One of the key tasks for contemporary democracies is to ensure the human and civil rights of all in the increasingly pluralist world of postmodernity. Central to this is a mystery; just how may we erradicate the prejudicial attitudes which both reproduce, and are themselves produced by, existing inequalities? A degree of popular support is required before politicians will contemplate adding anti-discrimination laws to the statute book, and the causal relationship between liberalising legislation and increasing social tolerance is complex and unclear.

Nor do we understand how representational practices, whether popular or elite, act either to reinforce or to challenge prejudice. For example, it is certainly the case that lesbian and gay characters on mainstream television shows are portrayed far more sympathetically than was the case twenty years ago. Yet hate crimes motivated by homophobia continue, seemingly unabated, whatever allowances are made for various reporting methods (Comstock, 1991; Mason & Palmer, 1996; Coyle & Kitzinger, 2002).

This paper explores a specific element of homophobic discourse - offensive slang - and asks what it reveals about the nature and causes of homophobia. Drawing on insights from Foucaultian and (to a lesser extent) psychoanalytic theory, I examine data collected (seredipitously) during fifteen years working 'in the field' of facilitated groupwork. I conclude that current homophobic slang exposes a profound and specific psychosocial anxiety at the root of homophobia, and I appropriate the concept of the 'crypt' from psychoanalytic theory (Abraham & Torok 1986)  in order to begin theorising the psychosocial production of hate speech.

Speaking our minds

As feminists, anti-racists and queers can all testify, words can and do hurt and may exact a daily toll on self-esteem and emotional well-being (Fanon, 1968; Moraga & Anzaldua, 1981; Armitage et al, 1987; Comstock, 1991; Mason & Palmer, 1996). Social constructionism and Foucaultian discourse theory (Halperin, 1995) have convincingly demonstrated the larger harms that words do, to the extent that it seems not unreasonable of me to claim that there is no such thing as wordless harm. It is, after all, words that produce the social and cultural constructions neccessary for the policing of difference. It is hate speech that makes the wielding of sticks and the hurling of stones possible, whether such violence is institutional (the stoning of adulterous women or gay men under Sharia law) or individual (the gay bashers who go after their quarry with baseball bats).

Foucault (1976) recognised this when he insisted that the coining of the word 'homosexual' in the nineteenth century was a significant moment. Although historians have overturned the easy assumption that there was no gay identity before this moment (Donoghue, 1993; Boswell 1994), the word 'homosexual' marked the originary point of a discourse with specific claims to authority, that of allopathic medicine. The power of medicine as a social institution lies, precisely, in its authority to name as pathological certain attributes, characteristics and behaviours.

The various 'new' social movements and civil rights struggles of the last few decades of the twentieth century insisted that language was central to claims for human and civil rights (eg. Spender, 1981) Although routinely attacked as ritualistic political correctness, this insistence on the significance of the word represented a radical departure from traditional political activism. Academics and activists have identified the harm engendered by hate speech and have renounced specific words made ugly by intent and by history. Some were clearly and intentionally derogatory ('kike’, ‘faggot’, 'slag'). Others came freighted with an historical cargo of objectification, paternalism or simply 'othering' (negro, coloured, cripple, lady) and yet others had become irrevocably tainted by their appropriation into a hostile vernacular (spastic, retarded, Paki).

(the love that dares not) speak its name

The lesbian and gay liberation movements in the english-speaking world were as engaged in struggles around language as any other liberationist movement. There is not the space here to rehearse these cultural interventions. The rejection of "homosexual" (the hated product of a medicalising discourse) in favour of "gay"; the anti-assimilationist shift signalled by the adoption of "queer"; the ironic reclaiming of "homosexual" and its cheerful abbreviation into "homo" are all, however, well-known. Less familiar may be the lesbian and feminist debates over self-naming; the nuances distinguishing "lesbian" from "dyke", "gay woman" from "gay girl", the fierce battles over implicit racism and the adoption of terms such as "zami" or "kush" by lesbians of the African or Asian diaspora (Lorde, 1982; Mason-John & Khambatta, 1993; Reinfelder, 1995).

