The Secret Language That Kept Queer People Alive

In 1864, a German lawyer named Karl Heinrich Ulrichs did something no one had ever done before: he invented a word for himself. Not a diagnosis. Not a slur. A word rooted in ancient philosophy that said this is what I am, and I am not ashamed. That word was Uranian, and it cracked open a door that has never fully closed.

This episode traces 160 years of queer linguistic history, from Ulrichs coining his own vocabulary to the underground world of Polari, the secret slang that kept gay men in Britain alive when loving another man was a crime. We explore the coded language of midcentury America, where being a "friend of Dorothy" could mean the difference between connection and isolation. We debunk the persistent myth about the origin of "faggot" and trace how words like "queer" and "dyke" traveled from weapons to badges of honor.

The story moves through ACT UP and Queer Nation reclaiming public language during the AIDS crisis, into the ballroom culture that gave the world "slay," "shade," "tea," and "vogue," vocabulary created by Black and Latinx trans and queer people that mainstream culture adopted without credit. And it lands in the modern era, where the internet has accelerated identity language at a pace Ulrichs could never have imagined.

Kris shares his own journey with the word "queer," from a time when it felt foreign and wrong to the moment it became a source of strength. He reflects on the power of taking a word that was used as a weapon and making it your own. Because naming yourself, on your own terms, might be the most powerful thing you can do.

