Fruit (slang)

"Fruit" and "Fruit cake" (as well as many variations) are slang Sexual s _te. dyke.cite web
first=Danny
title=Strange Fruit
publisher=Nighttours.com
date=2007
url =http://www.nighttours.nl/amsterdam/gayguide/strange_fruit.php
accessdate=2007-11-15]

Origin and historical usage

Slang words in general and gay slang are not always possible to trace as they often cross-pollinate in various subcultures and thus overlapcite web
last=Stanley
first=Julia P.
title=Homosexual Slang
publisher=Duke University Press
date=American Speech, Vol. 45, No. 1/2 (Spring - Summer, 1970), pp. 45-59
url =http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0003-1283%28197021%2F22%2945%3A1%2F2%3C45%3AHS%3E2.0.CO%3B2-G&size=LARGE&origin=JSTOR-enlargePage
accessdate=2007-11-15] and like most languages change with time with new words being introduced and others dropped altogether.cite web
last=McClive
first=Tom
title=Socio-semantic Lexical Variation in the Homosexual Community: Using Identity Terms to Create Gender Roles
publisher=State University of New York at Buffalo
date=July 14, 2003
url =http://66.102.1.104/scholar?num=100&hl=en&lr=&q=cache:5TTGlDvgmAoJ:r1.chass.utoronto.ca/twpl/pdfs/twpl19/TWPL19_McClive.pdf+fruit+homosexuality+term+reclaim
accessdate=2007-11-15]

In "A Dictionary of Epithets and Terms of Address" author Leslie Dunkling traces the friendly use of the phrase "old fruit" (and rarely "old tin of fruit") to the 1920s in Britain possibly deriving from the phrase "fruit of the womb". In the United States, however, both "fruit" and "fruitcake" are seen as negative with fruitcake likely originating from "nutty as a fruitcake" (a crazy person).

Costermongers and Cockney rhyming slang

London in the 1840s was more like a 21st century Third World megalopolis than a 19th century city. A significant portion of the population had no fixed place of work, and indeed many had no fixed abode. The city also teemed with outsiders, migrants from other parts of Britain and even Europe. A costermonger was a street seller of fruit and vegetables. The term, which derived from the words "costard" (a type of apple) [cite web |url=http://www.bartleby.com/81/4180.html |title=Brewer, E. Cobham. Dictionary of Phrase & Fable | Costard |accessdate=2007-01-13] and "monger", i.e. "seller", came to be particularly associated with the "barrow boys" of London who would sell their produce from a wheelbarrow or wheeled market stall. Costermongers have existed in London since at least the 16th century, when they were mentioned by Shakespeare and Marlowe and were probably most numerous during the Victorian era, when there were said to be over 30,000 in 1860. They gained a fairly unsavoury reputation for their "low habits, general improvidence, love of gambling, total want of education, disregard for lawful marriage ceremonies, and their use of a peculiar slang language".cite web
last=Hotten
first=John Camden
title=The Slang Dictionary: Etymological, Historical, and Anecdotal
publisher=Cockney Rhyming Slang
date=1859, page 130
url =http://books.google.com/books?id=l3MKAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA380&dq=%22The+Slang+Dictionary%22+%22John+Camden+Hotten%22#PPA130,M1
accessdate=2007-11-16] Two examples of their slang are referring to potatoes as "bog-oranges" likely developed from the phrase "Irish fruit" also referring to potatoescite web
last=Hotten
first=John Camden
title=The Slang Dictionary: Etymological, Historical, and Anecdotal
publisher=Cockney Rhyming Slang
date=1859, page 90
url =http://books.google.com/books?id=l3MKAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA380&dq=%22The+Slang+Dictionary%22+%22John+Camden+Hotten%22#PPA130,M1
accessdate=2007-11-16] and "cool the delo nammow" which means 'watch out for that old woman' with the words essentially backwards; cool (look), delo (old) and nammow (woman).cite web
last=Hotten
first=John Camden
title=The Slang Dictionary: Etymological, Historical, and Anecdotal
publisher=Cockney Rhyming Slang
date=1859, page 353
url =http://books.google.com/books?id=l3MKAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA380&dq=%22The+Slang+Dictionary%22+%22John+Camden+Hotten%22#PPA130,M1
accessdate=2007-11-16]

Out of the East End of London traditional Cockney rhyming slang developed, which works by taking two words that are related through a short phrase and using the first word to stand for a word that rhymes with the second. For instance, the most popular of these rhyming slang phrases used throughout Britain is probably "telling porkies" meaning "lies" as "pork pies" rhymes with lies. "Alright, me old fruit?" is an example of this as "fruit gum" is translated as meaning "chum" (a friend or acquaintance).cite web
last=Smith
first=Gordon
title=Slang to English letter F
publisher=Cockney Rhyming Slang
date=1998-2006
url =http://www.cockneyrhymingslang.co.uk/slang/F
accessdate=2007-11-16]

