User:Benjiboi/Chicken (gay slang)

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Zephyrus, the Greek god of the west wind, courts the handsome and athletic Spartan prince Hyacinthus who would be considered a chicken with his sexual potency and youthful good looks are represented on a Attic red-figure cup from Tarquinia, circa 480 BCE. Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

Chicken and chick (with variations) is a gay slang term which has various origins but modern usages tend to primarily refer to young or youthful appearing gay men and sometimes other LGBT people. Historically used as a pejorative, the term has also been re-appropriated as insider terms of endearment within LGBT communities. Stereotypically describing a gay man barely out of adolescence who does not show much of any body hair or well-defined muscle-development. Most would consider a young man of barely-legal age or appearing to be very young and having an innocent nature.

naive Sometimes turns "pro" to survive.

men going "cluck-cluck-cluck" at me when I was a gay teen!

Back in the day, chickens not only looked like boys, but were boys, but it also applied to any barely legal types. Thirty years ago, information about gay sexuality wasn't readily available for teens who were questioning, age of consent laws were more restrictive for gays, making for a lot of naive young queers in their teens, easy prey for the "hawks." Chicken had a negative connotation (the gay equivalent of "jail bait"), made even more so by those chickens that turned pro. "Twink" never had that kind of baggage, even when it was sometimes used as a dismissive term. An 18 year old today is more worldly and not as clueless about sex as teens were 30 or 40 years ago

The Queer Issue; I Hate Older Men: Lay Off Me! I'm a Boy, Not Your Toy, and I Want To Be With Another Boy by Philip Guichard; June 21 - 27, 2000

chicken gay teen google search

[edit] Origin and historical usage

Slang words in general and gay slang are not always possible to trace as they often cross-pollinate in various subcultures and thus overlap^[1] and like most languages change with time with new words being introduced and others dropped altogether.^[2] The routes for chicken being used as a pejorative slang for gay men or simply effeminate men suspected of being gay are likely similar but separate as the history of the chicken's usage and symbolism spread and changed throughout the world.^[3]

[edit] Universal chicken

Main article: Chicken

The Red Junglefowl is a tropical member of the Pheasant family and the direct ancestor of the domestic chicken first raised in captivity at least 5,000 years ago in India, and the domesticated form has been taken all around the world.

The chicken is the most widespread of all domestic fowl with near-universal appeal from tribal societies to the most technically-advanced cultures.^[4][5] They were likely first domesticated in Southeast Asia and became a staple for food source as well as divination rituals.^[6][7] Chickens are good travelers (even on ships) supplying a self-perpetuating supply of meat and eggs; they spread westward from India through the Mediterranean, Europe and Africa and eastward from China through the Pacific Islands but no clear point of origin to the Americas.^[3] The chicken is seen as sexually potent perhaps accounting for ascribing them, the eating of their meat and eggs as taboo as well as having healing properties.^[8]

In the Victorian era cock was replaced in many instances with rooster.^[9] With a population of more than 24 billion in 2003 there are more chickens in the world than any other bird.^[10]

[edit] Chicken as sexual slang

Several origins of the word chicken being used to describe gay men are possible, and most stem from the linguistic concepts of insulting a man by comparing him to or calling him a woman. In Edita Jodonytë and Palmina Morkienë's research On Sexist Attitudes in English they note "female-associated words become totally derogatory when applied to males"^[11] and “[W]hen language oppresses it does so by any means that disparage and belittle.”^[12]

Comparing gay men to female chickens, an easily dominated animal with a pronounced sex drive, has possibly gained near universal use because both LGBT people and chickens are found nearly everywhere.^[13] In One of the Boys: Homosexuality in the Military During World War II author Paul Jackson writes "a number of words that originally referred to prostitutes came to be applied to effeminate or queer men.^[14]

From the 1857 "Dictionary of Obsolete and Provincial English: Containing Words from the English Writers Previous to the Nineteenth Century Which Are No Longer In Use, Or Are Not Used In The Same Sense. And Words Which Are Now Used Only In The Provincial Dialects" (e.g. all parts of England other than London) several routes seem likely, biddy was a chicken while Biddy's-eyes a pansy^[15] while carvel is a prostitute, a small ship, and a chicken-coop^[16]

cuckold in the 1600's as old man young woman thing who she is later called a prostitute and it seems most words for prostitutes became slurs against gay men

^[17]

