Forbidden Words: Taboo and the Censoring of Language

Sex and bodily effluvia 157
I’m a total bottom. I don’t even like to get sucked. But I love giving good head for
hours and I love getting fucked. (Leap 1996: 152)
Gay language was replete with verbal play, as can be seen in the headlines
from the long-defunct New York tabloid Brevities, reproduced in Figure 7.1.
The headlines warrant scrutiny for the verbal plays on the following words
and/or their denotations: balls, bean, camp, cods, cops on the lam, cruise,
cunnilingus, daisies, degeneracy, drag, fag, fairies, flaunt, gay, hot chatter,
lavenderish, lesbians, making love, navy yard, pansies, plague, pussy,
queers, run afoul of, Sapphic sisters, sensational, sissies, sod, sucker, third
sex, tool.
Gay men are wont to refer to one another (certainly to queens) using female
names, 40 feminine pronouns and feminine address forms, such as sister,
aunty, sweetheart, dearie, darling, bitch, etc. In straight US, a man may be
addressed as Mac or Joe; in gay US, he’ll get Mary. Women are referred to as
fish (from the characteristic smell of a vagina). 41
‘I adore seafood. Gorge myself whenever the fleet’s in. But I can’t stand fish,’ [a gay
man] might say, and any gay man would instantly know that the speaker was turned
on by sailors and turned off by women, while the puzzled Mr and Mrs Readers
Digest, listening in, would assume this was a discussion about food preferences.
(Vining 1986: 55; quoted by Chauncey 1994: 286)
Gay ritual insults reported by Stephen Murray 42 have a lot in common with
flyting and playing the dozens (see Chapter 3), e.g.:
A: Cross your legs you’re showing your hemorrhoids.
B: You need to strap yours forward so you’ll have a basket.
A gay person who gives themselves tickets is known as Miss Thang; the
alphabetism YMCA is said to mean ‘Why I’m so gay’; New York’s Central
Park near Columbus Circle, once a haunt for gays, had a Fruited Plain,
Vaseline Alley and Bitches’ Walk. In 1970s San Francisco, gays with facial
hair wearing nuns’ habits established a now worldwide order of Sisters of
Perpetual Indulgence, in light-hearted mockery of Roman Catholic persecution
of gays. Verbal play is found in other gay slang such as bear ‘hefty hairy
man’, twink ‘cute young man’, chicken ‘young boy’, chickenhawk ‘older man
who prefers chickens’, datette (with the common diminutive suffix -ette)
‘brief date that involves no overnight stay’, almost the same as the three gets
‘get home, get off, get out’, tearoom/t-room ‘public toilet’.
Rape and the meaning of ‘No’
Consensual sexual intercourse is constrained by taboos: it may not freely take
place in public, and each party must have the power to refuse the other, thus