They Called Me Deer In School. Well, Deer Can Also Be Gay
Gay slang in Brazil with a pinch of underreporting in science as I reminisce about my adolescence
“DEER!” (VEADO!)
(I guess that doesn’t really translate well to English)
Walking down the school hallway when I was a teenager and having someone call me deer at the top of their lungs was nothing new to me. Laughter would explode all around, and it would take me a couple of years to learn how to roll my eyes and follow just the words popularized by the drag queen Jinkx Monsoon — let it roll like water off a duck’s back.
The word veado (deer) has been used in Brazil as one of the most popular gay slurs for decades. Any gay kid has had it aimed at them at least once in their life.
Its origins are a bit unsure, in the sense that we don’t know for sure if they came from the word transviado — meaning wayward, erring — and then shortened for viado, or if it really came from the animal veado, because Bambi made it cute and that’s how all gay men look.
I mean, the second option is kind of the one that makes more sense according to research by Stela Danna (link in Portuguese, but the Internet is your friend).