"Cassell's Dictionary of Slang" traces uses of "fruit" meaning an easy victim in the late 1800s and also as an eccentric person (along with "fruitball", "fruit basket" and "fruit merchant").cite web
last=Green
first=Jonathon
title=Cassell's Dictionary of Slang
publisher=Sterling Publishing, ISBN 0304366366
date=2006, page 549
url =http://books.google.com/books?id=my_ut0maeV4C&pg=PA440&dq=%22Donut+puncher%22+gay&sig=thPzRoHEPOezH1XHX499prJycNU |accessdate=2007-11-16]

As gay slang

Fruit as gay slang or slur is amongst the lexicon of the cant slang Polari used in the gay subculture in Britain, which has become more mainstream with transcontinental travel and online communication.cite web
last=D'Silva
first=Beverley
title=Mind Your Language
publisher=The Observer (UK)
date=December 10, 2000
url =http://observer.guardian.co.uk/life/story/0,6903,409178,00.html
accessdate=2007-11-14] There is still debate about how Polari originated but its origins can be traced back to at least the 19th centurycite web
last=Gill
first=Liz
title=Lavender Linguistics
publisher=The Guardian (UK)
date=July 14, 2003
url =http://www.guardian.co.uk/gayrights/story/0,12592,997623,00.html |accessdate=2007-11-14] and has multiple origins and routes of dissemination with researchers finding a relatively small base of less than two dozen common (universal words) supplemented by regional phrases. It is believed to be passed on near exclusively by oral history and teaching and was found in traveling professions such as those in the sailing and traveling entertainment industries (like minstrel shows and circuses). In Polari, fruit means queen, which at the time and still today is a term for gay men and can be used positively or negatively depending on the speaker, usage and intent.cite web
last=Gaudio
first=Rudolf P.
title=Sounding Gay: Pitch Properties in the Speech of Gay and Straight Men
publisher=Duke University Press
date=Journal of American Speech, Vol. 69, No. 1 (Spring, 1994), pp. 30-57
url =http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0003-1283%28199421%2969%3A1%3C30%3ASGPPIT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-V&size=LARGE&origin=JSTOR-enlargePage
accessdate=2007-11-15] cite web
last=Runner
first=Jeffrey T.
title=In Search of Gay Language
publisher=University of Rochester
date=2004
url =http://66.102.1.104/scholar?num=100&hl=en&lr=&q=cache:LCBvI3zpEAkJ:urresearch.rochester.edu/retrieve/3177/RunnerSBA2004.pdf+fruit+homosexuality+term
accessdate=2007-11-15]

Several origins of the word fruit being used to describe gay men are possible, and most stem from the linguistic concepts of insulting a man by comparing him to or calling him a woman. In Edita Jodonytë and Palmina Morkienë's research "On Sexist Attitudes in English" they note "female-associated words become totally derogatory when applied to males"cite web
last=Jodonytë
first=Edita
coauthor =Palmina Morkienë
title=On Sexist Attitudes in English
publisher=Informacinių technologijų plėtros institutas
date=
url =http://66.102.1.104/scholar?hl=en&lr=&q=cache:b-FLJcCvSpYJ:www.kalbos.lt/txt/1/jod_2.htm+%22insult+a+man+by%22+him+%22a+woman%22+language |accessdate=2007-11-15] and “ [W] hen language oppresses it does so by any means that disparage and belittle.” ["One Small Step for Genkind". In Exploring Language; Miller, C., Swift, K. (1992: page 220) , Harper Collins.] Comparing a gay man to fruit, soft and tender, effeminate, like a woman has possibly gained near universal use because both LGBT people and fruit are found nearly everywhere.cite web
last=Fraser
first=Bruce
coauthor =
title=Insulting Problems in a Second Language
publisher=Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, Inc. (TESOL)
date=TESOL Quarterly, Vol. 15, No. 4 (Dec., 1981), pp. 435-441
url =http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0039-8322%28198112%2915%3A4%3C435%3AIPIASL%3E2.0.CO%3B2-Q&size=LARGE&origin=JSTOR-enlargePage
accessdate=2007-11-15] In "One of the Boys: Homosexuality in the Military During World War II" author Paul Jackson writes "a number of words that originally referred to prostitutes came to be applied to effeminate or queer men - "queen, punk, gay, faggot, fairy, and fruit."cite web
last=Jackson
first=Paul
coauthor =
title=One of the Boys: Homosexuality in the Military During World War II
publisher=McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
date=2004
url =http://books.google.com/books?id=SHGRxuaJ0F4C&pg=PA194&dq=fruit+gay+subculture&sig=llb7BqWgTl2Oj_3GmxB84YLl1ds#PPA5,M1
accessdate=2007-11-16]

