In 1970s Australia, the ubiquitous “poofter” covered all forms of deviancy including men who had sex with other men, poor-performing sportsmen, politicians and motorists. In 1920s New York, it described an effeminate homosexual who sought social/sexual relations with “normal men”, according to George Chauncey while a “flaming faggot” was an extremely obvious, flamboyant gay man. In eighteenth-century London it was first a term for prostitute then for homosexual. “Faggot” has had different meanings according to where and when it was used. 'Homosexual” (or “homosexualist”) has similar 19th-century origins and was originally coined in 1869 by a Hungarian doctor, Karoly Maria Benkert. “In the past one asked if a woman was 'gay,” much as today one might ask if she “swings,”“ wrote White. And “gay-house” was the term for a brothel. Its pedigree is longer and according to Edmund White originally applied to women and meant loose or immoral, as in a prostitute.
Let’s begin with the most common term, “gay”, which baby-boomer homosexuals appropriated for their liberationist cause in the late 1960s and early 1970s. But words used by others to define gay people can say a great deal more about them than us.
