Ed Wood's When the Topic is Sex: "Sexual Terminology" (1971)

Time for another vocab lesson from Ed Wood.

NOTE: This article continues my coverage of Ed Wood's When the Topic is Sex (BearManor Media, 2021).

The article: "Sexual Terminology." Originally published in Switch Hitters (Calga Publishing), vol. 2, no. 2, June/July 1971. No author credited.

Excerpt: "TRANSVESTISM: A form of sexual behavior in which the person derives pleasure by dressing in the clothes of the opposite sex. Not necessarily associated with homosexuality."

Ed Wood is the "Dr. Know" of smutty words.

Reflections: It seems as though Ed Wood had a few mini-franchises going as a magazine writer. Yesterday, for instance, I covered "Odds and Ends and Oddities," which I think was the last of Ed Wood's numerous "oddity" articles. Today, I'm reviewing what I believe is the last of his "glossary" articles, consisting simply of definitions of sex-related terms. "Sexual Terminology" is not the last glossary Ed ever wrote or compiled, you understand, but it's the last of its type to be included in When the Topic is Sex.

And, just as "Odds and Ends and Oddities" was the most bare-bones of Ed's "oddity" stories, "Sexual Terminology" is the most basic and plain of Ed's glossaries. Unlike "Did You Ever Know...?" (1973) and "There Are Different Words" (1974), "Sexual Terminology" does not feature any kind of preamble or postscript from Ed. There is no editorializing or philosophizing here whatsoever. It's simply a list of terms and their meanings. Nuts-and-bolts stuff. A pessimist might say this was Ed at his least imaginative. An optimist might say this was Ed at his most disciplined.

At this point in When the Topic is Sex, most of the terms were already quite familiar to me. Many of these proudly polysyllabic words refer to sadomasochism, group sex, fetishism, cross-dressing, oral sex, homosexuality, lesbianism, and bisexuality. In other words, the basic building blocks of When the Topic is Sex. I said that "Sexual Terminology" contains no editorializing, but that's not entirely true. When Ed defines "transvestism," a term now frowned upon, he makes sure to point out that it is not interchangeable with homosexuality. Why was Ed so focused on mentioning this fact over and over throughout his career? What was he trying to prove and to whom was he trying to prove it? To us? To himself?

Given this article's extremely basic layout, visible in the header image above, and its one-page length, it seems likely that "Sexual Terminology" was strictly intended as filler. It carries no byline, not even a pseudonym. I can imagine publisher Bernie Bloom telling Ed, "We're one page short in this month's Switch Hitters, Eddie. What've you got for me?" And this was what he came up with. All in all, not a terrible way to fill up a page. Do you think it's possible that, for some readers, even a passionless list like this was sexually arousing? If anyone used "Sexual Terminology" as an autoerotic stimulant, that would give a new meaning to the phrase coming to terms.

Speaking of that layout, however, I could not help but be charmed by this article's retro-futuristic headline. It has that distinct look of 1970s sci-fi films like Rollerball (1975). I asked around on Twitter, and several users identified it as a font called Amelia BT. It seems to have been a favorite of the British Invasion bands. The Beatles used a version of it on the cover of their Yellow Submarine album in 1968, but The Kinks used it first on their album The Live Kinks (later renamed Live at Kelvin Hall) in 1967.

The Amelia BT font in action: The Live Kinks and Yellow Submarine.

Incidentally, I would like to thank Bob Blackburn for going above and beyond in assisting with my research for this article.

Next: "Is it Really All That Important?" (1971)