We had a human sexuality discussion after church today and someone asked how terms like gay and lesbian came into modern common usage. Beyond the fact that Lesbos is a Greek island we didn’t really come up with much. As you might expect web searches are not returning what I’m looking for. Does anyone have the SD on how those and similar terms came to be?
I can expand a little on Lesbos… it was the home of a lady poet named Sappho who was known to love women.
http://www.temple.edu/classics/sappho.html
As for ‘gay’, not a clue, really.
I suppose a dictionary would be too much trouble? Fine.
Lesbian: Sappho, a Greek female erotic poet, lived on Lesbos.
Gay: It means “festive,” but once it was often used to mean “wanton” or “licentious” – see the connection?
Lesbian: A resident of Lesbos.
Gay:
- Bright and pleasant; promoting a feeling of cheer
- Full of or showing high-spirited merriment
- Given to social pleasures often including dissipation
- Brightly colored and showy
- Offering fun and gaiety
- Homosexual or arousing homosexual desires
No-one is quite sure how the latter changed to definition 6 but there is a type of social butterfly who fits the pattern for all the definitions. Watch the movie Bright Young Things to understand the original “gay”. Also includes the recent “gay”.
I believe there is a connection gaiety->foppishness->homsexuality.
As an aside, I was told in all earnestness by a geography teacher that current residents of Lesbos are referred to as “Lesbanians.”
No need for the wisecrack Nametag, as I’m well aware of the dictionary definitions and thought I was making that clear. None of the gay people in the discussion use the term to describe themselves as “wanton” or “licentious.”
“Gay” meaning generally wanton or licentious goes back to the 17th century. By the 19th century, it was specifically applied to prostitutes; streetwalkers in London were known as “gay girls” and brothels as “gay houses”. The Oxford English Dictionary gives several examples of the usage:
You can find examples of “gay” meaning licentious — but not homosexual — in early 20th century America. For example, a 1903 film titled The Gay Shoe Clerk has him fondling the ankle of an attractive female customer, then kissing her, to her delight, until her mother hits him over the head with an umbrella.
The earliest unequivocal use of “gay” for homosexual was by Noel Coward in his song Green Carnation, from the 1929 musical Bittersweet, in which he makes a double entendre on the term “Gay Nineties”, as four dandies sing:
In the 1938 screwball comedy Bringing Up Baby, Cary Grant is asked why he is wearing a woman’s frilly dressing gown. He replies in exasperation, “Because I just went gay all of a sudden!” (It’s worth noting that the line was not in the script; Grant ad libbed it.)
See the article on www.wordorigins.org.
Somewhere I read that they should be called Lesbotians.
Giving this the ol’ google test, I find 24 hits for Lesbanian and 0 for Lesbotian. Furthermore, none of the Lesbanian hits actually seemed to apply to the island or the people thereof. So it doesn’t look like either term is actually in use.
You can indirectly follow how well known the homosexual definition of “gay” entered popular culture by looking at the titles of American movies. The 1930s had titles such as Let Us Be Gay, Gay Love, The Gay Buckaroo, The Gay Divorcee, and several more; the 1940s had The Gay Sisters, The Gay Cavalier, The Gay Intruders, and others. But in the 1950s, nothing.
On the other hand, there’s the line in the Flintstones theme song about “you’ll have a gay old time”. I’m not sure exactly when that song was written, but sometime in the late 50s/early 60s, I think. Then again, maybe they were implying something about the sexual preferences of the characters or the audience…
Well, the initation rites of the Loyal Order of Water Buffaloes does involve some Crisco and leather, but I digress.
And as to Cary Granite…
Interesting. Did he also ad lib the other gay reference in that scene (“I’m just waiting for a bus on 42nd Street”)?
(42nd Street was a hangout for gays to cruise in the 20s-30s. If the cops hassled them, they’d claim they were waiting for a bus.)