Zack's Ramblings: When A Straight Guy Says “Faggot.”
This all starts with a pink sock.
Specifically, a rad monthly queer party in DC called “Pink Sock.” Though its creators insist the name comes from throwing one red shirt into your white laundry, it’s hard not to think of the other connotation: Specifically, the urban legend about getting fucked so hard that part of your colon comes out when the dick is removed.
I had parked myself on the patio of Pink Sock’s mixed venue, Wonderland Ballroom, yesterday for my birthday. A bunch of friends came and to make room at our table my boyfriend wandered over to say hi an awesome hippie chick and her unbelievably-friendly pit bull. The hippie chick had a male friend with her, and when I was petting the dog I overheard my boyfriend giving him the more tame explanation of the party’s moniker.
A couple minutes later I came over again to pet the dog (she was so cute) and the guy asked me what was going on tonight, and how it got its name. I gave my interpretation (the one involving rectal prolapse) and the man nodded vociferously from under dirty, shoulder-length hair and an equally dirty bandanna. “That’s what I said! But that other guy had a different explanation. No offense, but why did he have to be such a faggot about it?”
All I could do was abruptly stop playing with the dog, emphatically intone “he was my boyfriend” and walk away, hoping that terms of my exit spoke for myself.
I consider situations like this to be tests of the old “you come out every day” maxim, and I almost always fail them.I just don’t have the balls for a full-out confrontation in areas that are supposed to be pleasant. If the guy had said this from the confines of a NOM rally, perhaps, or while wearing a shirt that said “WARNING: I am a Homophobe” I’d have been prepared. But as it was I was just there to drink. I think that if queers have to have their cockles up all the time, to always be prepared for battle when we’re trying to do things like board a bus, then the terrorists have won. But the second I walked away I started to regret not giving this guy a pink sock of his own, except a verbal one so that his words would hang out of his mouth like a bloody butthole for the world to see.
But I didn’t. I was just too surprised. When it comes to epithets, most of polite society knows to avoid them in public. No racial terms, no religious ones. It’s one of those little unspoken pleasantries that gets all of us through the day without getting in fights all the time. I would prefer that people not harbor the biases in the first place, but at least most know not to talk about them.
This hasn’t yet been the case with queers. “Tranny” is so entrenched in the vernacular that even gay men throw it around with impunity, and Ann Coulter thought nothing of calling Al Gore a “faggot” in public a couple years back. There’s not the kind of institutional security in place — the kind that gets people fired, and makes the call press conferences to say their best friends are gay — and so these words stay on the “OK” list.
So I’m mad that a widespread cultural change hasn’t yet occurred that lets people know that gay slurs are pretty damn bad, mad at that guy for casting a shadow on my birthday, and more than anything mad at myself for missing a chance to change someone’s mind.
But would his mind have really changed? At the very least I would’ve absolved myself of some assimilationist guilt and he might’ve thought twice before calling strangers faggots.
So I’ll ask our readers, then: What would you have done?
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In my college admissions essay, I wrote about being called the n-word by one of my best friends. The point wasn’t that I was hurt or offended by the word – actually the word itself had no effect on me – but rather I was hurt and offended by the intention behind using the word. What I was trying to get at was that the word itself didn’t have any meaning greater than that which I ascribed to it. Personally, I attach no meaning to the n-word, so if someone were to call me it, I wouldn’t think twice about it (other than to think, what an idiot this guy is). I argued that if black people really wanted to bury the word then they should simply stop caring. Because, frankly, part of what keeps the word alive is the deep feelings that (some) blacks carry about those six letters, strung together.
I started to write that in this situation it would be no different. However, the issue is that while everyone already knows that the n-word is a serious, heavy word that should not be uttered (at least if you’re not black, which is a whole different story), that can’t necessarily be said of the f-word. I remember in high school where the girls made an issue of us guys calling some people the f-word, and people started to talk about it at that point in the early 2000s, but I highly doubt its gotten anywhere near to the point of the antipathy that the n-word currently receives.
