Trying To Hit A Moving Target

My third slide for my diversity training reads…

Every culture has their own language 

• Definitions evolve
• Words can have different means to different people
• Some people are very passionate about labels

Some of the more common definitions (At least for today) are…

I then go on to define the words that I use for my presentation, but the thing of it is words do change. Take the word “Transsexual” when I first came out it has an entire different meaning and was an acceptable word to use, now it has gone out of favor.

LGBTQ slang: Exploring outdated & modern queer slang
Queer slang has a long and colorful history, evolving as society and its attitude towards the community changes. Take a trip down history as we explore outdated and modern LGBTQ slang.
By LGBTQ Nation
August 27, 2022


As times change, so does language. With new generations come new words, phrases, and slang. This is especially evident in the LGBTQ community, where terminology evolves to better represent and encompass the queer experience. In this post, we’ll explore some of the outdated and modern queer slang terms used by LGBTQ people.

Note that this short and incomplete list mostly covers American LGBTQ slang. Many countries around the world have their own version of queer slang, from British gay slang derived from the rhyming slang Polari to beki – the Philippines’ queer language that borrows from a slew of sources, including pop culture, Japanese, Spanish, and the country’s local languages. While these gay slang terms and languages deserve just as much attention, one article wouldn’t be enough to cover everything.

One of the reasons that I retired was the changing language. A lot of it I do not agree with; for an example the word “Transgender” my definition is that of an umbrella term that covers anyone who crosses the gender norm. So in my opinion it includes everyone from a drag performer to a post-op. I got into a very heated debate over the definition, this young trans person said it only covered post-op trans people. In her opinion it didn’t cover a person living full time in their true gender.

Words morph over time and there is no stopping it.

Queer Slang In The Victorian Era

While slang is often associated with youth culture, various types of slang have long been used by marginalized groups to communicate while protecting one another from their oppressors. Linguists believe that’s how gay slang started, too.

In the Victorian era, male homosexuality wasn’t just considered taboo – it was illegal. Men who were convicted of sodomy – also known as “buggery” – were subjected to years of imprisonment and chemical castration. To hide their identities in plain sight of other queer people, gay and bisexual men would refer to each other with code names. Oftentimes, these code names would start with “Mary” or “Miss”, as in “Miss Kitten” or “Mary Louise”.

Today, “Mary” is still used as an expression or a way to teasingly refer to another gay person. The term “Miss Thing”, which refers to a self-absorbed or presumptuous person, may have originated from Victorian slang. But the Online Slang Dictionary cites 1960s gay male culture as the earliest known source, particularly cartoonist Joe Johnson’s characters “Miss Thing” and “Big Dick”, which appeared in early issues of The Advocate.

They didn’t have any widely used slang for trans people because we were usually lumped with “homosexual.”

The article ends with,

Why Queer Slang Matters

Words are powerful. They can be a way to cultivate communities, connect with other LGBTQ people, and they can also be used as a form of resistance. Queer slang has been around for centuries, and it isn’t going away any time soon.

Out language is part of our culture.

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Mollies and the Tommies

MISS MUFF'S MOLLY HOUSE IN WHITECHAPEL
East End Women’s Museum
20 November 2016


One of the challenges of uncovering transgender histories is that even where we find stories which hint at trans identities, we can't go back and ask the individuals in question how they would describe themselves.

Even if we could, concepts of gender identity constantly shift and change throughout history, and the question would probably make very little sense to someone who lived centuries before us.

However, the hints we find show us that in the past, just like today, gender was not a simple binary.

MOLLY HOUSES

In 18th century London a 'molly house' was a coffeehouse, inn, or tavern at which men could meet in secret to socialise and have sex. 'Molly' or 'moll' was a slang term for a gay man, and for a lower class woman, or a woman selling sex.

Although at this time in England sex between men was punishable by death, molly houses were part of a thriving gay subculture:

The legal records document investigations into about 30 molly houses during the course of the century. Considering that the population of London was only about 600,000 in the 1720s, having even just a dozen molly houses at that time is a bit like having 200 gay clubs in the 1970s. In some respects, the eighteenth-century molly subculture was as extensive as any modern gay subculture.

One of the main molly districts was on the east of the City, around Moorfields in Shoreditch. What is now the south side of Finsbury Square was a cruising area known as 'Sodomites' Walk'.

We have evidence that we were out on public back in the 1770s, there are records of court cases with trans people. One famous case was about John Gray who was cross dressing at the time and was hit by Lendall Pitts who made a pass at John Gray thinking him a woman.

CROSS DRESSING

Molly houses are a site where gay histories and trans histories intermingle. It was common for men at the molly house to wear women's clothes and to speak and act in typically 'feminine' ways. Most had alternative names such as Plump Nelly, Primrose Mary, Aunt May, Susan Guzzle, Aunt England, and the Duchess of Camomile.

One very famous molly called Princess Seraphina wore her feminine identity beyond these secret meeting places and into her public life. In 1732 she brought a case against a man for stealing her clothes. Her neighbour Mary Poplet described her in her testimony:

I have known her Highness a pretty while... I have seen her several times in Women's Cloaths, she commonly us'd to wear a white Gown, and a scarlet Cloak, with her Hair frizzled and curl'd all round her Forehead; and then she would so flutter her Fan, and make such fine Curt'sies, that you would not have known her from a Woman: She takes great Delight in Balls and Masquerades, and always chuses to appear at them in a Female Dress, that she may have the Satisfation of dancing with fine Gentlemen. Her Highness lives with Mr. Tull in Eagle-Court in the Strand, and calls him her Master, because she was Nurse to him and his Wife when they were both in a Salivation (salivation was a mercurial cure for syphilis); but the Princess is rather Mr. Tull's Friend, than his domestick Servant. I never heard that she had any other Name than the Princess Seraphina.

Then we have the case of Chevalier d'Eon.

The Incredible Chevalier d’Eon, Who Left France as a Male Spy and Returned as a Christian Woman
Celebrity, scandal, tell-all books, palace intrigue, political protest and more.
Atlas Obscura
By Linda Rodriguez McRobbie
July 29, 2016


WHEN THE CHEVALIER D’EON LEFT France in 1762, it was as a diplomat, a spy in the French king’s service, a Dragoon captain, and a man. When he returned in July 1777, at the age of 49, it was as a celebrity, a writer, an intellectual, and a woman—according to a declaration by the government of France.

Things get a little complicated…

But there may have been more to his refusal than simple pride. In May 1772, a French secretary in the service of the Secret allegedly came to London to investigate the claim that d’Eon was a woman; he left in June, fully convinced that d’Eon was indeed female because that’s what d’Eon told him. From that point on, Kates wrote, the French government took it as fact that d’Eon was a woman. Kates believed that d’Eon planted the rumors himself, so that when Beaumarchais came calling in 1775, d’Eon was armed with a fictional narrative that he’d been born female but forced into the role of a son by a tyrannical father. This would have enabled him to retire from the Secret and return to France, as Kates suggested, a “heroine who had dressed up as a man in order to perform patriotic acts for Louis XV” in the eyes of the public, rather than as a “trickster”.

When we look back in history it becomes complicated because of the changing vocabulary and words having different meanings back then and not only different meanings but also different spellings so our history gets lost in the fog of time.