From the 1857 "Dictionary of Obsolete and Provincial English: Containing Words from the English Writers Previous to the Nineteenth Century Which Are No Longer In Use, Or Are Not Used In The Same Sense. And Words Which Are Now Used Only In The Provincial Dialects" (e.g. all parts of England other than London) several routes seem likely, "cockney" was "an effeminate boy who sold fruit and greenscite web
last=Wright
first=Thomas
coauthor =
title=Dictionary of Obsolete and Provincial English: Containing Words from the English Writers Previous to the Nineteenth Century Which Are No Longer In Use, Or Are Not Used In The Same Sense. And Words Which Are Now Used Only In The Provincial Dialects |publisher=Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, Inc. (TESOL)
date=1857, pg 326
url =http://books.google.com/books?id=-cQRAAAAIAAJ&dq=fruit+effeminate
accessdate=2007-11-15] while "cobble" is the stone (or pit) of a fruit which also is presently defined as male testiclescite web
last=Wright
first=Thomas
coauthor =
title=Dictionary of Obsolete and Provincial English: Containing Words from the English Writers Previous to the Nineteenth Century Which Are No Longer In Use, Or Are Not Used In The Same Sense. And Words Which Are Now Used Only In The Provincial Dialects
publisher=Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, Inc. (TESOL)
date=1857, pg 324
url =http://books.google.com/books?id=-cQRAAAAIAAJ&dq=fruit+effeminate
accessdate=2007-11-15] cite web
last=Green
first=Jonathon
coauthor =
title=Cassell's Dictionary of Slang
publisher=Sterling Publishing Company, Inc.
date=2006, pg 305; ISBN 0304366366
url =http://books.google.com/books?id=5GpLcC4a5fAC&pg=PA305&lpg=PA305&dq=cobbles+testicles&source=web&ots=2wmSP8dex5&sig=DHY3wzjCQAkGhumJhQejPOtNR-U
accessdate=2007-11-16] from the Cockney rhyming slang "cobbler's awls", meaning "balls" and "blow" was the blossoming of a fruit tree and is widely used as the Polari definition for oral sex on a man causing him to "blow"(ejaculate).cite web
last=Wright
first=Thomas
coauthor =
title=Dictionary of Obsolete and Provincial English: Containing Words from the English Writers Previous to the Nineteenth Century Which Are No Longer In Use, Or Are Not Used In The Same Sense. And Words Which Are Now Used Only In The Provincial Dialects |publisher=Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, Inc. (TESOL)
date=1857, pg 226
url =http://books.google.com/books?id=-cQRAAAAIAAJ&dq=fruit+effeminate
accessdate=2007-11-15] cite web
last=
first=Josh
coauthor =Chris Mohney
title=Lexigraphy: Piccadilly Polari
date=2006-09-26
url =http://gridskipper.com/travel/lexigraphy/piccadilly-polari-203364.php
accessdate=2007-11-16]

Fruitcake

"Fruitcakes", which are cakes containing both fruit and nuts, have been in existence since the Middle Ages, [http://whatscookingamerica.net/History/Cakes/Fruitcake.htm History of Fruitcake] ] but it is unclear when the term started being used disparagingly, especially in the United Kingdom and the United States, as a slur for a 'crazy person' (e.g. "he's a complete fruitcake") although "Cassell's Dictionary of Slang" traces uses of "fruitcake" meaning an eccentric (crazy) person to 1910s.cite web
last=Green
first=Jonathon
title=Cassell's Dictionary of Slang
publisher=Sterling Publishing, ISBN 0304366366
date=2006, page 549
url =http://books.google.com/books?id=my_ut0maeV4C&pg=PA440&dq=%22Donut+puncher%22+gay&sig=thPzRoHEPOezH1XHX499prJycNU
accessdate=2007-11-16] It is derived from the expression "nutty as a fruitcake", which was first recorded in 1935. [ [http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=fruitcake&defid=706327#706327 Urban Dictionary: fruitcake ] ] It should be noted that a nut can be either a seed or a fruit.

