Sexual Orientation
Brazilian Portuguese Gay Slang
A quick history of Pajubá, a secret language within the gay community created during the late 1900s in Brazil when queer people faces persecution from the government. It takes lexical inspiration from Old Tupí, Yoruba, and several other African languages. [Published on 08-21-2025]
Performing Gender: Queer Actor Wants to Play A Straight Guy
Play videoQueer actor Cole Escola, in an interview with Stephen Colbert, jokes about wanting to play a straight male character: "Enunciating is gay. [To play a straight character] you have to be like really scared to enunciate."
Es-tu lesbienne?
This is a Youtube-Shorts video.
The Dvita and Curtis reading reminded me of this video I came across a while ago. The poster, Sami Landri, uses mostly French (from Montreal), and English phrases ("girlboss," "come on, lez-queen!") are used for gay-affect, like "le coming-out" but a bit more modern. Although, this is pretty different from the article because the audience, location, and communicative intent are all different in a number of ways... [Published on 12-16-2023]
Ajax Gay Steel Mill - The Simpsons
Play videoThe famous gay steel mill scene from The Simpsons, Season 8, Episode 15, "Homer's Phobia." Homer takes Bart to a steel mill to teach him a normatively masculine social role, but soon discovers based largely on speech that the steelworkers are all gay. Great example of fear of the "gay voice" in popular media. CW for parody of homophobic attitudes.
Twink Slang vs. Bro Slang
A self-titled "twink" and "bro" compare slang terms used by each group, such as equating 'purr' to 'bet' or 'GOAT' to 'mother'. (Video Length: 55 seconds) [Published on 10-05-2024]
Town Hall Audience Member - Key & Peele
Play videoDon Kulick's "No" paper reminded me of this classic Key & Peele sketch, in which the camera and audience at a town hall follow Jordan Peele's character while a member of congress is talking about gay rights. In this case, the camera and audience are calling Jordan Peele's implicitly straight character into being as a gay subject, which Peele attempts to circumvent by refusing to linguistically acknowledge the attention and instead scurrying around the room to hide. I think this is a (non-violent) example of the same phenomena Kulick talks about, since Peele's character evidently believes "to have to utter that ‘no’ oneself is to be forced to produce oneself as a non-masculine subject," which in this case means he can't just say he isn't gay.
Stud name vs real name trend
A trend where studs, black masc lesbians, are asked to compare their stud names to their real names which are often seen as "girly".
Among the New Words Special Entry on Gender and Sexuality
The editors of "Among the New Words" in the journal American Speech want your help! For an upcoming special issue on gender and sexuality, which words and phrases should ATNW cover? Please respond to the survey by Oct. 31.
[Published on 10-17-2022]
lost lesbians t
TERFs are expressing concern that "lesbians are going extinct," citing trans/nonbinary men who identified as lesbians pre-transition. [Published on 2021]
Who Sounds Gay? | Op-Docs | The New York Times
Play video"This short documentary explores the reasons that some men sound stereotypically gay, whether they are or not."
Why are Disney villains gay/queer?
Play videoThis video addresses a problem in Disney films not addressed in Lippi-Green's 2012 paper: queer-coding of Disney villains. Disney commonly gives its villains stereotypically gay features, teaching children to associate homosexuality and immorality. While the video does not provide audio, I've provided some further links to queer-coded villains: King Candy (from Wreck-It Ralph): https://youtu.be/MVVeugPVD2Q Scar (from The Lion King: https://youtu.be/-8wgXRNYcPM
Zoella's Controversial Tweets from 2010
Gender stereotypes and sexuality appear to cross over in a few aspects, including negative connotations. This quote seems to suggest that spitting is associated with "macho" heterosexual men according to gender stereotypes; whereas gay men are not "macho" enough to be taken seriously when exhibiting the same actions.
