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BDSM Dictionary : Handkerchief codes: history
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This entry is part of the BDSM Dictionary hosted by Informed Consent.
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Handkerchief code, more commonly known as hanky code, was a way of indicating, usually among gay and gay Leather casual sex seekers or BDSM practitioners in the US and Canada, whether they were a top or bottom, and what kind of sex they were seeking, by wearing colour-coded handkerchiefs (or some other piece of material), usually in the back pocket of jeans. These were worn on the left side of the body for tops and the right for bottoms (this division is still somewhat common: tops may wear keys on the left belt loop and bottoms on the right, for example).
There is no universally understood colour code, and there may have been regional variations. There is, however, a general agreement on the colours for more common practices: yellow for watersports, red for fisting, navy for anal intercourse, grey for bondage and black for generalised S&M, but there was no consensus for the more uncommon practices, mainly because of the difficulty in acquiring such coloured handkerchiefs, but particularly because no one save for a gay sex shop clerk ever bothered to learn them all.
It is less common than it used to be, perhaps due to the advent of
Internet dating and the coming out of more members of the leather and
BDSM communities. For the universally understood colours, however, the
basic hanky code still holds, and, for the totally
out, is often a part of one's everyday street wear
(but red hankies need to be further explicated before one makes a pass
in non-gay contexts).Further Reading
(This entry in the BDSM Dictionary incorporates text from the Handkerchief codes article in Wipipedia.)
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