Outbursts!

Erotic slang words from Great Britain, Canada, the United States, Australia, and other English-speaking nations number well into the tens of thousands. But the history of terms used to describe the sexual activities of gays and lesbians have opposing sources: one, the discreet networks of gay men and lesbians who sought to come up with a new terminology for the pleasures of their secret lives; and the other, those who found gay sexuality repellent, and created phrases that denigrated and insulted its proponents. The result? A coded language, for better or worse, that celebrates sexuality in all its queerness.

A. D. Peterkin shows how euphemism, camp humor, rhyme, acronym, and secret code have all been recruited imaginatively by gay men, lesbians, and bisexuals to name what was thought to be unnamable.

A. D. Peterkin is a Toronto psychiatrist and journalist.

Allan Peterkin is a Toronto psychiatrist and journalist.