Ellen DeGeneres' coming out episode
Play videoIn a televised talk show this year host Ellen DeGeneres celebrated the twentieth anniversary of her revelation on national prime time television that she was a lesbian. Forty-two million viewers tuned in to watch Ellen’s sitcom character declare “I am gay”, and this challenging and controversial decision made television history. A media frenzy followed with heated debates on gay rights and lifestyles. Ellen’s difficult and personal decision to reveal her lesbianism led to her sitcom show being cancelled in 1997. By 2004 she returned to television as a talk show host, and since then has earned ten Emmys for excellence in television. By making it acceptable for a public figure to declare a sexual preference, social change has occurred, and since then, gay marriage has become legal in the United States.
Shameless: Mickey and Gender Expectations
These photos are from multiple scenes found in the TV series Shameless. The photos involve a character named Mickey Milkovich, a troubled, poor teenager who radiates the “tough guy” and delinquent persona but also happens to be gay. The quotes on the left demonstrate Mickey’s attempt in hiding his sexuality through harsh, derogatory language that is often associated with men. Girls are expected to show polite, clean language while boys can often get away with obscene language due to the ideologies involving expectations of how women and men should speak. These ideologies are socially constructed based on gender stereotypes and are reinforced through socialization. Boys are socialized to assert dominance and stray away from emotion that is typically associated with women, which is what is being displayed in these images. Mickey initially hides behind these language ideologies that are rooted in a largely heteronormative and male hegemonic society due to the fear of intolerance within society and of challenging these ideologies to ultimately lose the masculine, “tough guy” persona he is expected to portray. However, the photos on the right show, although at times still obscene in language use, a changed Mickey that eventually speaks out against these ideologies through publicly coming out as gay with his boyfriend, Ian.
Gay Men React to Lesbian Slang
Play videoThis video shows a bunch of different gay men trying to decipher what different types of lesbian slang mean. They also go in to what their own gay slang is as well while trying to understand lesbian slang.
Judith Butler on Performativity
Philosopher and feminist theorist Judith Butler describes performativity as “that reiterative power of discourse to produce the phenomena that it regulates and constrains.” She has largely used this concept in her analysis of gender development. Working in the fields of feminist, queer, and literary studies.
Saturday Morning Cartoons
Autostraddle is self-described as "an intelligent, hilarious & provocative voice and a progressively feminist online community for a new generation of kickass lesbian, bisexual & otherwise inclined ladies (and their friends)".
There's a weekly column called "Saturday Morning Cartoons" following a few different artists, which reminded me of our discussion about Queen's "I Don't Speak Spritch: Locating Lesbian Language" due to the use of comics.
Some of the analyses Queen made are still visible in these cartoons although the distribution method and potentially audience differ from the ones she analyzed in the 90s.
LGBTQ girls and the heterosexual marketplace
This article isn't specifically linguistic, but relates to Eckert's notion of the heterosexual marketplace, where adolescents learn how to speak/act/dress/present in the best way possible to attract people of the 'opposite' sex and thus gain popularity. This article deals with how lesbian and queer girls fair in this social structure as people who essentially do not participate in the heterosexual marketplace.
Interestingly, the article posits that a good way to combat the isolation of non-conforming young people would be for schools/institutions to reward non-physical and non-sexual achievements. I find this a strange concept because I think of popularity/success in the heterosexual marketplace as being determined almost entirely separately from school-sanctioned recognition of achievement; in fact, I think institutional recognition often detracts from a person's success in the marketplace, and I wonder how/whether institutions are capable of causing a shift in the dynamics of young people's social structure. [Published on 12-31-1969]
Lexicon Valley: What does it mean to sound gay?
A Lexicon Valley episode on sounding gay, with Benjamin Munson. [Published on 12-01-2014]
Landover Baptist Children's Hospital Homosexual Reparative Ward
Landover Baptist Church's post that promotes the stigmatization of how some gay men speak.
Genderbread Person, V.1
(Enlarge image)Verson 1 of the Genderbreak person outling the four continua that make up one's gendered self: gender identity, sexual orientation, biological sex, and gender presentation. From www.itspronouncedmetrosexual.com