By the 1930s both "fruit" and "fruitcake" terms are seen as not only negative but also to mean male homosexual,cite web
last=Dunkling
first=Leslie
coauthor =
title=A Dictionary of Epithets and Terms of Address
publisher=Routledge
date=1990, ISBN 0415007615
url =http://books.google.com/books?id=5QIv39cbUMYC&dq=fruit+homosexuality+term
accessdate=2007-11-15] although probably not universally. It should be noted that LGBT people were widely diagnosed as diseased with the potential for being cured, thus were regularly "treated" with castration, [cite journal
last=Talbot
first=E.S.
coauthors=Ellis, Havelock
year=1896
title=A Case of Developmental Degenerative Insanity, with Sexual Inversion, Melancholia, Following Removal of Testicles, Attempted Murder and Suicide
journal=Journal of Mental Science
volume=42
pages=341–44 ] [cite journal
year=1929
title=Results of Castration in Sexual Abnormalities
journal=Urologic & Cutaneous Review
volume=33
pages=351 ] cite book
last=Kronemeyer
first=Robert
title=Overcoming Homosexuality
year=1980
publisher=Macmillan
location=New York
isbn=0025668501
pages=81, 87
quote=In the 1950s and 1960s, lobotomies ... were administered promiscuously in the treatment of homosexuals. ] lobotomies, [cite journal
last=Friedlander
first=Joseph
coauthors=Banay, Ralph S.
year=1948
title=Psychosis Following Lobotomy in a Case of Sexual Psychopathology; Report of a Case
journal=Archives of Neurology & Psychiatry
volume=59
pages=303–11, 315, 321 ] pudic nerve surgery, [cite journal
year=1904
title=The Gentleman Degenerate. A Homosexualist's Self-Description and Self-Applied Title. Pudic Nerve Section Fails Therapeutically
journal=Alienist & Neurologist
volume=25
pages=68–70 ] and electroshock treatment. [cite journal
last=Max
first=Louis William
year=1935
title=Breaking Up a Homosexual Fixation by the Condition Reaction Technique: A Case Study
journal=Psychology Bulletin
volume=32
pages=734 ] [cite journal
last=Liebman
first=Samuel
year=1967
title=Homosexuality, Transvestism, and Psychosis: Study of a Case Treated with Electroshock
journal=Journal of Nervous & Mental Disease
volume=99
pages=945–57 ] so transferring the meaning of "fruitcake", nutty, to someone who is deemed insane, or crazy, may have seemed rational at the time and many apparently believed that LGBT people were mentally unsound. In the United States, psychiatric institutions ("mental hospitals") where many of these procedures were carried out were called "fruitcake factories" while in 1960s Australia they were called "fruit factories".cite web
last=Green
first=Jonathon
title=Cassell's Dictionary of Slang
publisher=Sterling Publishing, ISBN 0304366366
date=2006, page 549
url =http://books.google.com/books?id=my_ut0maeV4C&pg=PA440&dq=%22Donut+puncher%22+gay&sig=thPzRoHEPOezH1XHX499prJycNU |accessdate=2007-11-16]

From 1942 to 1947, conscientious objectors in the US assigned to psychiatric hospitals under Civilian Public Service exposed abuses throughout the psychiatric care system and were instrumental in reforms of the 1940s and 1950s.

Usages

"Strange Fruit"

Some people have mistakenly believed the 1939 song "Strange Fruit" is in reference to LGBT people, due, in part to the bisexual jazz legend Billie Holiday who popularized it and a misinterpretation of the "swinging people" lyrics which refers not to various sexual activities of the swinging lifestyle but to African Americans that had been lynched in the Southern United States for decades.cite web
last=Gibson
first=Robert A.
title=The Negro Holocaust: Lynching and Race Riots in the United States,1880-1950
publisher=Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute
date=1998
url =http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1979/2/79.02.04.x.html
accessdate=2007-11-15] The song condemns American racism and was written to express horror after seeing Lawrence Beitler's photograph of the lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in Marion, Indiana. "Strange Fruit" became a signature song for Holiday. "Fruit of the gibbet" (used 1700s through late 1800s) refers to a hanged mancite web
last=Green
first=Jonathon
title=Cassell's Dictionary of Slang
publisher=Sterling Publishing, ISBN 0304366366
date=2006, page 548
url =http://books.google.com/books?id=my_ut0maeV4C&pg=PA440&dq=%22Donut+puncher%22+gay&sig=thPzRoHEPOezH1XHX499prJycNU
accessdate=2007-11-16] and derives from the Halifax Gibbet Law under which a prisoner was executed first and his guilt or innocence determined afterwards.cite web
last=Green
first=Jonathon
title=Cassell's Dictionary of Slang
publisher=Sterling Publishing, ISBN 0304366366
date=2006, page 634
url =http://books.google.com/books?id=my_ut0maeV4C&pg=PA440&dq=%22Donut+puncher%22+gay&sig=thPzRoHEPOezH1XHX499prJycNU
accessdate=2007-11-16] cite web
last=Carter
first=Albert Thomas
title=A History of English Legal Institutions
publisher=Butterworth
date=1906
url =http://books.google.com/books?id=1QQzAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA288&dq=%22Halifax+Gibbet+Law%22#PPA289,M1
accessdate=2007-11-16]

The instances of "Strange Fruit" being used within a LGBT context include the 1944 novel that depicts lesbianism,cite web
last=Jones
first=Sonya L.
title=Gay and Lesbian Literature Since World War II: History and Memory
publisher=Haworth Press
date=1979, Volume 02.04
url =http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=7rFOUk9lT4gC&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&dq=fruit+homosexuality+term+reclaim&ots=vCkO4Ghq7o&sig=0t290Oo-k8WGAy34Np3GO143Wko#PPA69,M1
accessdate=2007-11-15] Kyle Schickner's 2004 video,cite web
last=Sumter-Freitag
first=April
title=Strange Fruit
publisher=Vancouver Queer Film + Video Festival
date=2005
url =http://www.outonscreen.com/festival/2005/viewshowtime.php?stid=37
accessdate=2007-11-15] performance artist and ethnographer E. Patrick Johnson's one-man show (which toured the US between 1999 and 2004)cite web
title=Strange Fruit
publisher=Northwestern University
date=2007
url =http://www.communication.northwestern.edu/performancestudies/faculty/E_Patrick_Johnson/fruit/
accessdate=2007-11-15] and others all of which used the name "Strange Fruit" and addressed racial issues as well as various LGBT issues.cite web
last=Dixon
first=Poppy
title=Strange Fruit: Comparing the Struggles of African-Americans for Civil Rights with the Struggles of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered Peoples
publisher=Whosoever (magazine)
date=2001
url =http://whosoever.org/v6i1/fruit.html
accessdate=2007-11-15]

