# Japanese words for lesbians **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [October 1, 2005, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/japanese-words-for-lesbians/324359 "2005-10-01T18:27:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![dotchan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9d8465/32.png) [@dotchan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dotchan)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2005, 5:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/japanese-words-for-lesbians/324359/21 "2005-10-04T05:21:29Z")
I’m more or less horribly out of touch with Chinese/Taiwanese slang, so I only know two terms: 同性戀 (tong2 xing4 lian4) - literally “enamored with the same sex” 同志 (tong2 zhi4) - the old commie term for “comrade”, now used as slang for a gay person I also know a few terms that I now know to avoid when buying stuff\* or reading fanfics: _yaoi_ - hardcore male/male, depicting fairly explicit sex (although, oddly, penetration is only implied) _yuri_ - the equivalent for female/female pairings _uke_ - the femme/bottom/submissive half of a pairing _seme_ - the macho/top/agressive half _loli/lolicon_ - Short for “Lolita complex”, in which one of the characters is much younger, to the point of being severely underage A x B - pairing between characters A and B, usually the seme is listed first _noncon_ - short for nonconsentual; might not actually be rape, but the uke character is portrayed as not enjoying the sexual act (to paraphrase something I read somewhere, the attitude is: “no, but yes”) \*Dojinshi’s aren’t all porn. Some of the stories are funny, cute, touching, dramatic, etc, and the art is generally beautiful (even in the X-rated ones). It’s just that I wish I didn’t have to rip pages out of the binding about 50% of the time. ---
**Author:** ![sjc](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e5b9ba/32.png) [@sjc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sjc)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2005, 6:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/japanese-words-for-lesbians/324359/22 "2005-10-04T06:44:17Z")
Looking at an Estonian slang dictionary and attempting to translate (which I’m only so-so at), I come up with several words. There is ‘homoseksuaal’, which can be shortened to ‘homo’, both of which are apparently neutral. Then there are ‘pede’ and ‘pedekas’, both slightly pejorative shortenings of the offensive ‘pederast’. Then there’s ‘gei’ or ‘gay’. For lesbians ‘lesbi’ or ‘lespi’ (both probably pronounced the same way: ‘lespi’). A variant is ‘lesbar’/‘lespar’. There are also the euphemisms ‘lilla’, literally ‘violet’ and ‘roosa’ literally 'rose. I also see ‘seenekorjaja’, ‘seenemees’ and ‘seenesõber’ which translate to ‘mushroom picker’, ‘mushroom man’, and ‘mushroom friend’ respectively. Well, anyway, there are a lot of words to look through on this site and I’m slow to translate. A last few ‘engelbert’, with no explanation; ‘vaseliinimees’, ‘vaseline + man’; ‘viinerimees’ i.e. ‘wiener man’. I didn’t see so many words for lesbians, but maybe I they were among the words I didn’t really look at. ---
**Author:** ![matt\_mcl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ab992/32.png) [@matt\_mcl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/matt_mcl)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2005, 10:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/japanese-words-for-lesbians/324359/23 "2005-10-04T10:57:38Z")
> [@Johanna](#): > > \*The Virgin of Pilar told me > She wants to be a dyke > And have lesbian sex > With the Catalan … \* > > Um, what’s a Montse? The Virgin of Montserrat. ---
**Author:** ![audreyayn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@audreyayn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/audreyayn)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2005, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/japanese-words-for-lesbians/324359/24 "2005-10-04T16:01:34Z")
What are “Ways to make Japanese interesting”, Alex? Last time I checked, Wikipedia had a good list of gay-related Japanese slang. The probably have similar for other languages. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2005, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/japanese-words-for-lesbians/324359/25 "2005-10-04T23:45:42Z")
**matt** , all I can tell you is _maricón_ for fag is current in American Spanish too. Read _Little Heroes_ by Norman Spinrad and get several doses of homophobic Nuyorican stream of consciousness. _“Maricones sin cojones…”_ ---
**Author:** ![matt\_mcl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ab992/32.png) [@matt\_mcl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/matt_mcl)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2005, 9:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/japanese-words-for-lesbians/324359/26 "2005-10-05T09:59:33Z")
Detrás de los balcones ¡Hay maricones! Detrás de las ventanas ¡Hay lesbianas! - another protest chant Mecagón Dios, Soy marica Porque me gusta Porque me pica. Mecagón Dios, Soy lesbiana Porque me gusta Que me da la gana. - and another ¡Rajoy, Rajoy! ¡Aprovecha y dilo hoy! - and a third (chanted on gay pride day to PP (right-wing) leader Mariano Rajoy, widely kno_cough_believed to be a closet queen) ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2005, 2:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/japanese-words-for-lesbians/324359/27 "2005-10-26T02:16:37Z")
Is Turkish the most lesbian-friendly language? Turkish slang has two words for lesbian: _sevici_ and _ablaci_. Both have the agentive suffix -_ci_ (pronounced “ji”) used for practitioners. So _ablaci_ literally means ‘older-sister practitioner’ and _sevici_ literally means ‘love practitioner’, from the verbal root _sev-_ ‘to love’. So in Turkish lesbians are named for Love itself. That is so sweet! Common to the whole Turkic language family across Central Asia is the noun for ‘girl’, _qiz_. At the same time, the common verbal root _qiz-_ means ‘to be hot’. 🙂 (cite: Sir Gerard Clauson, _An Etymological Dictionary of Pre-Thirteenth Century Turkish_. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1973.) It’s like finding a nice lesbian attitude embedded within Proto-Turkic philology! Girl, I love being a lesbian philologist! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/japanese-words-for-lesbians/324359.md?page=1)