For example, in 1995 a company called Pleasure Productions produced a DVD called Banjee Black Boys (and five similarly named sequels) and c. The term banjee has also been used by several producers of gay pornography in presenting the type of young man described herein. Lugo, presented at the Milagro Theater/ Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural and Educational Center (and in another NYC venue in 2004), is "the story of Angel (played by Indio Meléndez), a straight homeboy, and Tony (played by Will Sierra), an admittedly bi banjee, who've known each other since childhood". The 1999 play Banjee, written by playwright A.B. In 1998, a report in the medical journal AIDS Patient Care and STDs regarding safer sex practices among young Black and Latino men was entitled "Banjee Boys Are Down" ( down, in this vernacular, meaning "supportive of it"), named for a project of Brooklyn's Unity Fellowship Church to get safer sex information to young men of color. In 1997, author Emanuel Xavier coined and referenced the term in his debut poetry collection, " Pier Queen". The word banjee never entered mainstream pop culture, but it had currency as gay slang throughout the 1990s. a queen schooled me on how my masculinity was something that carried great weight, not only in the gay world, but the straight world as well. An anxious 19 year old, I wore my banjee realness designation like a badge of honor. I was new to the life, so I had no reference for what people were talking about, but I soon gathered that "banjee" meant that I wasn't a "queen." Whatever the terms of identification, all I knew was that there was one thing that brought both the banjees and the queens (and whatever lies between) to the pier: we were men who loved men. That was the identity I was given back in the summer of 1991, when I, half out/half in approached the colored museum of the Christopher Street piers. Of his experience with the term, a gay black man writes:īanjee. The 1990 documentary film Paris Is Burning featured "banjee realness" as one of the categories in which contestants competed for trophies.
According to The Village Voice, "banjee boy categories have been a part of vogue balls since at least the early 1980s".