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Queer Slang Makes a Comeback

Queer Slang Makes a Comeback

Queer language often makes headlines for negative reasons – someone has been misgendered, or called something derogatory, or used a “reclaimed” word that isn’t accepted by other queer folks. But people have been queering language for as long as there have been queer people, a fact that doesn’t usually make the papers.

Since we’re in the digital age, most people – queer or otherwise – have a basic knowledge of bears and computer coding in the 1990s, or the modern dictionary found on any Grindr account. Historical queer slang is more difficult to find, since it would have been almost completely oral and kept secret to protect the identities of queer folks living in times and places that weren’t exactly LGBT-friendly.

Filmmakers Brian Fairbairn and Karl Eccleston highlight historical queer slang in their short film Putting on the Dish. While Fairbairn and Eccleston achieved internet fame for their video Skwerl (or How English sounds to non-English speakers), where the actors are speaking gibberish, Putting on the Dish features Polari, a dialect that sounds like gibberish but had special meaning for queer men.

The award-winning film shows two gay men in early 1960s London chatting in Polari, a dialect that pulls from Yiddish, Italian, and the slang used by sailors and thieves, among other languages. They gossip about a mutual acquaintance, complain about being hounded by police, and flirt – all in a dialect that would sound like nonsense to the straight men and women who would call the police if the conversation had taken place in plain English.

English anti-queer laws that led to the conviction of tens of thousands of queer men were in effect until 1967. The UK Ministry of Justice announced that they would posthumously pardon the men who had been convicted, and set up an easier process for living men to clear their records of the convictions. Polari, some of which survives in English slang today, was a way for queer men to live their lives without being found out by the police.

You can watch the video below, and read a translation of the conversation.

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