"Kiki" (alternately kiking or a ki), a term which started in ballroom culture, and was also for decades used in lesbian lingo to refer to a woman who was neither butch nor femme. The use of kiki as a gathering was later made more famous in the 2012 song "Let's Have a Kiki" by the Scissor Sisters. [1] [2] [3] [4] Since the 2010s, the term has returned to popular usage within the LGBT community, being loosely defined as a gathering of friends for the purpose of gossiping and chit-chat.
Now referring to a social gathering, kiki developed as categorizations within different queer subcultures of ballroom culture as well as a mid-century American lesbian scene. The uses of this term thus all have historical ties to the LGBT community. [5]
The word kiki first evolved from the French word meaning to “to choke” or “to throttle.” In the 1930s, the word was used to describe gay men who took on either dominant or submissive roles when sexual relations arose. From the 1940s, the term was used to reference lesbian women who did not identify as either masculine butch or feminine femme within the lesbian community, particularly working class networks; this connotation of the word continued for decades, but seems distinct from the use as a social get-together. From the 1990s, kiki was being used to refer to people gathering together to have a good time. This usage came from Black queer Ballroom culture, which gained a wider public audience through the 1990 movie Paris Is Burning, in which Ballroom participants used kiki to refer to the sound of laughter. [6]
From ballroom culture, kiki began to bud off into its other scene, especially those particularly friendly towards Black/Latino members of the LGBT community, as depicted in the 2016 movie, Kiki . Post 2010, due in part to the release of "Let's Have a Kiki" by the Scissor Sisters, and the popularization of drag culture through RuPaul's Drag Race , the word found its way into mainstream culture. [5]