Much was at issue in these struggles, particularly for lesbians. The development, in the 1980s, of revolutionary lesbian-feminism, forced many lesbian communities to reflect with real urgency on what, if anything, the word "lesbian" might mean (Wilton, 1996). Revolutionary feminists, taking their cue from a particular reading of Adrienne Rich's seminal paper Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence (Rich, 1981), tried to detach the name "lesbian" from the erotic. Their stated definition of a lesbian was 'a woman-identified woman who does not fuck men' (Onlywomen Press, 1981). In short, heterosexual women could name themselves "lesbian" simply by avoiding penetrative sex, thereby laying claim to the political cachet of the label without having to experience the social marginalisation and opprobrium (or the great sex) dealt with on a daily basis by 'real' lesbians. This appropriation of ‘lesbian’ by heterosexual women may be one reason why many lesbians have little sympathy for the inclusivity of queer.

Language is infamously protean. Slippery and unpredictable, it shifts and mutates in the mouth and in 'common parlance'. "Bad" starts to mean "good", as does "wicked" or "evil". Thus "gay", having been claimed with pride by millions, is currently a catch-all term of abuse in English playgrounds. Not that it even 'means' homosexual any longer; a pair of trainers that don't conform to the style code, an especially boring lesson, a bad television programme or an inadequate pop song can all be dismissed as "gay" (Wilton & Streich 2002).

Clearly, then, language is very potent in relation to sexuality. What, then, can be learned by analysing homophobic slang, the language in which homosexuality is most commonly spoken about outside the academy? What do common slang terms for homosexuality tell us about the cultural construction of sexuality, about gender, about homophobia?

Let's talk about sex: an accidental methodology

This small study is informal in the extreme. It was not predicated on any thought-out methodological premises, nor was it informed by any rigorously tested theory. Rather, it emerged through happenstance and serendipity. Although this limits the claims which can be made for it - it is not generalisable, falsifiable, replicable nor especially valid - it also (I argue) strengthens it in some ways. Precisely because these are phenomena which brought themselves to my notice while I was engaged otherwise than in linguistic analysis, it appears likely that they are commonly present in the broader cultural milieu. It is the rare flower which must be hunted down, weeds are everywhere.

I have been facilitating workshops on safer sex, on the social aspects of HIV/AIDS, on lesbian health and on heterosexism awareness since 1987. During that time, I have repeatedly carried out the same groupwork exercise (first published in Aggleton et al, 1990). The exercise consists in getting participants to brainstorm, in small groups, all the slang terms (specifically nouns) they have ever heard of for a gay man. These are written on a sheet of flipchart paper and discussed. Participants then brainstorm slang terms for a lesbian, and conclude with an attempt to construct a similar list for heterosexual men and women.

As a strategy for recruiting a broad range of research participants this approach - albeit unintentionally - turns out to have several advantages. Workshop participants came from all socio-economic classes, were of diverse ethnic backgrounds and wide age range (from secondary school dropouts to voluntary sector workers past retirement age). They represented the full range of sexual orientations and more than two genders. Although no claims can be made for the sample being representative, fairly strong claims may be made for its size (I estimate that participants number between 2,500 - 3,000) and diversity.

Over the years, these workshops have taken place in towns and cities all over England, Scotland and Wales. The language exercise has been carried out by helpline volunteers, AIDS service organisation staff, teachers, students, nurses, midwives, doctors, hospital consultants, prison officers, youth workers, administrators, social workers, community workers, university lecturers, residential care staff, members of religious groups, counsellors, young farmers, sex workers, police officers, school refusers and others.

During this time I kept no formal records (something I now regret), but I did make a note of any terms new to me which emerged in the course of any session. This long experience has had the ambiguous legacy that I am now probably more familiar than most with the richness and inventiveness of what is, undeniably, a language of hate.

As groupwork facilitators will know, the kind of intense collaboration produced in such exercises can be extraordinarily productive. When encouraged to pay close and critical attention to phrases which they are accustomed to suppressing as rude or offensive, participants in this exercise are able to recognise that this is a language of obsession. When written down and exposed to critical scrutiny, the same themes can be seen to emerge over and over again. Without formal records I am unable to carry out any kind of statistical analysis, but I have certainly done this exercise on more than two hundred occasions and not one of those occasions gave rise to "data" that stood in contradiction to, or differed substantially from, what became a very familiar picture.

Striking a bum note: the data

The first finding is quantitative. There are far more slang terms in circulation for a gay man than there are for a lesbian. There are, strictly speaking, none at all for a heterosexual man or a heterosexual woman, although adjectives such as 'straight' or 'normal', together with the diminutive 'hettie' sometimes appear. For whatever reason, participants who are not lesbian- or gay-identifed feel a strong need to write something down in the heterosexual columns, and the nouns they choose for heterosexual man and/or woman have included; slut, slag, stallion, stud, slapper, tart, bird, dolly bird and macho man. These are, however, terms which go beyond simply indicating heterosexuality. They in fact refer to sexual characteristics which may be shared by gay or non-gay individuals and which are to do with sexual attractiveness, prowess or availability.