"Fruta Extraña," Spanish for "Strange Fruit", is a Spanish and English gay-themed talk show on BronxNet, Bronx public access television. Eric Stephen Booth directs the show as well as one of the longest-running programs on Bronx public access television - "Strange Fruits," which the New York Times describes as "a 30-minute burst of gender-bending camp and low-budget intrigue" that is "flamboyantly irreverent, unabashedly gay and teeming with men in high heels and pantyhose." " [O] ne of the few public displays of homosexuality in a blue-collar borough that is a bastion of Latin machismo" the bizarre sometimes free-form soap-opera has been aired since 1997 and has multi-racial cast of straight and LGBT actors and is considered "a kind of brilliant mess." The show also broadcasts on Manhattan Neighborhood Network and Queens Public Television.cite web
last=Fernandez
first=Manny
title=A Gay Soap (and Soapbox) in the Bronx
publisher=The New York Times
date=May 7, 2006
url =http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/07/nyregion/07access.html?pagewanted=print
accessdate=2007-11-15]

The fruit machine

The fruit machine was an actual machine built to aid in the detection of gays in the Canadian Civil Service from 1950-1973.cite web
last=Adams
first=Mary Louise
title=The Trouble with Normal: Postwar Youth and the Making of Heterosexuality
publisher=University of Toronto Press
date=1997, ISBN 080208057X
url =http://books.google.com/books?id=piG4Uprd-RoC&dq=jonathan+ned+katz+fruit
accessdate=2007-11-15] In discussing his choice for naming a 1994 Ontario gay and lesbian film and video retrospective and then re-using the phrase for his book "The Fruit Machine: Twenty Years of Writings on Queer Cinema", film critic Thomas Waugh explains quote|" [I] n the late fifties and early sixties our very own Mounties, ever conscious of security threats, had commissioned research into a mechanical devices for detecting homosexuality, inspired by similar research in the (United) States where McCarthyism and the sex panics had created a market for such lunatic pseudoscience. The idea was to unmask perverts by measuring involuntary pupillary dilations and other physiological reactions to pictures and words. Dubbed "the fruit machine" by terrified straight Mounties who didn't want to be the guinea pigs and whose security was already threatened, the technology came in several proposed models. One involved perspiratory responses to vocabulary with homosexual meanings like queen, circus, gay, bagpipe, bell, whole, blind, mother, punk, queer, rim, sew, swing, trade, velvet, wolf, blackmail, prowl, bar, house, club, restaurant, tea room, and top men."cite web
last=Waugh
first=Thomas
title=The Fruit Machine: Twenty Years of Writings on Queer Cinema
publisher=Duke University Press
date=2000, page 7
url =http://books.google.com/books?id=F1X3Sx77OdoC&pg=PA27&dq=fruit+effeminate&sig=b8Nc-D2w_05wZLYo-S_tC9uLvgY#PPA7,M1
accessdate=2007-11-14] Other devices involved showing subjects pictures of seminude men and measuring eye movement or attention span. quote|"Basically they'd show suspected homos slides of naked men and measure their responses (dilated eyeballs, sweaty palms). The poor dilated sweaty souls would then be fired or arrested. Needless to say, the Mounties' machine was a crock: after a decade of breathtaking inaccuracy, it was consigned to mothballs."cite web
last=Waugh
first=Thomas
title=The Fruit Machine: Twenty Years of Writings on Queer Cinema
publisher=Duke University Press
date=2000, page x intro by John Greyson
url =http://books.google.com/books?id=F1X3Sx77OdoC&pg=PA27&dq=fruit+effeminate&sig=b8Nc-D2w_05wZLYo-S_tC9uLvgY#PPA7,M1
accessdate=2007-11-14]

"The Fruit Machine" is a ITV Productions 1988 thriller about two Brighton gay teenagers running from an underworld assassin and the police.cite web
last=
first=
title=The Fruit Machine (1988)
publisher=New York Times
date=1998
url =http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/131998/The-Fruit-Machine/overview
accessdate=2007-11-16] cite web
last="MS" Time Out film reviewer
first=
title=The Fruit Machine
publisher=Time Out New York
date=2006
url =http://www.timeout.com/film/newyork/reviews/67141/The_Fruit_Machine.html
accessdate=2007-11-16]

On 8 July 1992 The Fruit Machine weekly club for "queers, dykes and their friends" opened at England's largest gay dance venue Heaven in London and recently celebrated their fifteenth anniversary.;cite web
title=Fruit Machine
publisher=Heaven London
date=2007
url =http://www.heaven-london.com/london/clubs/index.asp
accessdate=2007-11-16] cite web
last=Brumfitt
first=Stuart
title=Reggay Boyz
publisher=(Guardian) The Observer
date=2006-11-12
url =http://observer.guardian.co.uk/omm/story/0,,1942187,00.html
accessdate=2007-11-16]