[edit] Costermongers and Cockney rhyming slang

The Coster's Mansion, 1899 sheet music

London in the 1840s was more like a 21st century Third World megalopolis than a 19th century city. A significant portion of the population had no fixed place of work, and indeed many had no fixed abode. The city also teemed with outsiders, migrants from other parts of Britain and even Europe. A costermonger was a street seller of fruit and vegetables. The term, which derived from the words costard (a type of apple)^[18] and monger, i.e. "seller", came to be particularly associated with the "barrow boys" of London who would sell their produce from a wheelbarrow or wheeled market stall. Costermongers have existed in London since at least the 16th century, when they were mentioned by Shakespeare and Marlowe and were probably most numerous during the Victorian era, when there were said to be over 30,000 in 1860. They gained a fairly unsavoury reputation for their "low habits, general improvidence, love of gambling, total want of education, disregard for lawful marriage ceremonies, and their use of a peculiar slang language".^[19] Two examples of their slang are referring to potatoes as "bog-oranges" likely developed from the phrase "Irish fruit" also referring to potatoes^[20] and "cool the delo nammow" which means 'watch out for that old woman' with the words essentially backwards; cool (look), delo (old) and nammow (woman).^[20]

Out of the East End of London traditional Cockney rhyming slang developed which works by taking two words that are related through a short phrase and using the first word to stand for a word that rhymes with the second. For instance, the most popular of these rhyming slang phrases used throughout Britain is probably "telling porkies" meaning "lies" as "pork pies" rhymes with lies. "He's a right chicken plucker 'im" is an example of this as chicken plucker rhymes with and refers to fucker.^[21]

[edit] As gay slang

Chicken as gay slang or as a slur is amongst the lexicon of the cant slang Polari used in the gay subculture in Britain, which has become more mainstream with transcontinental travel and online communication.^[22] There is still debate about how Polari originated but its origins can be traced back to at least the 19th century^[23] and has multiple origins and routes of dissemination with researchers finding a relatively small base of less than two dozen common (universal words) supplemented by regional phrases. It is believed to be passed on near exclusively by oral history and teaching and was found in traveling professions such as those in the sailing and traveling entertainment industries (like minstrel shows and circuses). In Polari, chicken means a young gay (man) and can be used positively or negatively depending on the speaker, usage and intent.^[24][25]

[edit] check below and switch out for chicken refs

Cassell's Dictionary of Slang traces several uses of chicken with _______(sexual)

Chicken ranch referring to brothel 1920s-1940s

meaning an easy victim in the late 1800s and also as an eccentric person (along with fruitball, fruit basket and fruit merchant).^[26]

[edit] Usages

[edit] Chicken Hawk section to be trimmed down

World War 1 Ivory Soap ad with homosexual undertones^[27]

A chickenhawk or chicken hawk is slang used in American and British gay culture to denote older males who prefer younger males for partners, who may less often be called "chickens"^[28], i.e. the prey of the chickenhawk.^[29] Other variations include chicken queen^[30] and chicken plucker.^[29]

It is sometimes used as a disparaging vulgarity within the LGBT community, or seen as a slur against people in that community. The label can also be applied to a man who seeks partners with the look of someone young, regardless of their target's age.^{[31], [32]}

Much less frequently, "chickenhawk" indicates a man who uses underage boys for his sexual pleasure. The usage was publicized by members of the controversial group NAMBLA in the 1994 documentary film Chicken Hawk: Men Who Love Boys,^[33] although Time magazine reported it in this sense in 1975.^[30]

The use and significance of this term have been the subject of academic discussions ^{[34], [35]} as well as popular reports.

[edit] Images

Once lede sorted a bit add best photo; also possibly use high profile example.

Photograph of a Beijing Hand Scroll, opaque watercolor on paper; Qing dynasty, late 19th c. showing young men engaged in erotic play.

Photograph of Christian Wilhelm Allers (1857-1915), Junge.

Charles Demuth (1883-1935), Two sailors urinating. Watercolour (ca. 1930). Military _______ see ref on talk page for possible tie-in

[edit] See also

• Age disparity in sexual relationships
• Cougar
• Fruit
• Polari
• Troll

[edit] References

[edit] Further reading

• Earlier Citations for Terms Characterizing Homosexuals by Fred R. Shapiro, Journal of American Speech, Vol. 63, No. 3 (Autumn, 1988), pp. 283-285.
• Queer Words, Queer Images. R. Jeffrey Ringer (ed.) New York: New York University Press, 175-92.
• “Kinks and Queens: Linguistics and Cultural Aspects of the Terminology for Gays”; Ashley, Leonard R. N. 1979. . Maledicta III, 215-56.
• “A Glossary of Homosexuality”. Bardis, Pano A. 1980. Maledicta, IV.1, 59-64.
• Gayspeak, Gay Male & Lesbian Communication. Chesebro, James W., ed. 1981. New York: The Pilgrim Press.

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