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[quote] The word queer was used by gay men about a decade earlier than gay, and it similarly has a centuries-long non-gay history, meaning odd, eccentric, disreputable or bent. The earliest documented homosexual use is a 1914 description of a party in Long Beach, California, when some “chickens” were invited to meet some prominent “queers”. It was the most commonly used term (together with fairy) before World War II. It was used mainly by “ordinary” and “straight-acting” gay men in preference to a host of words for effeminate gay men: nellie queens, margeries, fairies, pansies, nancy-boys.
[quote] By the 1940s the homosexual meaning of gay was common knowledge to those in the gay subculture and in the bohemian demi-monde in America. It became common in Britain in the 1950s. From the late 1950s it was increasingly extended to cover women as well as men. There were organizations for “gay men and women”, and in the commercial subculture there were “gay women’s bars”. For a short period, about 1965 to 1973, lesbian activists employed it, but they began rejecting it as the gay liberation movement began fragmenting into ever-purer ideological camps.
[quote] Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, there had been many campaigns for “homosexual” equality, and by the time of the Stonewall Riots of June 1969, there were 50 “homosexual” and “homophile” organizations in the United States. Immediately following the riots, political activists embraced the slang term gay which was now common in the street culture, and attached it to their liberation movement. By the end of 1970 there were 200 organizations calling themselves “gay”, and by the end of 1973 there were more than 1,000 “gay and lesbian” organizations, not only in San Francisco, Chicago and New York, but across the United States. There is no doubt that an explosion had occurred. Was it caused by a word?
[quote] Probably not. There were other important factors: the sexual revolution, the black liberation movement, the women’s liberation movement, the student anti-war movement, and the rise of popular youth culture. But we should not underestimate the power of words, and the power of words used as visual images. Crucial to the gay explosion was the formation of the Gay Liberation Front in July 1969, and the adoption of the slogans “Gay Power”, “Gay is Good” and “Gay Pride”. GAY was perfect as a short, powerful, arresting image, on posters, on lapel badges, on manifestos.
[quote] Gay became a powerful word for organisations, leaflets, newspapers and magazines, publishing collectives, T-shirts. Two New York papers titled GAY and Gay Power were founded in 1969 and quickly achieved a circulation of 25,000 – compared to earlier “homophile” papers that were lucky to reach 200 readers. London’s Gay News was born in 1972.
[quote] Gay became the global standard in numerous countries, displacing indigenous terms. For example, in 1972 the kathoeys or transvestite and transgender male prostitutes of Thailand reconceptualized themselves as masculine “gay kings” and effeminate “gay queens”. Queerwords don’t construct identities, but they can widen or narrow the possibilities for expression.
[quote] Words can be powerful motivating forces, but it would be a mistake to assume that an identity doesn’t exist prior to the words currently used to describe that identity. For example, plenty of words were used to identify different types of gay men in England in the eighteenth century: molly, endorser, Gany-boy, madge cull, mameluke, margery, patapouf, queen and aunt. These words were in addition to older terms such as catamite, sodomite and buggerer. Eighteenth-century lesbians were called tommies, tribades, sapphists – and lesbians.
[quote] Terms like “unnaturalist” or “invert” (which were both used in the eighteenth century) and “homosexual” (coined in 1868), were eventually taken up by the modern medical establishment, but they had no impact on the working-class subcultures where most queer words are employed.