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Transcript

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Every slur thrown at a queer person has been designed to do one thing. Let someone else decide what you are. But what happens when you build your own vocabulary? When you invent words that are so beautiful and so precise and so yours that the old labels, they lose all of their sting. And that's not just wordplay, but that is empowering. And queer people have been doing this for over 160 years. Hi there, I'm Chris with a K, and welcome back to this week in Queer History, where we uncover strategies and tactics from queer history that still work today. Today's topic in strategy is one of the oldest and most powerful in the queer toolbox. It's controlling the language used to describe ourselves. From secret codes whispered in Victorian parlors to slang that rewired mainstream culture, queer people have always refused to let hostile institutions define us. We built our own dictionaries instead. And in 2026, with battles raging over pronouns, the word queer itself, and who gets to say the word gay, this strategy has never been more relevant. By the end of this episode, you'll understand exactly how language became one of our most effective weapons and how you can use that same tactic today. Stories told with love and green. In the mid-1800s, there were no words for who you were. Not a kind one, anyway. If you loved someone of the same sex, the available vocabulary came from courtrooms and medical textbooks. Sodomite, invert, degenerate, every term carried a sentence, sometimes literally. Prussia's anti-sodomy laws, England's Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885, legal systems across Europe, they didn't just criminalize behavior, they criminalized existence. And that language they used made sure everyone knew it. And here's something we don't often talk about, but when the only words for your identity are invented by people who want to erase you, silence starts to feel like safety. You stop naming yourself at all, and that silence, that's the real victory for the people writing those discriminatory laws. So what do you do when every available word is a weapon pointed at you? Well, you forge new ones. The first person to pull this off was the German lawyer named Carl Heinrich Ulrichs. Born in 1825, Ulrichs did something no one in recorded history had done before him. He stood up in public and argued that love between men was natural, not criminal. But before he could make the argument, he needed vocabulary that didn't come loaded with shame. In 1864, Ulrich reached back to Plato's symposium and the myth of Aphrodite Urania, the heavenly Aphrodite born without a mother, associated with love between men. From that, he coined Urning, or Iranian in English. And he didn't stop there. He built an entire taxonomy: dionee for heterosexuals, urano-dioning for bisexuals, manling for masculine gay men, Weibling for feminine gay men. It was a complete framework, clinical yet dignified, built from classical philosophy instead of criminal law. Ulrich's published 12 pamphlets under the title Studies on the Brittle of Male Male Love. Then in 1867, he stood before the Congress of German Jurists in Munich and argued for the decriminalization of same-sex love. He was shouted down before he could even finish, but the words survived. Two years later, in 1869, a Hungarian journalist named Caroli Marie Kurtbenny coined the word homosexual in a pamphlet, opposing Prussia's anti-sodomy laws. Kurtbenny wanted a term that sounded scientific and natural, removed from moral judgment. The word stuck for better or for worse. And we have to take a moment to think about this. These two men understood that before you can change the law, you have to change the conversation. And before you can change the conversation, you need words that don't muddle the argument before it even starts. And the vocabulary kept evolving. In 1908, Edward Carpenter published The Intermediate Sex in England, framing same-sex love as a natural variation. And in 1923, an 11-year-old boy, probably coming into his own puberty and having thoughts about his own sexuality, found Carpenter's book in a public library in Los Angeles, and that book changed his life. Hay would go on to found the Matachine Society in 1950, one of the first sustained LGBTQ rights organizations in America. One book and just one word, reframed, became one movement. But not all queer language was meant for the public. Some of it was designed to be invisible. Polari emerged in the 19th century across Britain and continued all the way through the 1960s. It was a secret language woven from Italian, Romney, Cockney, Rhyming Slang, Thieves Cant, and Sailor's Lingo. Gay men used it to identify each other, flirt, and warn of danger, all in plain earshot of people who had no idea what was being said. Bono Tovada, your dolly old eek, meant good to see your pretty old face. Bona meant good, vada meant look. Ami Palone meant gay man. Fantabulosa meant wonderful. Naff meant uncool, straight, or boring. Polari got so popular that it hit the BBC. The radio show Round the Horn, which aired from 1965 to 1968, featured two characters, Julian and Sandy, who spoke fluent Polari to millions of listeners. Most of the audience laughed along without fully understanding what was being said. When England decriminalized homosexuality in 1967, Polari began to fade. The secret language that had kept people safe had done its job. Across the Atlantic, queer Americans built their own codes. Friend of Dorothy became shorthand for gay, drawn from Judy Garland and The Wizard of Oz. Confirmed Bachelor, musical, Boston Marriage for Women Who Lived Together, Alice Bluegown for Police, Auntie for older Kay men, Dick Leisch of the Matachine Society documented many of these terms, preserving a vocabulary that might otherwise have vanished. Then came the ballroom. In the 1970s, black and Latinx queer and trans communities in New York City built an entire culture with its own language, hierarchy, and values. Crystal Labaisia founded the House of Labasia, the first ballroom house, creating a family structure for people rejected by their biological families. And with that culture came words that would eventually reshape how the entire world talks. Reading, shade, tea, serving looks, sleigh, fierce, gagged, realness, and voguing. Paris's Burning brought Ballroom to film in 1990. Madonna's Vogue brought it to Pop Radio that same year. RuPaul's Drag Race, starting in 2009, sent it global. Words invented by black and Latinx trans women in Harlem ballrooms became the vocabulary of the internet and the world. And then there's the biggest reclamation of all, the word queer. It comes from the German word queer, meaning sideways or oblique, and for a century it was a slur. In 1990, Queer Nation marched through New York chanting, we're here, we're queer, get used to it. They took back the word. They made it powerful. Today it's an academic discipline, a community identifier, a point of pride. Dykes on Bikes began leading San Francisco Pride in 1976 and won a federal trademark for their name in 2005. So why is controlling your own language such a powerful