Fruit salad

On June 1 1963, Alfred Chester of The New York Review of Books gave an extremely unfavorable review of gay author John Rechy's first novel "City Of Night" under the disparaging title "Fruit Salad"cite web
last=Chester
first=Alfred
title=Fruit Salad
publisher=The New York Review of Books
date=June 1, 1963, Volume 1, Number 2
url =http://www.nybooks.com/articles/article-preview?article_id=13694
accessdate=2007-11-15] including speculation that Rechy was a pseudonym. The story is of a male hustler seeking love while working the streets of New York City, Los Angeles, and New Orleans. It was later revealed that the book was at least partly autobiographical.cite web
last=McLeod
first=Ernie
title=Queer Classics: John Rechy's "City of Night"
publisher=Out In The Mountains
date=March 3, 2002
url =http://www.mountainpridemedia.org/oitm/issues/2002/03mar2002/ae10_qclassics.htm
accessdate=2007-11-15] The protagonist has sex with "men for money but with women to prove his masculinity intact" with the book exploring seedy gay sex and those who deal with the criminal aspects of it.citation |url=http://www.johnrechy.com/city.htm |title=City of Night |periodical=JohnRechy.com |accessdate=2007-10-22] Over three decades later Rechy complained noting "I'm no longer young, I understand the attack, and I protest the abuse and its recent extension" referring to the reprint of the review in a 1988 collection of reviews, "Selections" which was again rerun, intact, in 1996. He specifically cites the title and adds that "City of Night" became an international bestseller, has never been out of print, is taught in literature courses and is considered a modern classic.cite web
last=Rechy
first=John
title=Complaint (Re: Fruit Salad)
publisher=The New York Review of Books
date=October 31, 1996, Volume 43, Number 17
url =http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:xxynAs0Sa3YJ:www.nybooks.com/articles/1378+%22fruit+salad%22+%22city+of+night%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us
accessdate=2007-11-15] In an interview in Poets & Writers it was revealed by Chester's once-editor Edward Field that "the title of the offending review…was not Alfred Chester's but the New York Review of Books's."

In South Africa, fruit salad refers to male genitalscite web
last=Cage
first=Ken
coauthor =Eric Julian Manalastas, Denise Gabrielle A. Sese, Arlene Catanghal
title=Gayle: The Language of Kinks and Queens : a History and Dictionary of Gay Language in South Africa
publisher=Jacana Media
date=2003, ISBN 191993149X
url =http://books.google.com/books?id=WSn7026sq_cC&pg=PA70&dq=fruit+effeminate&sig=hap87_GZ8fsV5Vi30-KBku1_NFM#PPA70,M1
accessdate=2007-11-15] while elsewhere it can refer to a group of gay men, a set of military medals and badges or a selection of drugs (because of the various colors) or even a mixture of marijuana and hashish called a fruit salad bowl referring to the pipe used to smoke the mixture, the later two in the context of gay men partaking of them.

Frozen Fruit

A gay slang term from the 1970s meaning a sexually frigid gay man.cite web
last=Green
first=Jonathon
title=Cassell's Dictionary of Slang
publisher=Sterling Publishing, ISBN 0304366366
date=2006, page 548
url =http://books.google.com/books?id=my_ut0maeV4C&pg=PA440&dq=%22Donut+puncher%22+gay&sig=thPzRoHEPOezH1XHX499prJycNU
accessdate=2007-11-16]

uck a Fruit for Anita

In the 1970s Anita Bryant became the spokesperson for Florida orange juice, making a series of television commercials for them. She is also widely known for her strong views against homosexuality, and for her prominent Save Our Children campaign to prevent gay equality by overturning a 1977 Dade County (now Miami-Dade County) human-rights ordinance that prohibited discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Bryant led a highly publicized successful campaign to repeal the ordinance waged on what was labeled "Christian beliefs regarding the sinfulness of homosexuality and the perceived threat of homosexual recruitment of children and child molestation." The campaign was the start of an organized opposition to gay rights that spread across the nation and many credit it as a second Stonewall mobilizing LGBT people to come out of their closets.cite web
last=Sims
first=Robert
title=Strange Fruit: Take that, Anita Bryant! The Miami Gay & Lesbian Film Festival is reclaiming the orange
publisher=Miami New Times
date=April 26, 2007
url =http://www.miaminewtimes.com/2007-04-26/film/strange-fruit/
accessdate=2007-11-15] Jerry Falwell went to Miami to help her and Bryant made the following statements during the campaign: "As a mother, I know that homosexuals cannot biologically reproduce children; therefore, they must recruit our children" and "If gays are granted rights, next we'll have to give rights to prostitutes and to people who sleep with St. Bernards and to nail biters." In response gay activists countered with the slogan "Suck a Fruit for Anita" playing on the words to imply oral sex ("Suck") with other gays ("Fruit") was an appropriate response.

