A Dictionary For All Things Lesbian

Photo: Ani DiFrancoJason Hickey/<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/exquisitur/2552615542/">Flickr</a>

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As my coworker, the whipsmart Emily Loftis, and I were discussing our mutual crush on Kaki King, she posed this question:

Can you do a post about gay language for straight girls? I’m always afraid I’m going to say something dumb considering that in my hometown “gay” is synonymous with really dumb. Grrr. I don’t have much of a measuring stick to work with. If you could include language that a well-intentioned bumpkin should avoid using, that’d be swell too.

PS: Is there a word for a girl-on-girl-crush, when the crusher is straight?

Thus inspiring me to create The Lezicon at After Ellen! A go-to guide for lesbian-related words, slang, and way too many puns.

Excerpt:

Anna says: Great question! And thank you for asking. Some straight women think being a queer gal simply means that we have 38 ways to spell wimmin, but there’s so much more to it than that! Below, I present to you the following lezicon*, a queer dictionary of sorts, with relevant examples, celebrities, and everyday usages that you can use to impress your new queer friends at the next folk festival and/or Vagina Monologues production.

*Note of historical relevance: Gay terms obviously vary by time, region, and stereotypes. I can’t get them all, nor do I mean to offend anyone with generalizations. Tongue is firmly in cheek here, but I encourage you to add your own terms in the comments.

Androgyny: Generically speaking, someone who exhibits both masculine or feminine gender traits. Might also go by: gender fluid, genderqueer, or David Bowie.

Baby Dyke: A young lesbian, often fresh out of the closet, full of ideals and front row tickets to see Girlyman.

Beersexual: A gurl who will make out or sleep with another grrrl only while under the influence. Found often in reality television shows, in sororities, and in rare cases, Nick Lachey’s above-ground swimming pool.

Birkenstock-Blocking: When you are trying to hit on a wommon and another lesbian interferes.

Boi: Could mean any of the following, depending on context — a boyish lesbian, a soft butch (aka butch lite), a biological boy who hangs in queer circles, or a member of OutKast.

Read the rest of The Lezicon at After Ellen.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

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