My name is not Susan

Years ago, in the Philippines, I learned through gay writer-friends that a dictionary on gay lingo was being developed. Unfortunately this development did not see fruition primarily because of the dynamic nature of gay lingo itself. The said that by the time this dictionary has seen print, the terms that it contained would have been obsolete, replaced by new terms. One could argue that this can be addressed by releasing editions of this dictionary on a regular basis. After all, more words are continually added to the English language each year so why should gay lingo be any different?

But then again, would this be financially viable to whomever publishes this dictionary? How big is the market who will snap up copies of this dictionary on a yearly basis? Even if many gay lingo terms end up on the mainstream, many think that the idea of a gay dictionary is, at best, a novelty. I remember that Ralph Galan and Ronald Baytan edited a small, pocket-sized gay dictionary. It was cute and it made for a cute gift to give your uber-butch friend or relative. I don’t know how well it did it terms of sales because I didn’t see a second edition but then publishing it might have just been a one-shot deal. I don’t really know.

One viable option, I think, is to have an on-line dictionary that can easily be updated once new information (terms and what-not) is available. Kind of like a wiki-pedia (homo-pedia?) page that can be updated by a number of homo-linguists. 

I mentioned something about how some gay terms and phrases have made it through the mainstream. I had observed this long before, mostly with my older relatives. My earliest recollection of this is an older aunt who referred to money as anda. In the early 80s, I think this was spurred by the popularity of some musicians whose lyrics where both lyrical and colloquial. The band Hotdog comes to mind. I think advertising also played a big role in this. I remember an old advertisement for a multipurpose cleaner. A girl was ready to eat her pastry but it fell to the dingy counter, so she she couldn’t eat it anymore. She gloomily sighed and hopelessly uttered, ‘Gu-tom Jones na ako!‘ Tom Jones was, still is (I think) a gay term for hungry.

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