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Sep. 15th, 2003 11:57 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
strangeandsour.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
transWhat do people here know about the origin of the word "boi"?
I first came across the word when I lurked on a lot of goth communities, and it seemed like boi was a popular alternate spelling for boy. And clearly, it's used pretty often in trans communities for FTMs.
At volunteering a couple weeks ago (for those of you in the D.C. area, I volunteer at Whitman-Walker Clinic) I was talking to one of the other volunteers, and she told me that "boi" used to be used for physically mature men who weren't yet married. I'm killing myself right now because I can't remember what culture she was talking about when she told me this. It could have been a foreign culture (she had travelled widely, and I remember talking with her about the Philippines), but she might've been talking about the black community in the U.S. during the '60s.
At any rate, it seems that in each of these uses of the word, it almost always indicates masculinity that isn't the 100% machismo stereotype. FTMs are male, but not physically at birth. Goth guys are male, but quite a few of them wear make-up, and make-up is traditionally associated with girls. And in the context of the paragraph above, a male wasn't a "real man" until he had been married, and, by implication, started getting laid.
Anyone else have information or observations?
I first came across the word when I lurked on a lot of goth communities, and it seemed like boi was a popular alternate spelling for boy. And clearly, it's used pretty often in trans communities for FTMs.
At volunteering a couple weeks ago (for those of you in the D.C. area, I volunteer at Whitman-Walker Clinic) I was talking to one of the other volunteers, and she told me that "boi" used to be used for physically mature men who weren't yet married. I'm killing myself right now because I can't remember what culture she was talking about when she told me this. It could have been a foreign culture (she had travelled widely, and I remember talking with her about the Philippines), but she might've been talking about the black community in the U.S. during the '60s.
At any rate, it seems that in each of these uses of the word, it almost always indicates masculinity that isn't the 100% machismo stereotype. FTMs are male, but not physically at birth. Goth guys are male, but quite a few of them wear make-up, and make-up is traditionally associated with girls. And in the context of the paragraph above, a male wasn't a "real man" until he had been married, and, by implication, started getting laid.
Anyone else have information or observations?