Loose Lips	Loose Lips Archive

In a famous 1970 article, three specialists in folklore drew attention to rhyming insults, a widespread cultural convention among Turks. To participate in the rhyming duel, you begin with an insult. Your opponent must reply with an insult that rhymes, and you must then insult him with another rhyme, and so on until one player (the loser) is left with no reply.

So in a sample verbal duel, the first person says Ayı, which means "You are a bear." (In Turkey that's no compliment!) The second person replies Sana girsin keman yayı, meaning "May the bow of a violin enter your ass."

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his short exchange illustrates two important points about Turkish verbal duels. First, the pairs of insults almost always rhyme; in this example ayı ("You are a bear") rhymes with yayı ("bow"). Second, the insults are almost always about sex -- and very often about homosexuality.

The boys who participate in rhyming duels take great delight in finding hundreds of rhyming ways to talk about their own virtues -- giant dicks, with enormous heads (onion-sized), nesting in thick, black pubic hair, and capable of splitting an ass or cunt open or drowning another in a flood of semen. At the same time, they focus on the homosexuality of the hearer, and the dubious morals of his mother and sister.

Blanche was amused while reading many of these exchanges, so she'll share one more example, of a particularly decisive duel which involves the first speaker getting triple-rhymed in response:

Ahmet: Inek -- "(You) cow!"
Kemal: Üstüne binek -- "Let me ride on you
Daa gidek -- we'll go to the mountain
Seni sikek -- and there I'll fuck you."

Blanche was discussing these verbal duels with a handsome gay Turkish friend, who was able to offer up a number of other exchanges. There are insult exchanges for a lot of numerals, so the general rule is to trick the other person into saying one of these numbers. If you know that Orhan has three sisters, for example, you can ask him how many he has. When he replies, the following exchange will occur:

Orhan: Üç -- "Three"
Mustafa: Seni sikmek çok güç. -- "It's hard to fuck you."

Or if Orhan has four sisters, you can start the following exchange:

Orhand: Dört -- "Four"
Mustafa: Dönde götünü ört -- "Turn around and cover your ass."

It is hard for Blanche, as a non-Turk, to get a clear idea of how seriously Turks take these kinds of insults. Clearly, it must depend on the situation, because friends can joke this way with each other and no one appears to take offense. But Blanche supposes that it would be unwise to try these rhymes on the passport control officer at the Istanbul airport!

There are similar traditions of trading insults in other cultures as well. One version among African Americans is sometimes called "doing the dozens" or "giving snaps." Yo mama jokes seem to be especially popular. (For example, "Yo mama's teeth are so yellow, she has to brush them with a butter knife.")

There is even a tradition of insults among drag queens and gay men, with insults often aimed at age, appearance, masculinity, and promiscuity. The play The Boys in the Band was an early depiction of this kind of insult humor. One scene takes place while Michael and Donald are getting ready for a party, and contains the following exchange:

Donald: You don't think Harold'll mind me being here, do you? Technically, I'm your friend, not his.
Michael: If she doesn't like it, she can twirl on it. Listen, I'll be out of your way in a second. I've only got one more thing to do. (He goes to mirror.)
Donald: Surgery, so early in the evening?
Michael: Sunt! That's French, with a cedilla.

Here Michael refers to Harold as she and calls Donald a çunt, while Donald implies that Michael is so old that getting dressed will require a surgeon.

Toward more cutting barbs

Looking at Turkish verbal duels, African-American snaps, or gay men's insults, we can see that they are humorous ways of reinforcing the boundaries of what is considered valuable in a culture. So it might not surprise us that the Turkish rhymes value masculinity. But it does seem odd that gay men's insults should also value masculinity and use feminine words for men as an insult.

The Boys in the Band exchange seems a bit dated to Blanche. But she does still hear similar joke insults among gay men, and is particularly tired of references to gay men as "she" and "Miss X."

It would be a shame to be so politically correct that we cut ourselves off from the insult humor that has been a part of our community for decades. But maybe it's time for us to borrow from other traditions. How about some (non-sexist) American rhyming insults? Or perhaps "Yo boyfriend" jokes? Blanche will trust her gentle readers to come up with some clever and novel examples. Write her and she'll run the best examples in a future column.

Send your rhyming insults or "Yo boyfriend" jokes to The Guide, include your mailing address, and if Blanche uses them in a future column, you'll get a free one year subscription to The Guide! Email theguide@guidemag.com, or write The Guide, Attn: Blanche Poubelle, PO Box 990593, Boston, Massachusetts 02199 USA.