Fruit Loops

"Cassell's Dictionary of Slang" lists several definitions including the loop at the back of a man's shirt collar which can be used to "hold a victim ready for buggery" (circa 1980 on college campuses), gay mencite web
last=Nues
first=Boozie Beer
title=Mobile Magnified
publisher=Lagniappe
date=2007-11-06
url =http://www.lagniappemobile.com/article/1171
accessdate=2007-11-16] and an area where they hang out and cruise each other. "Fruit Loop" can also refer to a cluster of gay bars, stores and businesses like Las Vegas' "Paradise Fruit Loop" just off the Las Vegas Strip.cite web
last=
first=
title=Las Vegas Gay Bars in Paradise Fruit Loop
publisher=Gay Cities
date=2005-2007
url =http://lasvegas.gaycities.com/bars/nid/2201/
accessdate=2007-11-16] A fruitloop can also refer to a person considered crazy.cite web
last=Green
first=Jonathon
title=Cassell's Dictionary of Slang
publisher=Sterling Publishing, ISBN 0304366366
date=2006, page 549
url =http://books.google.com/books?id=my_ut0maeV4C&pg=PA440&dq=%22Donut+puncher%22+gay&sig=thPzRoHEPOezH1XHX499prJycNU
accessdate=2007-11-16]

"Fruit Loops", (also singular "Fruit Loop" and "Fruitloops") are also Freedom Rings), a set of six rainbow-colored metal rings worn as necklaces, bracelets, etc to symbolize gay pride or solidarity with LGBT people that were popularized in the 1990s.cite web
last=Green
first=Jonathon
title=Cassell's Dictionary of Slang
publisher=Sterling Publishing Company, Inc.
date=2006, ISBN 0304366366
url =http://books.google.com/books?id=my_ut0maeV4C&pg=PA549&dq=%22Fruit+Loops%22+gay&sig=Q-Rel2661bjMNtHlXJRfnXEmk7E#PPA549,M1
accessdate=2007-11-15] For National Coming Out Day (United States held 11 October) students have made home-made versions of the "freedom rings" with actual Fruit Loops cereal.

"Fruit Punch"

"Fruit Punch" was the first gay radio show in the United States,cite web
title=The Rest Of Our World......
publisher=Out In The Mountains
date=April 2000
url =http://www.mountainpridemedia.org/oitm/issues/2000/apr2000/news_wbriefs.htm
accessdate=2007-11-14] cite web
last=Zoellner
first=Tom
title=Roland Schembari -- Co-Founder of S.F. Bay Times
publisher=Out In The Mountains
date=February 24, 2000
url =http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/02/24/MN79034.DTL
accessdate=2007-11-14] and possibly the world, which aired weekly from 1982–1987 from Berkeley radio station KPFA, the first listener-supported radio broadcaster in the United States.

Fruit stand

In South Africa a "fruit stand" is a gay bar while in the US it is an area to pick-up gay male hustlers.

In 1983, Frank Robinson, a spokesman for the San Francisco Giants, joked that the team is planning to have a special seating section for gays. “Instead of a grandstand,” he says, “We’re going to call it a fruit stand.”cite web
last=de la Croix
first=Sukie
title=Gay Hostory: What a Difference a Gay Makes: Feb. 9-15
publisher=Same Same
date=2003-02-12
url =http://www.windycitymediagroup.com/gay/lesbian/news/ARTICLE.php?AID=2547
accessdate=2007-11-16]

Speaking of "celebrated fag hag" and former Warhol superstar Dorothy Dean, author Hilton Als writes (she) "reigned, with both cruelty and compassion, over that site of urban gay culture she called 'the fruit stand'."cite web
last=Silberman
first=Seth Clark
title="Youse Awful Queer, Chappie": Reading Black Queer vernacular in Black Literatures of The Americas, 1903-1967
publisher=University of Maryland
date=2005
url =https://drum.umd.edu/dspace/bitstream/1903/2883/1/umi-umd-2662.pdf
accessdate=2007-11-16] It is unclear whether she was referring to "The New Yorker" where she worked or Manhattan where she socialized.

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

"Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit" is 1985 novel by Jeanette Winterson which she subsequently adapted into a BBC television drama. It is about a lesbian girl who grows up in an extremely religious community. The main character is a young girl named Jeanette who is adopted by evangelists, who believe she is destined to become a missionary. However, Jeanette finds herself subject to desires and feelings that contrast with the beliefs of the evangelical church. Because of these feelings, she finds herself subject to horrific practices and exorcisms, encouraged by her mother and her mother's friends.

The novel interweaves Biblical passages thus exploring the tension many LGBT people have with organized religion and Christianity in particular. The phrase "Be fruitful, and multiply" has been cited to support theories that God does not believe in gay rights, LGBT people are not born as such and instead have made a lifestyle choice and that God does not approve of homosexuality.

