Page 252 - Gay San Francisco: Eyewitness Drummer - Vol. 1

232 Jack Fritscher, Ph.D.
In 2005, because I was an historically documented coiner of “homo-
words,” I was invited to present this necessarily autobiographical paper
on language, identity, and homosexuality in the series “The(e)ories:
Advanced Seminars for Queer Research.”
The “Queer Keywords” event was convened and directed by Michael
O’Rourke and Noreen Giffney, Women’s Studies, School of Social Jus-
tice, University College Dublin, Ireland, April 14-16, 2006.
Michael O’Rourke and Noreen Giffney are also Research Affiliates
in the Centre for the Interdisciplinary Study of Sexuality and Gender in
Europe at the University of Exeter, UK.
In concept and content, this “Homomasculinity” essay specifically
answered the international invitation which Giffney and O’Rourke made
to activist . . .

. . . coiners of various homo-words to reflect anecdotally on how
and why they created their neologisms, their cultural and soci-
etal significance, origin, contexts, and agendas vis a vis the
impulse to conceptualize, name, and label — particularly in the
mass media of gay popular culture . . . with the idea of publishing
a “Homoglossary” . . .

My essay on the linguistic ecology of Drummer posited that in order
to write about the newly uncloseted homosexuality of the 1970s — the
first decade after Stonewall, our suddenly liberated culture required a
new vocabulary for authors reporting on the love that theretofore dare not
speak. Breaking the silence of the closet, I coined the word homomasculin-
ity in 1977 when I was editor in chief virilizing Drummer magazine in San
Francisco and needed words to conceptualize the new way we were in our
self-fashioning identities.
We were suddenly in our own new La Dolce Vita.
Necessity was the mother of invention.
In the way that Fellini created the new words paparazzo and paparazzi
for his Roman film, I had to create new and useful words for San Fran-
cisco Drummer.

In this homo-word essay of transparent history, and in my germinal
book, Gay San Francisco: Eyewitness Drummer, I am a protagonist as well
as a priestling-scholar playing the part of Eusebius hot-linking the “canon
tales” of Drummer and sorting, preserving, and quoting the leather his-
tory of Drummer that might otherwise have been lost.

©Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights Reserved—posted 05-05-2017
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