Having written books, articles and plays, words are important to me.
The act of attempting to censor or deny the growth of new terms is a
losing battle. Despite the title of the source book, When Drag is Not
a Race, there remains a cultural race to document the free flow of slang
and colloquialisms which eventually make their way into our sometimes
antiquated vocabulary. A sampling of defined terms from Fessler and
Rauch's Irreverent dictionary of...Gay and Lesbian Words and Phrases from
GLBT culture have been inserted for addition into a crusty Webster's
Dictionary. The lumbering tome is being tugged into the future by a
stolid drag queen's shoe, leading the way toward loosening the lexicon of
queer terminology. Originally intended to be placed in a dazzling
geometric arrangement of decorative tabs and bookmarks, the terms rejected
authoritarian artist's rule, reached no consensus, and decided to splinter
off in their own communities. The lesbians formed their own discussion group.
The married gays had a ceremony, while the cruising singles stayed in the
urban center and at a local bar. Yet they remain united in dialectic diversity.
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