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Originally Posted by squeeeb
when did it have a negative meaning? really, i'm 40 fucking years old, all my life i thought dyke just meant lesbian.
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As Wiki suggests:
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The origin of the term is obscure, and many theories have been proposed.[2][3] The OED dates the first recorded use of dike, dyke in 1942, in Berrey and Van den Bark's American Thesaurus of Slang.[4] But the term bulldyker, from which dyke may be a shortened form, was first printed in 1920s novels connected with the Harlem Renaissance.[2] For example, in the 1928 novel Home to Harlem, Claude McKay wrote: "[Lesbians are] what we calls bulldyker in Harlem. ... I don't understan' ... a bulldyking woman." (The term is unattested in the OED.) From the context of the novel, the word was considered crude and pejorative at the time. There are several theories concerning the origin of bulldyker. One is that it arose as an abbreviation of morphadike, a dialect variant of hermaphrodite, a common term for homosexuals in the early twentieth century. This in turn may be related to the possible late-nineteenth century use of dyke (meaning ditch) as slang for the vulva.[5] Bull is also a common expression for "masculine" or "aggressive" (as in "bullish"), so bulldyke implied "masculine woman.".[6]
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I've just heard too many men use the word "dyke" in an intensely negative way.
Also, I wouldn't be called anything worse than "caker" or "heathen" for my ethnic/religious background. There are worse words to call someone, of course, but it's just an example I can directly relate to.