![]() For example, if a straight woman asks her friend if their new coworker is cute, they could respond, “Yeah, but he seems a little light in the loafers, if you know what I mean.” Screamer Though many of these terms originated as pejoratives, they were quickly appropriated by the community, much like the term “queer”.Īnother similar term, “light in the loafers”, is a somewhat derogatory phrase that is used to describe someone who acts or appears to be gay. Other terms similar to flit include “fruit”, “pansy”, and “fairy”. “Flit” is a 50s slang term for a gay person that was popularized by the novel Catcher in the Rye. Leitsch described aunties as “aging or middle-aged homosexuals, offtimes effeminate in character” and people of “settled demeanor who cautions against intemperate acts”. At the time, bars could be shut down by the police if they were found to be serving alcohol to LGBTQ people. In the 60s, Leitsch was the president of a gay rights organization called the Mattachine Society and came up with the “Sip-In” – a demonstration held at New York City bars that banned service to out gay people. Judy Garland, who played Dorothy in the film, was also a queer icon who patronized gay bars and often surrounded herself with queer friends.Īccording to LGBT rights activist and journalist Dick Leitsch, “Alice Blue Gown” referred to police officers. Some sources cite writer and activist Dorothy Parker, who married an out bisexual man and maintained many queer friends even throughout the McCarthy era, as the inspiration for this phrase.īut the most widely accepted theory is that the phrase is derived from The Wizard of Oz, a film that is rife with queer subtext. ![]() One of the most well-known phrases to come out of this time is “friend of Dorothy”, which is code for a gay man. In the 60s and 70s, gay men even had a “hanky code” – a system that involved wearing bandanas with colors that signified whether you were a top, bottom, into BDSM, etc. This cultivated a rich queer culture and lexicon. In an act of resistance, underground gay and lesbian bars thrived in the 50s and 60s. Among those targeted by McCarthyism were radical thinkers, labor union leaders, and queer people – the latter of whom were targeted as “deviants”. ![]() Joseph McCarthy (R-WI) inspired a wave of anti-communist paranoia known as the Red Scare. The 50s were an especially difficult time for LGBTQ people as former Sen. Homosexuality remained illegal across the United States in the mid-twentieth century – that is, until Illinois became the first state to decriminalize same-sex relations in 1962. A post shared by Center for Sacramento History Slang Terms From The Mid-century To The 70s
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