Dyke

A lesbian: an insult for most of the 20th century, aimed above all at masculine women, and since reclaimed by lesbians as a word of pride.

Dyke means a lesbian. For most of the 20th century it was an insult, aimed especially at women who looked or acted masculine, and lesbians have since taken it back so thoroughly that it now rides through Pride parades on motorcycles. It is the women's word in the family of queer and fag: a slur that the people it was thrown at decided to keep.

Why is it in a dictionary written by gay men? Because we share bars, marches and history with the women who carry it, and because knowing when we can say it, and when we cannot, is part of being a decent neighbor.

Where it comes from

Nobody knows for sure. Green's Dictionary of Slang marks the origin as unknown and gives two theories: one links it to dyked down, old slang for dressed up, since some lesbians have always dressed like men; the other sees a slow corruption of hermaphrodite into morphodite and then dike. The old spelling dike and the compound bulldyke, for a very masculine lesbian, are part of the same story.

The earliest example Green's gives is from the memoir of an American madam, written around 1930 and looking back to the late 19th century: "I had a housekeeper, usually an old dyke". Two years later the gay novel Scarlet Pansy used it too. From then on dyke was the standard put-down for any woman who did not perform femininity on demand.

How lesbians took it back

With gay liberation and lesbian feminism, women started using dyke on purpose, as a word of strength rather than shame. The best-known proof is Dykes on Bikes, the women's motorcycle contingent at San Francisco Pride. When the group tried to register the name as a trademark, the US Patent and Trademark Office refused twice, calling the word "vulgar, offensive and/or disparaging"; the group brought evidence that the community saw it as positive and empowering, and in December 2005 the office reversed itself. A federal appeals court confirmed the trademark in 2007.

Can gay men say it?

Lesbians use dyke among themselves in many shades: soft butch dyke, baby dyke, dyke drama. Some love the word, some still hate it, especially older women who heard it with a fist attached. A gay man using it about his close friend who calls herself a dyke is usually fine; a gay man using it as a joke about women he barely knows is doing exactly what straight men did to us. The same rule we ask for with faggot applies the other way round.

For our own history of reclaimed words, see queer, pride and the pink triangle.

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