Fairy

Fairy is a term for an effeminate gay man that dates to the late 19th century, with historians tracing its use for gay men to roughly the 1870s and noting it was widespread by the 1890s. In early 20th century American cities, especially working class districts of New York, a fairy was a visible, flamboyant figure within queer street culture, and the word worked both as an insult from outsiders and as a form of self-identification. Since the 1970s some gay communities, including the Radical Faeries movement, have reclaimed fairy or faerie as an affirming name. Today the term is largely historical, but it still surfaces in discussions of queer cultural history and gender expression.