Sipping the tea that has been spilled over the internet
!!!= = = = = = = = = = LISTEN UP DOROTHY = = = = = = = = =!!!
Snatched, Wig, Reading, Slaying… There is no doubt that these words are familiar to the eyes of internet users. Left and right, people are throwing these words around in any form of media from Youtube videos to online forums. Want to see evidence? Just go on youtube and search drama channels, you’ll see gallons of hot ‘tea’ spilled and comments saying:
Though it's so common nowadays to sling these words out,
Have you ever considered where these words originate from and the history behind it?
//Hint: They’re from the LGBTQ+ community…//
!!!= = = = = = = = = = OVER HERE DOROTHY = = = = = = = =!!!
Who would have guessed that the homosexual agenda has been dominating the internet all along??!!
All jokes aside, a lot of the popular internet slang that we are using actually originates from the ballroom scene in NYC starting from the 1920's. During this time, being queer was criminalized, and often times queer people’s encounters with the legal forces end in violence.
Ballrooms were a safe place for queer people to congregate and express their true ideals without the fear of judgement. They could compete different categories (such as realness or femme queen) and may win a trophy (or even cash dollars) if they get the highest score from the judging panel. With a lot of queer people in these spaces, they gradually developed their own set of vernacular.
Though unbeknownst to them, their language would be fueling pop culture nearly 80 years after…
!!!= = = = = = = = = = COME HERE DOROTHY = = = = = = = =!!!
Soooooooo… What’s the big deal? Why do we need to know the history?
Well Dorothy, it may be fun to throw these words around without knowing the origin of it, but by doing this you may actually contribute to the undermining of queer oppression in the past.
YES, I KNOW THIS IS A HEFTY STATEMENT, BUT HEAR ME OUT!!
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With a vast number of people using language that orginated from queer oppression and queer creativity whilst being ignorant of it’s origin, the historic value of the word starts to distort since it has become common place to say words like wig or snatched due to the assimilation of the words into the heternormative media sphere!!
Again, it’s undeniable that queer language has been swept and adopted into pop culture and media. Katy Perry saying wig is a crystal clear sign of this. It is also undeniable that queer representation in media (like Rupaul’s Drag Race and Paris is Burning) may have led to this phenomenon.
Now don’t get me wrong, queer representation is absolutely needed to revert the bland status cishet people established in media (Don’t fight me on this, queer culture is a thousand times more enticing), but at the same time we have to keep in mind how insiders and outsiders of the community would react to the representation.
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Media is often times a mold for people to follow — a sort of proporganda that makes people rethink their daily interactions with different groups of people or ideas. (Or simply explained, the hypothermic needle theory, I think it has some degrees of truth) Hence why correct representation is vital to alleviating certain societal problems.
EXAMPLE
- When all gay teeny boys are portrayed as straight-passing / typical, and end up being turned away into sacrilegious exile when they come out, it may influence new generation of queer teens to also live this lifestyle of living in the closet. This is because they think that they would be faced with ridicule once they come out. This queer suffering storyline that has appeared all over media in the past decade (evident through shows like Sex Education) fosters fear in a new generation of gays.
- When heterosexual people see queer people saying words like read for filth hunty due to increased queer representation (again, it’s a good thing, try me), they may start to use these words in their daily interaction as well because they are atuned to this type of language. Actually, this same argument can also be made with African-American-Vernalucar-English (AAVE). With AAVE becoming more popular on the internet through stan twitter and black creators, more and more people are using AAVE without really knowing it’s historical significance. Is it really fair for the non-marginlised groups to speak the vernacular that’s not theirs?
With these words up in the dome and being widely used by all kinds of people whom don’t know it’s history, it’ll start to nullify the historical significance of the words, which spawned from the necessity to survive through hiding their queerness (thus in ballroom we have the category ‘realness’, which means to be able to pass as straight, as ‘real’).
Queer people have been and still is a marginalised group till this day, yet in media we see both cishet and non-cishet people abusing these words to death while being ignorant to the origin of the words. Is there something we can do to amend this phenomenon?
!!!= = = = = = = = = = LISTEN UP DOROTHY = = = = = = = = =!!!
There is a simple solution to this problem, and that is to spread awareness on queer history and where these words come from. Instead of continuing to being neglectful of the history behind the phrases, educate yourself the oppression and harassment that queer people used and still face. After you learnt about it, spread it to your friends and family — try to get the train going. There are tons of online resources that you can look at, there is an abundance of it.
!!!= = = = = = = = = = THANKS DOROTHY = = = = = = = = =!!!
Thank you for reading through this TED talk, now you are imbued with the power to educate and love. Look forward to my next TED talk XOXO.