It is usual for groups to come up with so many terms for a gay man that they easily cover a flip-chart sheet of A1 size. The smallest number produced by any group is twelve, whilst the top score has been forty seven, although this was produced by a group of gay helpline workers, and included many terms not in general circulation (such as chicken-hawk, rice queen and snow queen) which denote particular sexual preferences to do with age or ethnic origin. Since such terms do not mean gay man per se, they are not included in my argument here.

The "lesbian" list, on the other hand, rarely contains more than half a dozen words. Of these, many are corruptions or variations on the word "lesbian" itself (lezzie, lezzer, lezbefriends, lezzo etc). Others (muff-diver, cunning linguist) tend to reference cunnilingus, which has become the definitional activity of lesbianism in heterosexual fantasy (Wilton, 1996; 1997) Participants are often surprised at their inability numerically to match their previous list, and may expend much fruitless effort to produce more words. Where the group includes lesbian participants the list is sometimes longer, since few heterosexuals seem to know terms, such as "bulldagger" or "bulldyke", familiar within the lesbian subculture. It is not a lengthy list in any circumstances, however, and the record currently stands at an unimpressive sixteen.

I interpret this rudimentary quantitative data to mean two things. Firstly, that there is far more attention (albeit hostile) paid to gay men than to lesbians or to heterosexuals of whichever gender. Secondly, that this language of the homo/hetero divide is produced and owned by heterosexuals (not a surprising finding) and, moreover, it is strongly gendered.

It is not possible here to analyse the full implications of this complex set of findings, and I concentrate my discussion here on the data relating specifically to gay men. I want to interrogate these data, and to use my analysis of them to enrich our understanding of prejudice and hostility towards gay men. From this point on, therefore, I shall use 'homophobia' to mean negative feelings (of hatred, disgust, fear etc) directed towards gay men by men who do not themselves identify as gay (although this does not, of course, mean that they do not experience same-sex attraction). It is men and masculinity that primarily concern me here. This is partly pragmatic, since these are the issues that I have witnessed emerging most strongly from my serendipitous trawl through the vernacular. However, there may be more substantial reasons for exploring the psychosocial bundling-together of cultural norms of masculinity with (in opposition to) heteronormative constructs of male homosexuality. Many (eg: Pharr, 1988; Davidson, 1990) have suggested that homophobia, whether directed against men or against women, is an intrinsic element in masculinist hegemony and, therefore, in the doomed psychological project of male self-fashioning. It is in acknowedgement of the gap between 'real' masculinity as experienced by the individual and the unattainable ideal that the distinction between the phallus and its feeble shadow the penis is drawn. Masculinity and homophobia are everywhere in psychosocial collusion.

Moving on from the quantitative to the qualitative, the data are similarly stark. When the terms for a gay man are subjected to rudimentary taxonomic classification, they fall into three quite distinct categories. The vast majority refer to anal intercourse, while a smaller number reference effeminacy in various ways. The final category is simply made up of terms which do not fit easily into either of the first two and is fairly miscellaneous.

Caught with their trousers down? An obsessive fear revealed

It seems to me that these words, precisely because of their casual, throwaway nature, offer a kind of "listening device" into the emotional world that produces homophobia. In contrast to the finely calculated and carefully controlled phrases of formal speech, these slang terms speak to, and of, the utter taken-for-grantedness of shared assumptions about male homosexuality current in the dominant heterosexual milieu. Such assumptions circulate somehow below the level of publicly articulated discourse, yet they remain hugely significant in shaping the lived experience of lesbians and gay men. They suggest, rather strongly, that our apparently more tolerant and inclusive society is something of a facade, and that deep-seated emotions of disgust and anxiety remain encrypted behind that facade. I use 'encrypted' here in a double sense; firstly, in the linguistic sense of encoding and, secondly, in the psychoanalytic sense whereby traumatic experiences or overwhelming feelings are lodged within a 'crypt' in the unconscious mind in an attempt to protect the psychic integrity of the individual ¹. Later, I will suggest that the metaphor of the crypt offers a useful tool for understanding the psychosocial locations wherein hate speech is produced.

