Terminology of homosexuality

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The terminology of homosexuality has been a contentious issue since the emergence of LGBT social movements in the mid-19th century. As with racial terms within the United States, the choice of terms regarding sexual orientation may imply a certain political outlook, and different terms have been preferred at different times and in different places. In English, some terms in widespread use have been sodomite, pederast, Sapphic, Uranian, homophile, lesbian, gay, queer, LGBT, Two-Spirit, and same-sex attracted. Some of these words are specific to women, some to men, and some can be used of either; this too changes over time.

Examples of homosexual terminology

Tribadism

Fleur-12.jpg Main article: Tribadism

Although this term refers to a specific sex act between women today, in the past it was commonly used to describe female-female sexual love in general, and women who had sex with women were called Tribads or Tribades. As author Rictor Norton explains:

The tribas, lesbian, from Greek tribein, to rub (i.e. rubbing the pudenda together, or clitoris upon pubic bone, etc.), appears in Greek and Latin satires from the late first century. The tribade was the most common (vulgar) lesbian in European texts for many centuries. "Tribade" occurs in English texts from at least as early as 1601 to at least as late as the mid-nineteenth century before it became self-consciously old-fashioned-it was in current use for nearly three centuries.

Fricatrice, a synonym for tribade that also refers to rubbing but has a Latin rather than a Greek root, appeared in English as early as 1605 (in Ben Jonson's Volpone). Its usage suggests that it was more colloquial and more pejorative than tribade. Variants include the Latinized confricatrice and English rubster

Homophile

Popular in the 1950s and 1960s (and still in occasional use today, particularly in writing by Anglican clergy), the term homophile was an attempt to avoid the clinical implications of sexual pathology found with the word homosexual, emphasizing love (-phile) instead.

Homogenital

In the late twentieth century, this word was coined by Christian groups opposed to homosexuality. In contrast to homophile, the word focuses solely on the sexual acts which some churches believe to be sinful, side-stepping the associated issues of romantic or family love, community, and personal identity.

Homosexual

Fleur-12.jpg Main article: Homosexual

Karl-Maria Kertbeny coined the word homosexual in this 1868 letter.Main article: homosexuality The word homosexual translates literally as "of the same sex", being a hybrid of the Greek prefix homo- meaning "same" (as distinguished from the Latin root homo meaning human) and the Latin root sex meaning "sex".

Lesbianism

Fleur-12.jpg Main article: Lesbianism

Lesbian writer Emma Donoghue found that the term lesbian (with its modern meaning) was in use in the English language from at least the 17th century. A 1732 book by William King, The Toast, uses "lesbian loves" and "tribadism" interchangeably : "she loved Women in the same Manner as Men love them; she was a Tribad".

Pederasty

Fleur-12.jpg Main article: Pederasty

Today, pederasty refers to male attraction towards boys,[5] or the cultural institutions that support such relations, as in ancient Greece. However, in the 18th and 19th centuries, the term usually referred to male homosexuality in general. A pederast was also the active partner in anal sex, whether with a male or a female partner.

Sapphism

Fleur-12.jpg Main article: Sappho

Named after the Greek poet Sappho who lived on Lesbos Island and wrote love poems to women, this term has been in use since at least the 18th century, with the connotation of lesbian. In 1773, a London magazine described sex between women as "Sapphic passion". The adjective form Sapphic is still commonly used in the English language.

Sodomy

Fleur-12.jpg Main article: Sodomy

Though sodomy has been used to refer to a range of homosexual and heterosexual "unnatural acts", the term sodomite usually refers to a homosexual male. The term is derived from the Biblical tale of Sodom and Gomorrah, and Christian churches have referred to the crimen sodomitae (crime of the Sodomites) for centuries; the modern association with homosexuality can be found as early as AD 96 in the writings of the Jewish historian Josephus. Jerome in the early 5th century uses the forms Sodoman, in Sodomis, Sodomorum, Sodomæ, Sodomitæ (Hallam 1993). The modern German word Sodomie and the Norwegian sodomi refer to bestiality.

Urningtum

Karl Heinrich Ulrichs invented the term Urning in Germany in the 1860s for a male-bodied person with a female psyche, who is sexually attracted to men and not women. He expanded this system to cover a range of sexual appetites and gender variance in both males and females.

