Paper Short Abstract:

Jokes about gay people constitute a significant part of Romanian urban folklore. Nevertheless, the Romanian folklorists and ethnologists still ignore them, as, with just a very few notable exceptions, they do not seem attracted to study the sexual folklore in general. The present paper tries to shed some light on the reasons, purposes, as well as on the hidden intentions of these jokes.

Paper Abstract:

It should be a truth universally acknowledged that sexual folklore is far from being a mere catalyst of sexual arousal. This affirmation is even more accurate in the case of jokes about homosexuals. From this point of view, the Romanian case presents a great interest. In this country, during the communist times, gay people were persecuted, punished with jail if they were caught on the act or blackmailed in order to be forced to serve the system. Only in 2002, almost thirteen years after the fall of communism, was the law against homosexuality finally abolished. Nevertheless, the LGBTQ+ people are still far from being fully accepted by the common (and rather conservative) people in Romania, which makes the jokes about homosexuals ever more important, as they function as a barometer, an instrument to measure homophobia/philia.

For the students of these jokes, several questions arise, such as: who is telling such jokes? To whom? In what performance context? Who is reading this type of jokes, when published on a site (for a person could become a listener without their conscious will, but the situation is different in the case of a reader)? With what purpose? Folklorists could and should address these jokes, as their agency seems to lay beyond the mere intention to provoke the laugh of the audience/readers. The present paper tries to raise a corner of the curtain which hides these questions from view.