Polari: the dead language of gay British men

> Polari itself had Parlyaree as a base, but once in Britain was supplemented with a wealth of slang terminology from different sources, including Cockney Rhyming Slang, backslang (pronouncing a word as if it was spelt backwards), French, Yiddish and American airforce slang.

So perhaps its a dialect of Italian which borrows heavily from English? Or?

But of course there really isn't a rule, though. In practice what gets called a language vs. a dialect is mostly political. Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian are at least somewhat mutually intelligible, and Moldovan and Romanian are essentially the same language but for a border in between, as are Bosnian, Serbian, Croatian, and Montenegrin. By contrast, Mandarin and Cantonese aren't mutually intelligible at all but are supposedly both "Chinese dialects," and ditto for the various colloquial flavors of Arabic. The saying among linguists is "a language is a dialect with an army and a navy."

It's a political distinction, and linguists generally try not to make that distinction, using words like "tongue" (for the language/dialect) or "speech community" (for the people who speak it). cf. the way that Serbian/Croatian, or Danish/Swedish, are considered different languages, while the much more distinct Arabic and Chinese spoken tongues are considered dialects. (Note - Tunisian is considered a separate "language" in Tunisia, purely because of the way Tunisians view it. It's not actually any more distinct from other Arabics than, say, Iraqi or Moroccan.)

Or the way that Dutch is considered a separate language, while the very similar tongues that exist in Germany on a continuum between Standard German and Dutch are considered German (or Frisian, or Dutch) dialects.

Male same sex activity started to be decriminalised in the UK in 1967, but there were still many restrictions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_the_United_King...

I'm now wondering if this is parallel evolution to "Fenya" or some sort of cross-fertilization.

What stood out about those programmes were:

1. How well they've aged, with very few lost contemporaraneous references ( mostly in Horne's introductory monologue )

2. How much literature I had read in my youth that was directly influed by Horne's ensemble, without me being aware

3. How progressive it was, moreso than the likes of the Goon Show which seem to be higher-profile

It used to be a staple of BBC Radio 7 but seems to be much rarer on its successor, Radio 4 Extra:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00c7q4l

What does it mean when Obama flipped his view (evolved) in 2012? And, every serious 2008 POTUS candidate was against gay marriage.

So today we have broad support for gay marriage. Great -- certainly good news for my mainstream gay friends and cowoerkers (and by extension, for me).

But is that real progress? Or have we simply said something like, "your lifestyle is fine, as long as it looks a lot like our established mainstream lifestyle."

We pat ourselves on the back for accepting gays. How many coworkers do you have with facial tattoos? How many cross dressing coworkers? How many coworkers who are proud and open about being swingers, or nudists?

You are being too optimistic. Gays have more rights in some (mostly western) countries, it's not even close to the whole world. Meanwhile in Chechnya https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_concentration_camps_in_Che... and I'm not even talking about some Islamic countries where gay people are being killed on the spot.

People in UK still face higher rates of violent crime; there's still discrimination at work; there's only very recently been legal parity; there are increased rates of death by suicide.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/corrective-rape-women-re...

> This week a father was jailed for 21 years for sexual offences including the long-term sexual abuse of his two daughters. The abuse of his younger daughter began when she confided in him that she might be a lesbian. It is reported that the father decided to rape his daughter to “prove” that sex with men was “better”.

> For those of us who work with asylum-seeking women, this story of the rape of a lesbian or bisexual woman is all too familiar. “Corrective rape”, as it is chillingly known, is a common experience for women in countries where homosexuality is illegal or culturally disapproved of.

> No wonder such women seek asylum in the UK, a country which in some ways flies the gay flag with pride, allowing same-sex marriage and protecting LGBT people with laws prohibiting discrimination. However, rather than being protected and given sanctuary when they arrive in the UK, so many of these women end up locked up indefinitely in Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre in Bedfordshire

Homophobia is just stupid, government action is the real crime.

Apologies to any nuance of language I've missed here, as I'm sure this could be nitpicked to death.

While both acknowledge that gender is fluid personal interpretation of identity, to drag (female impersonation, but there are women who drag as men), gender identity is a joke to be made fun of and celebrate, but being transgender takes gender identity seriously.

They can be expressed by the same people (see Peppermint who won 2015's RuPaul Drag Race, she is a transgendered woman who competes in drag competitions), but they can just as often be in conflict.

Mostly. In not all cases and for not all people, and I'm probably wrong.