Dyke (slang)

Lesbian slang term Pre-Dyke March assembly (2019) in New York City Dyke is a slang term, used as a noun meaning lesbian. It originated as a slur for masculine, butch, or androgynous girls or women. Pejorative use of the word still exists, but the term dyke has been reappropriated by many lesbians to imply assertiveness and toughness. Origins and historical usage The origin of the term dyke is obscure and many theories have been proposed. Most etymologies assert that dyke is derived from bulldyke, which has a similar meaning. An early appearance of the term was in an August 1921 article in the journal Medical Review of Reviews titled "The 'Fairy' and the Lady Lover". In this article, Perry M. Lichtenstein, a prison physician in New York City, reports on the case of a female prisoner he examined: "She stated that she had indulged in the practice of 'bull diking,' as she termed it. She was a prisoner in one of the reformatories, and there a certain young woman fell in love with her." The forms bulldyker and bulldyking also appear later on in the Harlem Renaissance novels of the late 1920s, including Eric D. Walrond's 1926 Tropic Death, Carl van Vechten's 1926 Nigger Heaven, and Claude