TY - JOUR
T1 - Twinks, Fairies, and Queens: A Historical Inquiry into Effeminate Gay Bottom Identity
AU - Vytniorgu, Richard
N1 - © 2023 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
PY - 2023/3/20
Y1 - 2023/3/20
N2 - Effeminate gay bottoms, or gender nonconforming men who are anally receptive and/or give oral sex to other men who are also "gender nonconforming," are persistently marginalized in gay and LGBTQ+ communities in Britain and the US. For some LGBTQ+ commentators, "twink" has become relexified to mean a young-looking, slim, hairless effeminate bottom, whereas originally the term primarily denoted a body type and age bracket among gay men. This article explores how the twink has come to bear connotations of effeminacy and bottom subjectivity, highlighting the steady erosion of other available cultural terms to denote a bottom whose gender expression does not conform to dominant cultural masculine stereotypes. It offers an analysis of two key historical effeminate bottom identities in Britain and the US, the "fairy" and "queen," and argues that the twink not only now carries connotations originally attached to these historical identities, but that it merges their gendered and sexual connotations with new characteristics concerning age and body type that may cause considerable anxiety among contemporary gay men due to their unsustainable "shelf life."
AB - Effeminate gay bottoms, or gender nonconforming men who are anally receptive and/or give oral sex to other men who are also "gender nonconforming," are persistently marginalized in gay and LGBTQ+ communities in Britain and the US. For some LGBTQ+ commentators, "twink" has become relexified to mean a young-looking, slim, hairless effeminate bottom, whereas originally the term primarily denoted a body type and age bracket among gay men. This article explores how the twink has come to bear connotations of effeminacy and bottom subjectivity, highlighting the steady erosion of other available cultural terms to denote a bottom whose gender expression does not conform to dominant cultural masculine stereotypes. It offers an analysis of two key historical effeminate bottom identities in Britain and the US, the "fairy" and "queen," and argues that the twink not only now carries connotations originally attached to these historical identities, but that it merges their gendered and sexual connotations with new characteristics concerning age and body type that may cause considerable anxiety among contemporary gay men due to their unsustainable "shelf life."
KW - Homosexuality
KW - effeminacy
KW - gay bottoms
KW - gay men
KW - twink
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85150830503&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/00918369.2023.2186760
DO - 10.1080/00918369.2023.2186760
M3 - Article
C2 - 36939125
SN - 0091-8369
SP - 1
EP - 21
JO - Journal of Homosexuality
JF - Journal of Homosexuality
ER -