Unorthodox Chronicles

On Monday Nationals MP Alison Penfold introduce this private bill to federal parliament in an attempt to reshape the Sex Discrimination Act to target trans people while claiming not to target trans people

It is worth noting that this bill is being pushed by the National party, one of Australia's main right-wing parties. The party currently in power is the Labour party, our biggest left-wing/centrist party. The party pushing for this bill does not have the votes needed to pass it, and thus either needs to convince centrists to agree with them or are doing this to curry favour for the next election or some other goal.

When it comes to the bill itself, they are defining anything relating to one's sex in terms of the sex binary in a way which excludes intersex people in many ways. They also are changing the definition of sexual attraction, and the main change this makes is an exclusion of non-binary people in attraction. However, it is also worded so a trans woman lesbian is considered straight, and their definition also doesn't properly include asexual people. Those wording issues are already present in the original law, however.

If you don't know who your member is you can use this link to look up both state and federal members, just use your postcode or suburb to check.

Princess: an effeminate and relatively youthful male homosexual or lesbian (1931-4)

Daffodil: effeminate young man (1925)

To throw a fuck into: to have sex with (1919)

Top sergeant: a masculine lesbian (1939) [‘she takes command of the girls’ privates’]

Lily: penis (1919)

Wolf: sexually aggressive man (1847); a homosexual top (1918)

Soul kiss: a deep kiss, involving putting one’s tongue into one’s partner’s mouth (1907)

Tom: a lesbian (1909); [in 'old tom'] prostitute catering to lesbians (1966)

Church mouse: a male homosexual who frequents crowded churches in order to fondle any potential sex partners. (1941)

Discover one's gender: to accept or acknowledge one’s homosexuality (1941) / Lose one's gender: To return to living as a heterosexual

Minty: a masculine lesbian (1941)

Also a lot of early 20th century vulgarity is recorded in Letter from My Father, which is a collection of letters published by a man who's dad was, in short, a major slut and human disaster who wrote about his sex life for his son. It's insane. You can find copies of it online & it's a wild fucking read (literally!) and I think a really interesting look at the life of a person who goes against our stereotypes of what people in the past were "supposed" to be like.

note for writers: these are dated to the first time they were recorded, not necessarily to their first use. I imagine for many of these, they came about naturally through spoken language before they were written down anywhere. This is especially true of more underground slang because it's probably being recorded (in ways we still have) the least. So if you wanna use a term but it's a little off date-wise, give yourself some wiggle room.

also gonna take this moment to highlight two more i found recently:

Best boy: a sweetheart, a boyfriend, a husband. (1893) [w the obvious equivalent term 'best girl']

Honeydripper or honeydrips: a sexual partner (1917)

This is a form of backdoor bigotry from both normative facts (there are more straight than gay relationships) and well represented bigoted beliefs (men are superior to women).