strategy? Well, let's look at three reasons. First of all, language creates reality. When Ulrich coined Iranian, he gave people a way to think about same-sex love that didn't start with a crime or disease. And that's not just semantics. Cognitive science shows that words available to us, they shape what we can perceive and what we can believe. If every word for your identity is negative, your internal experience of that identity, it bends towards shame. So new words create new possibilities for self-understanding. And then second, shared vocabulary builds community. Polari wasn't just clever code, it was a membership test. If you understood it, you were one of us, and if you didn't, you were safely outside. Ballroom language did the same thing on a grander scale, creating an entire cultural ecosystem with its own values and its own heroes and its own standards of excellence. Language doesn't just describe a community, it constructs one. And finally, reclaiming words disarms your opponents. When Queer Nation took back the word queer, they didn't just neutralize a weapon, they converted it into armor. The word still carries all this historical edge, but now the people it once targeted were the ones wielding it. And that's a move that leaves your opponents with nothing to do. They can't even insult you with the word that you're using because you're wearing it as a badge. And here's something that we have to remember too. The one who controls the vocabulary controls the terms of the debate. Every single advance in LGBTQ rights was preceded by a shift in language. Homosexual replaced sodomite, gay replaced homosexual, queer replaced everything. Each new word moved the conversation from criminality to identity to pride. And that's not a coincidence. That is a strategy. I could not be doing this without our members. They help me find and share the moments from queer history that remind us that we've been here always and we've always been resilient. If you want to be a part of that, please check the link in the description. And if you're feeling a little tight on money, don't worry about it. I get it. Just subscribe and leave a positive review. Share it with a friend, even. That helps more than you know. But most of all, thank you for being here. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me. I've said that so many times as a kid that it became its own armor. I'm sure we all have. A little mantra that we would repeat on the walk home from school, trying to believe it. But here's the thing: it's half true. Words, they can hurt. They absolutely can, but only when you give them power, and when you give the person who's saying them power. But when you look at who's throwing those words and why they are saying them, something shifts. The words get smaller and the person gets smaller. But then you can flip it around. Words can also be incredibly powerful when you own them, when you decide what they mean to you and queer people. We might be the best wordsmiths in the history of language. We didn't just survive name-calling. We built a whole fabulous dictionary. And right now we are watching the same old, same old playbook. The don't say gay bills, the trying to erase the word gay from classrooms, debates around pronouns, treating it like they're destroying civilization, and politicians who think that if you ban the word non-binary, it'll make non-binary people just disappear. And here's a little spoiler alert: it doesn't. They've tried that. They've tried it since the 1800s, and it has never worked. But the one thing that does work is naming yourself. So I'm just gonna do a little demonstration because these words aren't museum pieces. They are alive and they're with us today. So if you're watching this episode thinking this is fantabulosa information, congratulations, you just spoke some Pilari. And if you clock the reference, you're clearly not NAF. If your friend asks what you're watching, just tell them you're catching up with an old friend of Dorothy. And if someone at work says something shady about the queer community, feel free to read them to filth, serve them some realness, and let them know the tea that we've been here since before their grandparents' grandparents were born, and we will be sipping from that same cup long after they're gone. Is your look today serving fierce? I hope so. And are you about to slay Wednesday? Obviously. Has this episode gagged you even a little bit? That's what I'm going for. So here's your playbook for this next week. Learn three pieces of queer slang that you didn't know before. Say them out loud, use them in a sentence, yes, be annoying, text them to a friend. Language only lives when people speak it. And here's something to try. Try to correct one piece of language this week. When someone says sexual preference, I mean, I don't know if you'll hear it, because hopefully you don't, but if you hear sexual preference, just be gentle about it and say, Oh, I think maybe you're thinking sexual orientation. Yeah, just gently point it out that there is a difference. That's it. Be kind about it, but you know, just try to see if you can influence the language. And if somebody uses the word transgendered with that unnecessary D on the end, just let them know. It's just a small, gentle correction, but do it kindly and it could shift the entire conversation over time. Try introducing yourself with your pronouns in one new space. It could be an email signature, a name tag, a bio, but every time you do it, you normalize it for someone who needs that space, that safe space. And you may be okay with it, but someone else could be exposed to something that could actually broaden their view. And then share one piece of queer vocabulary with a straight friend or an ally. You know, teach them what reading means, explain where sleigh actually comes from. Give credit to the ballroom communities who invented language half the internet uses right now without even knowing it. And then I want you to reclaim one word that was used against you in a hurtful way. Think about it, hold it in your mind, and then say it out loud. Maybe write it down, or even wear it like the armor that it's always meant to be. Sticks and stones, maybe, but words? Words built every movement in this episode. Words changed laws, words built families, and the right words spoken by the right person at the right time can change the entire world. So speak up. Name yourself and make it Bona. I'd love to hear from you in the comments. What's a favorite piece of queer slang that you use? Is it a classic like friend of Dorothy, or is it something from ballroom culture? Or maybe it's a word that your community uses that nobody else knows. Drop it down below because I guarantee you we all can learn something new from each other. And if you want more queer history like this, sign up for our email list. The link is in the description, and I promise the emails do not go straight to your inbox, if you know what I mean. And if this episode taught you something or made you smile, please hit the subscribe button and share it with someone who needs to hear it. Every share helps us reach more people who need to hear this history. Until next time, stay strong, stay bold, and keep making history.