Trade

A masculine man, usually straight-identifying, who has sex with gay men without calling himself gay; today also any hot, masculine guy.

Trade is a man you have sex with who is not, or says he is not, gay: the straight-acting, usually masculine guy who lets a gay man blow him or who fucks him, and then goes home to his girlfriend and his own idea of himself. Classic trade does not reciprocate, does not kiss, does not call. He is there for the sex, and the gay man is there for him.

Today the word has stretched. In a lot of gay talk, especially in Black and Latino gay and ballroom circles and online, "trade" can just mean a hot, masculine man who looks like he might be up for it, gay or not. "He's trade" is a compliment, a little wistful, a little predatory.

Where it comes from

Trade has meant prostitution in English since the 1590s, and the gay sense grew out of that. Green's Dictionary of Slang quotes a 1919 US Navy inquiry into gay sex in Newport, Rhode Island, where men talked about "calling for trade", and the historian Jeffrey Weeks notes that by the 1870s "any sort of homosexual transaction" could be called trade. For a long time it covered both the man you paid and the man who did not need paying.

By mid-century the gay guides had sorted it into categories. A 1949 Gay Girl's Guide lists "rough trade", "gay trade" and "commercial trade". In 1963 John Rechy's novel City of Night explained that the hustler who never admits enjoying sex with men "remains, in the vocabulary of that world, 'trade'", and a 1965 dictionary of gay terms defined trade as a man, "usually heterosexual", who takes the inserting role. A gay man who only went with such men was a trade queen.

Rough trade

Rough trade is the dangerous end of it: working-class, tough, sometimes violent men, often paid, often straight-identifying. For generations of gay men, especially in Britain, rough trade was a real fantasy and a real risk. Plenty of men were robbed, beaten or worse by trade who decided afterwards that they had been insulted, and the word still carries that edge.

Trade today

On the apps, trade lives under other names: str8, DL, discreet, "no face pic". In porn it is a whole market, from gay for pay performers to straight bait scenes built around the fantasy of seducing a straight man. And in everyday talk it has become a loving joke: your friend's new boyfriend may be "a bit trade" because he wears a tracksuit and does not dance.

Related terms