It is never an easy experience for participants to list these terms. Those individuals who take part in the kinds of workshop I run agree to be bound by ground rules which prohibit offensive or hostile language and encourage mutual respect. To admit familiarity with this vocabulary of abuse is something which sits uneasily within this structure. A small number of workshops have been made up of conscripts - notably ones involving prison officers, school-refusing young people and trainee social workers - yet even here there has been distinct unease at pronouncing such words in a relatively 'public' forum.

It may also be the case that many participants are unwilling to offend me as facilitator, either because they (correctly) perceive me to be a lesbian or (particularly in groups where heterosexual men are in a majority) because such language is not intended for the ears of 'ladies'. Thus, politeness and respect become entangled with the gendered cultural mechanisms whereby men retain control over the kind of segregated semiotic sphere identified by feminist scholars (Spender, 1981; Wolff, 1990; Cockburn, 1991). This phenomenon, called "the culture of separate spheres" by Janet Wolff (1990:12), is one of the key arenas whereby sexual inequality is maintained both by the forms and by the locations of language use.

Once we recognise that the distinct forms of language use (in particular racist, sexist or homophobic slang) are reserved for distinct social locations (the pub, the locker room, the stag or hen party) then the notion of language as a tool for constructing and maintaining the boundaries of the 'in group' comes to the fore. By constructing gay men as disgusting and dangerous, in particular as a bodily threat to members of the inner circle (see below), gayness becomes something 'inadmissible', precisely in the dual meaning of that term.

Socially, it is inadmissible in that it must not be admitted into the inner circle. Psychically, it becomes inadmissible in that each individual member is forced to reject, disavow or repress his own gay desires - not to admit to them - if he is to remain a member. I suggest that the term 'crypt' becomes very resonant when applied to the psychosocial 'location' where such linguistic strategies are produced and operate. If we apply it both to the physical spaces where such talk takes place (a locker room might be exemplary here) and to the psychic 'hiding place' within the unconscious mind where troubling desires are secreted, we may begin to understand the psychosocial nature of this phenomenon.

Demanding that people give public voice to what belongs thus 'encrypted' makes them extremely uncomfortable. Given this degree of discomfort it seems significant that even the most conservative, well-educated and comfortably middle-class participants know this lexicon. This is not the language of the gutter nor even of the street. Rather, its currency appears to extend to every corner of the heterosexual milieu. Clearly, then, the emotions flagged up by this extraordinary vocabulary are widely shared.

encrypting the anal

In order to facilitate the kind of detailed reflection which I believe a study of this kind requires, I list here ²  the most commonly occuring slang terms for gay man which participants in my workshops have identified. They are presented here in 'preselected' form, already assigned to one of the three categories mentioned above.

anal intercourse terms :  bugger, sod, sodomite, arse-fucker, bum bandit, brown hatter, uphill gardener, marmite man³ , shit shagger, sphincter monkey, turd burglar, arse bandit, arse robber, batty boy, batty man, shirt lifter, chocolate soldier, back door man, bender, fudge packer, bum boy, bum chum, poo pirate, poo poker, chocolate cowboy, marmite bandit, pillow biter, marmite lolly, driver up the Herschey Bay highway, starfish bandit, rectum raider, curry chaser

effeminacy terms: big girl’s blouse, nancy ⁴  boy, fairy, limp-wrist, sissy, pansy, nonce, jessie, big jessie, member of the Middlesex regiment

miscellaneous: faggot, poof, woofter, woolly woofter, cock-sucker, queer

I want here to focus on the longest list, that of terms which reference anal intercourse. I suggest that the nature of the phrases on this list make explicit an apparent contradiction within homophobic discourse, one which hints at the terror at its heart.

The second longest list is of terms referencing effeminacy. This is unlikely to surprise anyone, since it is widely accepted amongst social and cultural theorists of sexuality that the disenfranchisement and derogation of gay men is largely premised on their effeminacy. It is generally reported, for example, that Hispanic cultures (notably those of the South American ex-colonies) reserve their homophobia for the 'passive partner' of a homosexual dyad, regarding penetration as a proper manly activity whatever the gender of the person being penetrated (Kulick, 1998; Toibin, 2002). From a different perspective, scholars report that the ancient Greeks accepted that penetration was the prerogative of the adult, male, free citizen and that being penetrated was an act of subservience befitting women, boys, slaves and foreigners (Halperin, 1989). The implication has always been that men who allow themselves to be fucked have willingly and willfully surrendered their proper masculine status and allowed themselves to be used as if they were women. Men who fuck, on the other hand, are exercising their male privileges and (so runs the implied argument) cannot really be expected to notice whether the orifice they are fucking belongs to a male body or a female one. Historians of sexuality refer to the 'ancient' or 'Mediterranean' model of sexual division whereby the act of penetration confers masculine status (Phellas, 2002) while submitting to being penetrated compromises that status.