Slang or pejorative terms

Many of the following terms are considered acceptable in a casual register when used by members within LGBT communities and their allies like family and friends, but are considered pejorative or inappropriate when used in formal contexts or by outsiders. Many also imply masculinity in women (e.g. "bull dyke") or effeminacy in men (e.g. "fairy").

Female

  • Bean flicker- "Likening the clitoris to a bean"
  • Butch, butch-broad
  • Carpet muncher (or rug muncher)
  • Celesbian
  • Dyke (variations: bull dyke, bull dagger (alternatively bulldagger, bulldicker, from 1920s black American slang))
    • Diesel dyke
    • Drag dyke
  • Kitty puncher or pussy puncher with both kitty and pussy referring to a woman's vagina and puncher a variation on various derogatory terms for gay men like donut puncher et al.
  • Lezzie/Lesbo/Leso (also lezzer/lesser) (abbreviation for lesbian)
  • Muff Diver
  • The Game of Flats (an 18th century English term for sex between women)
  • Todger dodger, todger meaning penis

Male

  • Anal assassin (U.K) or anal astronaut
  • Ass Bandit or arse bandit
  • Back door bandit
  • Backgammon player (late 18th century Britain)
  • Batty boy (alternatively botty boy), also batty man
  • Bender
  • Bent, bentshot or bender
  • Bone smuggler
  • Brownie king or brown piper
  • Bufter, bufty (mainly Scottish) or booty buffer
  • Bugger (from Buggery)
  • Bum bandit or bun bandit
  • Bum boy or bum chum, also bum robber
  • Bum-driller
  • Bumhole engineer
  • Butt pirate, butt rider, or butt rustler
  • Charlie (rhyming slang for Charlie Ronce which rhymes with ponce)
  • Chi chi man (Jamaica and the Caribbean)
  • Chutney ferret
  • Cock gobbler
  • Cock jockey
  • Cock knocker, cockknocker and cocknocker
  • Cockpipe cosmonaut
  • Donut puncher (or Doughnut puncher)
  • Faggot (variation: fag) (U.S., recorded from 1914)
  • Fairy (common and acceptable for part of the 20th century)
  • Flit
  • Fruit (also fruit loop, fruit packer, butt fruit)
  • Fudge packer
  • Harry hoofter, rhyming slang of poofter
  • Gaysian, referring to a gay Asian
  • Homo (abbreviation for homosexual)
  • Iron (hoof) or iron hoofter (rhyming slang for poof)
  • Jobby jabber (mainly Scottish with jobby referring to excrement)
  • Knob jockey
  • Light in the loafers
  • Limp wristed
  • Marmite miner
  • Mary
  • Nancy or nancy boy, girlyboy or nellie
  • Oklahomo
  • Pansy
  • Pillow biter or mattress muncher,] referring to anal sex when one partner is face-down often into a pillow
  • Poof (variations include: poofter, pouf, poove, pooftah, pooff, puff) (U.K, Australia, New Zealand, California)
  • Queen, princess and variations
    • Bean queen (also taco queen or Salsa queen), gay man attracted to Hispanic gay men
    • Brownie queen, obsolete slang for gay man interested in anal sex (used by men who disliked anal sex)
    • Chicken queen, older gay man interested in younger or younger appearing men
    • Curry queen, gay man attracted to Asian-Indian gay men
    • Dinge queen, gay man attracted to black gay men (offensive use of "dinge" meaning black)
    • Drag queen, gay man into cross-dressing for performance
    • Gym queen, gay man given to athletic development
    • Pissy queen, gay man perceived as fussy
    • Scat queen, gay man into coprophilia
  • Ring raider
  • Sausage jockey (U.K)
  • Shirt lifter
  • Shit stabber
  • Sod (from Sodomy)
  • Toby
  • Turd burglar
  • Twink (backronym for twink stands for "teenaged, white, into no kink")
  • Uphill gardener, referring to the logistics of anal intercourse
  • Upstairs gardner, referring to the logistics of anal intercourse
  • Woolly, woofter and woolie woofter, a character from an Evening Standard cartoon and rhyming slang for poofter

Both

  • Gay
  • Ginger beer (rhyming slang for queer)
  • LGBT
  • Kamp/Camp
  • Molly and tommy: In 18th century England, the term molly was used for male homosexuals, implying effeminacy; Tommy, a slang term for a homosexual woman in use by 1781, may have been coined by analogy with molly
  • Queer
Sexual terms and slang
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