"Tropical Fruits"

[http://www.tropicalfruits.org.au "Tropical Fruits"] is the name of a LGBT grassroots community group in Lismore in northern NSW Australia that hosts a number of gatherings throughout the year culminating in an annual New Year's Eve multi-day party. They started in 1988 and attract international travelers to the middle of the Australian bush with attendance of 3,500 people. “We’ve got oldies, youngies, fairies, muscle marys, trannies, queens, vanilla dykes, butch dykes, femme dykes, Michaels – that’s what we call the vanilla boys,” she laughs, “and we all hang out here together. Our parties are very camp, very queer – we embrace the full queer mix.”cite web
last=Taylor
first=Christian
title=Time To Get Your Fruit On
publisher=Same Same
date=2007-10-26
url =http://www.samesame.com.au/features/1549/Time-To-Get-Your-Fruit-On.htm
accessdate=2007-11-16]

Fruit Juice

"Fruit Juice" is a name of a magazine started in 1988 by "two dykes and two poofters" in Lismore in northern NSW Australia that was a focal point for the formation of the "Tropical Fruits" community group. It can also refer to semen for or from a gay man.cite web
last=Green
first=Jonathon
title=Cassell's Dictionary of Slang
publisher=Sterling Publishing, ISBN 0304366366
date=2006, page 549
url =http://books.google.com/books?id=my_ut0maeV4C&pg=PA440&dq=%22Donut+puncher%22+gay&sig=thPzRoHEPOezH1XHX499prJycNU
accessdate=2007-11-16]

Fruit fly

"Fruit fly" can refer to a gay man but more commonly (along with "fruit bat")cite web
last=Green
first=Jonathon
title=Cassell's Dictionary of Slang
publisher=Sterling Publishing, ISBN 0304366366
date=2006, page 549
url =http://books.google.com/books?id=my_ut0maeV4C&pg=PA440&dq=%22Donut+puncher%22+gay&sig=thPzRoHEPOezH1XHX499prJycNU
accessdate=2007-11-16] is used as a synonym for "fag hags," which are usually straight women who befriend and socialize with gay men - often in gay bars. In South Africa the definition seems more stringent stating that she only has gay male friends while in Filipino culture "fruit fly" is based on a metaphor of a women buzzing around gay men.cite web
last=Torre
first=Beatriz A.
coauthor =Eric Julian Manalastas, Denise Gabrielle A. Sese, Arlene Catanghal
title=Fag Hags in Filipino Gay Culture: Friendships, Identities, and Personality
publisher=University of the Philippines Diliman
date=presented at “Sexualities, Genders, and Rights in Asia: The 1st International Conference of Asian Queer Studies” in Bangkok, Thailand (8-10 July 2005)
url =http://66.102.1.104/scholar?hl=en&lr=&q=cache:wXFCpVGq0L4J:web.kssp.upd.edu.ph/talastasan/papers/torre_manalastas_paper.pdf+fruit+homosexuality+term
accessdate=2007-11-15]

See also

* Terminology of homosexuality

References

Further reading

* "Fruit Loops and Naughty Places: How the Language of Gay City Reflects the Politics of Urban Gay Experience." In Natasha Warner et al. (eds.), "Gender and Belief Systems: Proceedings of the Fourth Berkeley Women and Language Conference". Leap, William L. 1996c. Berkeley: Berkeley Women and Language Group. Pp. 411-23.
* [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0003-1283%28198823%2963%3A3%3C283%3AECFTCH%3E2.0.CO%3B2-J&size=LARGE&origin=JSTOR-enlargePage "Earlier Citations for Terms Characterizing Homosexuals"] by Fred R. Shapiro, Journal of American Speech, Vol. 63, No. 3 (Autumn, 1988), pp. 283-285.
* [http://books.google.com/books?id=2XBtBapxXrMC&dq=jonathan+ned+katz+fruit "Whose National Security?: Canadian State Surveillance and the Creation of Enemies"] By Steedman, Mercedes, Dieter K. Buse. 2000 Between The Lines, ISBN 1896357253.
* Queer Words, Queer Images. R. Jeffrey Ringer (ed.) New York: New York University Press, 175-92.
* "A Secret World of Sex, Forbidden Fruit: The British Experience 1900-1950" by Steve Humphries, London; Sidgwick and Jackson 1988.
* "Character Weakness" and "Fruit Machines": Towards an Analysis of the Anti-homosexual Security Campaign in the Canadian Civil Service". Labour/Le Travail 35 (Spring 1995): 133-61. - "The Regulation of Desire". Rev. ed. Montreal: Black Rose 1996.
* “Kinks and Queens: Linguistics and Cultural Aspects of the Terminology for Gays”; Ashley, Leonard R. N. 1979. . Maledicta III, 215-56.
* “A Glossary of Homosexuality”. Bardis, Pano A. 1980. Maledicta, IV.1, 59-64.
* Gayspeak, Gay Male & Lesbian Communication. Chesebro, James W., ed. 1981. New York: The Pilgrim Press.
* [http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=7nVq0BLfVT4C&oi=fnd&pg=PR9&dq=fruit+homosexuality+term+reclaim&ots=0elE9MiBOy&sig=6WLT5rWcfi9d3W5Mmy4ZhnGnCNQ#PPA229,M1 Reclaiming the Sacred: The Bible in Gay and Lesbian Culture] by Raymond-Jean. Haworth Press - 1997.