There is also plenty of social scientific evidence - much of it garnered in the interests of HIV prevention, but some of it long predating the pandemic - to suggest that this is how 'men' (to use a rather fragile generic) behave. Men who feel the need for casual sex are, according to the evidence, almost as likely to seek out other men in public toilets (cottaging) as they are to pay a female prostitute or risk an affair (Humphreys, 1970; Hickson et al. 1997). Men who cottage for this reason expect to be 'serviced' by the (presumptively gay) men they meet. They seem generally to receive blow jobs or hand jobs, and their adventures on the wild side seemingly fail to undermine their status as sexual predator.

This richly documented and soundly theorised account sits uneasily with our list of slang terms referencing anal intercourse. For, far from confirming the construct of gay men as effeminate 'passive' partners in anal intercourse, these terms focus obsessively on gay men as penetrators of the anus. With the exception of 'pillow biter', with its vivid image of the sodomised individual, face down, chewing the bedding ⁵, these terms dwell with vivid fascination on the person doing the penetrating.

This lexicon is both vivid and inventive. To come up with (for example) a phrase like "uphill gardener" demands that the physical realities of imagined anal penetration be dwelt on and encapsulated. The sense of expended effort and of plunging into dirt are both neatly expressed by the gardening metaphor, while the doing of it uphill suggests an element of folly. The anus is presented as an improper orifice for penetration, since it is too small (penetrating it being 'uphill work') and full of faeces (which is why the work involved is 'gardening'). A similar term is 'sphincter monkey' which, by focusing on the (tight, resistant) anal sphincter and alluding to a relatively small wild animal, offers an alarmingly vivid image of something being 'monkeyed with' (ie, tampered with in a potentially unwise way).

References to faeces abound. Clearly, the imagined experience of putting one's penis into a hole and bringing it out covered in shit is one which gives rise to much anxiety among the originators of this language. Consider the visual acuity of terms such as 'brown hatter', 'fudge packer', 'curry chaser', 'chocolate soldier' or 'marmite lolly' . So it seems fair to suggest that an element of coprophobia is present, a cultural disgust around faeces and an anxiety aroused by the association of sex with shit ⁶.

However, the aspect of this list which I want to draw attention to is less to do with its faecal focus and more to do with an alarmed sense of agency. It is, moreover, an agency which is perceived as determined and unstoppable. The strong suggestion is that, if a man wants to penetrate the anus of another, it is difficult to prevent his doing so. The nouns used signify activity; the penetrator pokes poo, lifts shirts, stabs or shags shit, chases curry, packs fudge, fucks arses. Nor is he just a gardener; rather he is a bandit, a burglar, a robber, a soldier, a pirate, a cowboy. This cast of characters are the bogey-men and the heroes of boyhood. They are rough, tough and untamed. They are, above all, resoundingly masculine. This is not a lexicon which references effeminacy. This sodomite is a batty ⁷ (or back door) man, a bum boy, a bum chum. He is all man.

This leads me to suggest that we are unlikely to be able adequately to understand homophobia by depending on theories which identify the presumed effeminacy of homosexuality as its cornerstone. There is nothing effeminate about a 'turd burglar'. Quite the opposite. A turd burglar is someone who represents an alarming threat to the homophobic masculine self. He could render that self effeminate. He threatens to break in and steal away the fantasy of bodily integrity, impenetrability, inviolability on which phallic masculine selfhood is (perilously!) constructed. He is the soldier, the pirate or the cowboy who has the power to rape, to pillage and to push back the frontier of the male body, to invade the flesh-and-blood 'crypt' which must remain impenetrable to ensure proper masculine status.

Consider, at this point, the facetious advice given by heterosexual men to one another when they want to imply that one of their number is gay. "Don't bend over in the shower with him", they urge, "Careful you don't drop the soap!" And if someone deemed to be gay passes in close proximity the murmer goes round, "Backs against the wall, boys!" These are the war cries of homophobia, the rallying cries of heterosexual male bonding against a threatened intrusion into their space. It is an intrusion, and a 'space', imagined as both metaphorical and radically material - bodily. The message is clear, we have to keep them out of our circle, because otherwise they would break into our ring, our sphincter, our rectum and make us into penetrated, effeminate non-men.

