In 1997, author Emanuel Xavier coined and referenced the term in his debut poetry collection, ' Pier Queen'. The word banjee never entered mainstream pop culture, but it had currency as gay slang throughout the 1990s. a queen schooled me on how my masculinity was something that carried great weight, not only in the gay world, but the straight world as well. An anxious 19 year old, I wore my banjee realness designation like a badge of honor. I was new to the life, so I had no reference for what people were talking about, but I soon gathered that 'banjee' meant that I wasn't a 'queen.' Whatever the terms of identification, all I knew was that there was one thing that brought both the banjees and the queens (and whatever lies between) to the pier: we were men who loved men. That was the identity I was given back in the summer of 1991, when I, half out/half in approached the colored museum of the Christopher Street piers. Of his experience with the term, a gay black man writes:īanjee.
The 1990 documentary film Paris Is Burning featured 'banjee realness' as one of the categories in which contestants competed for trophies. According to The Village Voice, 'banjee boy categories have been a part of vogue balls since at least the early 1980s'.
