{"id":6930,"date":"2018-04-21T08:10:56","date_gmt":"2018-04-21T12:10:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/?p=6930"},"modified":"2018-04-21T08:11:53","modified_gmt":"2018-04-21T12:11:53","slug":"hanky-panky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/2018\/04\/21\/hanky-panky\/","title":{"rendered":"For One Night, \u2018Hanky Panky\u2019 Brings Back The Secret Queer Bandana Code For Cruising In The \u201870s"},"content":{"rendered":"

The \u201chanky code,\u201d a secret queer cruising code of the 1970s, was a way to signal your sexual desires via flagging\u2014hanging a bandana from the back pocket of your tight jeans. Sporting a navy bandana in your left back pocket signaled you liked to be on top. Or put a navy bandana in your right pocket to say you enjoyed being on the bottom. A red bandana would tell those in the know that you were into fisting.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were headed into this period of liberation, this period of justice orientation, and looking for rights and being expressive,\u201d says Raul Cornier, who\u2019s researched the history of the fashion practice. \u201cI think that\u2019s why it became really popular. \u2026 It did lend itself to that environment or atmosphere of expression and freedom and even transgression beginning to become okay.\u201d<\/p>\n

The organizers of \u201cHanky Panky: A Flagging Party and History Project Fundraiser\u201d<\/a> at Jacque\u2019s Underground in Boston from 6 to 10 p.m. Sunday, April 22, 2018, aim to bring the style back for one night. And they hope to raise funds for The History Project, a Boston group of historians, archivists and activists who\u2019ve been documenting and collecting artifacts of the history of the LGBTQ community here since 1980.<\/p>\n

Guests are invited to dress 1970s and wear their own hankies or buy some that organizers will have for sale at the event. DJ Brian Halligan aims to spin tunes that evoke the 1970s and \u201880s when the hanky code was most in use, for a darker, electronic leather bar kind of feel. Werewolf Becky will perform.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt will allow people to sort of play with the idea,\u201d Halligan says. \u201cAnd we\u2019re handing out a postcard with the code when they get there.\u201d<\/p>\n

The party was inspired by a talk that Raul Cornier gave<\/a> at Boston\u2019s History Project in January. A Boston-based graduate student at the University of Rhode Island in Kingston, he began his research into hanky flagging as part of his study of the history of textiles and fashion.<\/p>\n

The hanky code, he says, seems to have originated in San Francisco among gay white men flagging with red and blue bandanas in the 1970s, or perhaps as early as the late 1960s.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople were already flagging with their keys,\u201d Cornier says. Inspired by biker style, gay men began hanging keys from the left belt loop of their jeans to signal they were tops and from their right loop to signal they liked being bottoms. \u201cKeys identified your sexual availability and your role. Bandanas were used to identify your practice \u2026 your particular fetish.\u201d<\/p>\n

How did the code expand? Cornier says there\u2019s a legend that a couple gentlemen working in a queer novelty shop decided\u2014partly as a joke, partly as a way to drum up business\u2014to expand the code with references to more fetishes and then sell bandanas in a wider variety of hues. \u201cIt stuck. People took it seriously in a way,\u201d Cornier says.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
A vintage flier from The Boston Eagle, when the bar was located on Queensberry Street.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\n

Help Wonderland keep producing our great coverage of local arts, cultures and activisms by contributing to Wonderland on Patreon<\/a>. And sign up for our free, weekly newsletter<\/a> so that you don’t miss any of our reporting.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

Then the lists started to show up. As part of the promotion of \u201cHanky Panky\u201d organizers have shared a vintage flier from The Boston Eagle, when the bar was located on Queensberry Street. One side advertises the bar. The other side is a list of hanky colors and what pocket to wear them in to signal interest in orgies, threesomes, shower sex, whips, bondage, masturbation, dirty old men, being shrimped and so on.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know a lot of the bandanas were sold with these little decoders,\u201d Cornier says. \u201cThis became a way for these businesses to advertise. You have the flier on one side and the code on the other.\u201d Shops, bars, gay newspapers printed them.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou could communicate with people within the queer community familiar with it but also be out in public with it,\u201d Cornier says.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was the only way you could let relative strangers know what your sexual preferences were before talking with them,\u201d Halligan says.<\/p>\n

Photographer \u201cRobert Mapplethorpe in one of his bios,\u201d Cornier says, \u201che mentions stitching multiple bandanas together to flag that many because he wanted to make sure he got everything covered.\u201d<\/p>\n

As early as 1978, the code was taken up in parts of the lesbian community, Cornier says\u2014and adapted to signal interest in fisting, anal, oral, food, Victorian scenes, bondage, breasts, menstruation.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
A vintage flier explaining a “Handkerchief Color Code for Lesbians.”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cIt was right at the time of real gay liberation via disco and everything else,\u201d Halligan says \u201cThe liberation of nightlife culture coincided with disco. It was an innocent time in many ways. The possibilities felt limitless. Then AIDS came and changed everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe presence of AIDS does put an immediate halt to a lot of this. And that\u2019s when we see the hanky code begin to go back underground,\u201d Cornier says.<\/p>\n

Bandana flagging remained a part of the predominantly white male leather culture, he says. \u201cIt never really fell out of favor,\u201d Cornier says. And he notes, some \u201ctrans men are now flagging with a plaid hanky.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

Help Wonderland keep producing our great coverage of local arts, cultures and activisms by contributing to Wonderland on Patreon<\/a>. And sign up for our free, weekly newsletter<\/a> so that you don’t miss any of our reporting.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The \u201chanky code,\u201d a secret queer cruising code of the 1970s, was a way to signal your sexual desires via flagging\u2014hanging a bandana from the back pocket of your tight jeans. Sporting a navy bandana in your left back pocket signaled you liked to be on top. Or put a navy bandana in your right […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6931,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[120,101],"tags":[37,338,312],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6930"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6930"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6930\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6937,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6930\/revisions\/6937"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}