American Cinema, 1908-1934_ (2016), as
well as an earlier article by Horlak ("Queer Crossings: Greta Garbo,
National Identity, and Gender Deviance") in the edited volume _Silent
Cinema and the Politics of Space_ (2014).

Worth noting that GDoS has a bracketed 1870 cite and a 1928 cite from Mae
West for "lavender" meaning "a euph. for homosexual and anything referring
to homosexuality; also as n., homosexuality."

---
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[1870 [UK] ‘The Ninety-Ninth Hussars’ in Songs for the Army 46: Sir
Lavender Silk was a pretty young man, [...] / His men, though respectful,
had thoughts of their own / Which might have spoke out if they chose, /
That Sir Lavender Silk had the aspect alone / Of a Lady dressed up in men’s
clothes!].
1928 [US] M. West Pleasure Man (1997) Act I: stanley: And don’t you annoy
the boys, Violet. paradise: Lavender, maybe, but violet never.
---

Also, in his 1926 book _Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years_ (p. 166), Carl
Sandburg said of Lincoln's close friend Joshua Speed, "A streak of lavender
ran through him; he had spots soft as May violets" and "Lincon too had... a
streak of lavender, and spots soft as May violets."

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Historians have argued about whether Sandburg was implying a homosexual
relationship between Lincoln and Speed, but elsewhere in the book "streak
of lavender" appears to mean something like "sentimentality." That's more
along the lines of Cole Porter's 1929 song, "I'm a Gigolo" (quoted in OED's
1997 draft addition): "I'm a famous gigolo, and of lavender, my nature's
got just a dash in it."

--bgz

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