Tag Archives: club culture

Kai Society Burnings

TG is a 25 year old graduate student and cultural forensic anthropologist. She grew up in Maryland and currently resides in Tennessee. She was an active member at her university.

Context: Kai Society is a secret university society at Longwood University where they encourage university involvement and service. However, it is very exclusive and secretive; no one knows who is in Kai. TG was not a part of this organization and as far as she knows does not know anyone in it either.

Transcript (discussed over the phone):

Collector: What is the connection between the Burnings and senior students?

TG: To start off, the organization started around 1900 and recognize students and faculty that do great things at the university. Kai has burnings where they make a fire and stand around it wearing robes that conceal their identity. At the end of each spring semester, all of the senior members of the Kai have the option to reveal themselves and this is the only time you can do it. You either wait 4 years to reveal yourself or you never do. The society’s purpose and its cult-like characteristics does not make much sense but they are an inherently good group.

Thoughts/Analysis: What makes Kai different from other service and recognition groups outside of its cult-like approach is that they do not want to be identified. This is unlike typical organizations who even have social media accounts to promote themselves and make them seem more open. However, the way that there is a rite of passage ritual for the seniors that is not public is interesting. Senior pranks are public and light-hearted and the Kai burnings are serious and mysterious.

“Fish” as folk speech to describe femininity in the drag community

Nationality: Mexican
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/24/2020
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Main Piece

Informant: In the gay community, fish or being fishy refers to how uhh accurately a drag queen presents as a biological female, I guess. This is hard to explain because I use it all the time, haha. Usually we say “oh, she is serving fish” or “oh, she is fishy” which is usually positive, and it is like saying they would pass as a woman because they are so fishy. 

Interviewer: Where did you learn this term?

Informant: I picked it up from RuPaul’s Drag Race, which popularized a lot of the drag slang today that has kinda started getting popular in popular culture. 

Background

The informant is a great friend and housemate of mine, and he is a senior at USC studying Lighting Design. Coming from Oxnard, CA he and his family are very connected with their Mexican roots and he has grown up practicing and identifying with many aspects of Mexican culture. He is also a very big raver, as he enjoys going to many EDM festivals and aspires to do lighting design for different raves as well.He also identifies as part of the LGBTQ+ identity, comfortable identifying as a bisexual man.

Context

The informant and I typically watch RuPaul’s Drag Race at our off-campus house when it is airing on TV. There are several terms that we use, confusing many of our other housemates and one of the one this informant uses the most is fishy. In our interview, I asked him to define it and provide a definition and some context. 

Analysis

A lot of the folk speech and terms used within the queer community has stemmed from the club and ballroom culture of queer POC’s in large Metropolitan cities such as NYC during the 1970’s and 1980’s. Many of these terms are used today, and as queer POC’s both the informant and I continue to use these terms around other members of the communty as signifiers of our personal identity and our belonging in the community. The lingo also provides a special codified language that others outside of the community might not get as well, providing a sense of security and privacy in a subtle way.