Conclusion: the bum's rush

That this paranoid, anxious, conflictual discourse remains both so vivid and so current is testament to the deeply rooted nature of homophobia in British culture. It also suggests that theories of homophobia need to develop beyond the notion that it represents a rejection of men who have, themselves, voluntarily surrendered the manly privileges of sexual agency for the effeminate pleasure of being penetrated. Clearly, homophobia is more complex and conflictual than this would suggest. Within the terms of the anxiously gendered script of heteronormativity, masculine embodiment is pre-eminently characterised by impenetrability. 'Men' don't get fucked, that is what happens to 'women'. The masculine imperative therefore demands that men exclude not only those of their sex who actually like to be fucked but also those who might fuck them, the back door men and arse bandits whose super-human and unruly desires threaten to break into the 'crypt'.

Of course, such anxieties are complicated by the suspicion that this experience might be pleasurable. I refer you once more to the list of terms referencing active anality  and to its length and inventiveness. That men spend so much time thinking up imaginative phrases with which to disparage this threat seems to suggest that much effort is required to keep it at bay. Given that gay men notably do not go around buggering heterosexual men who drop the soap, we must assume that the power of the threat lies in the psychic realm rather than the social. Its power is its seductiveness, its promise of dirty pleasures that must be denied. This suggests, therefore, that the full social inclusion of gay men requires a rigorous critique of the masculinist fantasy of bodily impenetrability. The queering of the male body seems to be prerequisite for erradicating homophobia.

In order to achieve this 'queering', we need fully to grasp the complex and multi-layered nature of what homosex threatens to undermine. The 'crypt', within which homophobia is engendered and hate speech given tongue, is somatic, social, cultural and psychic. The crypt which is the male anus/rectum not only signifies the metaphorical sanctum of inviolable masculinity, it also 'is', in the most fundamentally material sense possible, a somatic space. Similarly, the crypt which is the social space where hate speech is vocalised, the locker rooms and board rooms of a gender-segregated world ⁸, is the 'real' location for the inner circle/in group which is culturally hegemonic masculinity. Homophobic hate speech thus expresses a catastrophic anxiety indeed - one which threatens the social, the cultural, the bodily and the psychic. If gay men and lesbians must negotiate the trauma of coming out of the closet, it seems that heterosexuals must face a parallel ⁹ journey - out of the crypt.
 
 

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Simon Clarke for his comments on an earlier draft of this paper, and John Bird for filling me in about crypts. I am grateful to Professor Esther Rashkin of the University of Utah for inspiring me to think about crypts in the first place and to participants in my workshops who provided me with a spyhole onto the language of hate.

Copyright: The Author

Endnotes

1. I am grateful to Esther Rashkin for introducing me to this latter concept
2. I was going to write 'with apologies', but since my fellow queers and I hear these words with depressing regularity, I don't feel apologetic at all about giving them this public airing.
3. Marmite is a yeast extract sold in jars and used a a savory spread. The version that ended up in Australia is called 'Vegemite'. Its significance in this context is that it is sticky, soft and dark brown.
4. Since 'nancy' was 18th century English slang for 'buttocks', this term originally referenced anal intercourse too. However, current usage assumes it denotes effeminacy, based on the simple fact that Nancy is a women's name.
5. In pleasure or in pain? The ambiguity is suggestive.
6. An anxiety which many psychoanalysts would, of course, suggest masks deep-seated desires. Coprophillia may, indeed, be 'encrypted' as coprophobia.
7. 'Batty' here is not the diminutive forms of 'bats of the belfry' used to signify mild insanity. Rather, it is a corruption of 'bottom' or 'botty' found in Jamaican patois and among British-Carribbean communities of the post-Windrush generation.
9. Not to mention the church, the mosque, the synagogue, the Vatican, the bishops palace...
10. I have said 'parallel' here not 'equal'/ Hetrosexuals are nowhere assulted, deprived of their children, their liberty or their lives purely on account of their sexual preference.

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Address for Correspondance:

Dr Tamsin Wilton
School of Sociology
University of the West of England
Frenchay Campus
Coldharbour Lane
Bristol BS16 1QY, UK

Tel: 0117 3442315
Email: Tamsin.Wilton@uwe.ac.uk