In three months, Hynes had sold more than $30,000 worth of shirts, and went on to launch Don't Panic! Designs, which produced iconic T-shirts for LGBT's who came of age (and out) in the 1990s and early 2000s. One milestone in this chronology came in 1990 when Skyler Hynes printed up some "Nobody Knows I'm Gay" T-shirts for a booth at the annual Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Festival. "Closets are for Clothes" is an attempt to retire a double meaning deemed demeaning and unhealthy-returning the term "closet" to its original purpose.Īs the LGBT-rights movement grew in size and prominence during the 1970s and 1980s, the use of queer humor became more overt, graduating from small buttons to T-shirts, signs, and-later still with the advent of online media-readily shared memes, gifs, and photos. "Come Out, Come Out," simultaneously references the sing-song cadence of fairy tales as well as serving as a modern-day statement for proudly self-declared "fairies." The use of language could also work in reverse. The button "How Dare You Presume I'm Heterosexual," evokes both campy indignation as well as a serious call to reconsider normative assumptions. Thus a button with the letter combination "IMRU" exists as both coded language and an invitation to connect with others who are LGBT-identified.
Like the pun or double entendre, they are simultaneously both fully exposed and carefully hidden. On the other hand, they rarely are larger than an inch or two, requiring close contact and intimacy in order to be effective. On the one hand, buttons are inherently public displays, placed on jackets and bags to be seen, read, and understood. In fact, the button format itself is an interesting communication tactic. Thus the affirming and often-humorous buttons can be seen as a continuation of an earlier tradition-one that in many ways perpetuated the subversive tendency to rely on puns and double meanings. Rather than abandon it, a new generation put it on display as a hallmark of a distinct culture. By taking a phrase regularly splashed across the society page of newspapers to describe a city's wealthiest and most privileged daughters' entrance into high society, and applying it to their own, often difficult entry into a much more hidden society, users of queer language set out to subvert norms and stretch meaning to almost comical extremes.Īfter 1969's Stonewall riots helped propel the LGBT civil rights movement into the public eye, gays and lesbians inherited this subversive but humorous language. "Coming out" borrows terminology used by elite and powerful families to describe their ritual of debutant balls however, for gay men especially this phrase meant accepting and joining a network of peers within the world of urban, queer society. Thus a "wolf" came to denote a man who preferred men, and possessed what many would consider the more traditional markers of masculinity, but the "wolf" moniker also suggested a man on the prowl who was perhaps a bit dangerous. What is clear, however, is that queer culture developed myriad uses for words with multiple meanings. Whether this was done as an affirmation within closed social circles or as a defense mechanism against outsiders overhearing queer conversation remains a subject of scholarly debate.
#You say your straight but you are gay meme code#
Often forced to speak in code or to use phrases with more than one meaning, gays and lesbians living before the era of gay rights movements and calls for civic equality resorted to a language filled with puns and humorous double meanings. The use of humor, double entendre, and secret language is a well-documented aspect of queer culture and LGBT history.