All Boys Aren't Blue

by George M. Johnson

It wasn’t until I was much older that I learned about “gay lingo.” Terms like shade and yaaassss that we so often hear used in television or on social media—especially by those not from the LGBTQIAP+ community—have become common in pop culture. Lingo that children like me were ostracized for using. Lingo that queer children today still get ostracized for using. And yet straight people use it out of context safely. This lingo or slang was created by “Black femmes,” which is an umbrella term that captures Black trans women, Black queer men, nonbinary folk, cishet Black women, and anyone else I may be missing. However, a lot of this history has been erased from those who identify as queer, which has allowed the notion that queer culture comes from emulating Black cishet women to spread. But it’s not true. That erasure also allows the hetero community to get “a pass” for using language that would often get queer folk harmed.