So in this situation, I probably would be like “Dude, don’t say f—. Thats not cool.” If I were feeling ballsy and inspired I would have rattled a list of reasons why, but otherwise I would’ve just walked away at that point.
I do still stand by the fact that words are just syntax. “aiofhad” has just as much inherent meaning and significance as “lolipop.” The fact is, words only have the meaning that we give it. If we take away that meaning, then they become powerless.
But until then, we should definitely just call people out on their own stupidity and ignorance.
Love the post Zack… I can say with certainty that I would have called the guy on it right away; and have done that more times than I can count since I was in junior high. Because you see, I was one of those “obviously gay” kids that everyone talks about behind his back, maybe at a family reunions, or even the faculty lounge.
I recently had a similar experience with the “other F-word” as I like to call it…
While attending a social gathering two weeks ago, one of my gay male friends used the word. Now, I’ve been called the “other F-word” by your share of classmates, strangers, and even a former roommate (or two); but to hear it come out of the mouth of a fellow gay so freely? I just do not abide.
I was annoyed at-best and seriously offended at-worst. So I immediately called him on it, and was repudiated by him and some of our fellow friends (both gay and straight) for being “too sensitive” about using the word. Now, I get the use of reclamatory language, really I do. It empowers people to use epithets that are hurled at them, but I just don’t like doing it myself. I think it gives the wrong impression to all of those non-”other F-words” out there.
I can only imagine what goes through straight minds when they hear a gay acquaintance, stranger, relative, co-worker, friend, etc. use the word. Like, “if it’s okay for my gay friend to use the “other F-word” it must be okay for me to use it as well”; you know, that sort of thing. I just don’t think we should give them a free pass to use such a hateful word. Maybe if we make a concerted effort to stop using it, as well as “tranny” and other derogatory words used toward LGBT people, we’ll be in a place where society will place it in the “Not OK” instead of “OK” list of words?
I hope and believe so. xoxo-JAsh
It’s a hard thing to do, confronting ignorant strangers in public places regarding their ignorance and the use of slurs. We all want to be able to muster a Julia Sugarbaker- or Dorothy Zbornak-strength rant filled with stirring and quotable one-liners and enough indignant vitriol to make douchery like that slink quietly into a corner and consider every syllable it utters hereafter, but it’s a challenge. I know that I honed my ability to slam shitheads like through many hard years on rural schoolbuses, where I was called names before I was strong enough to make an epithet meant to shame me into a mantle to empower me.
Had this guy dropped the F-bomb in the same context with me, I think I might have gone with: “The reason that guy, who incidentally is my boyfriend, had to be, as you say, a faggot about it, is because he is one, and so am I, and so are so many of my friends. In fact, you’re likely to be surrounded with faggots here, and they’re likely to give you the tamer explanation of things that we assume straight people don’t have the stomach to hear, since they tend to use intolerant slurs like “faggot” and reduce the complexity of who we are to ass-fucking and emulating Martha Stewart. So, if trying to avoid a confrontation or making you feel awkward on my birthday, when I’m out with my friends having a drink to celebrate, was my boyfriend being a faggot, I’ll happily go home and sleep with him, even though you’re clearly the tighter asshole in the room.”
Adam – Thats a good one.
I think you did the right thing and I would have done the same. Just walked.
maybe it’s because i’ve lived so long in san francisco that dumb remarks like this are so foreign and backwards to me that really they’re just laughable. my response probably would’ve been to laugh teasingly, and good-naturedly say to the guy: “because he is a faggot. my faggot :D that’s my boyfriend! :D”
i think having a laugh together is one step towards turning someone into an ally.
Great response from more bees with honey! Also when people call me the F word I reply that it’s not mean if it’s true.
Why so passive and then doing this slow burning on the blog? Like this is your public catharsis for not acting?
Stand up and “go off”! Bomb the asshole OUT!
And is it OK if another gay man calls you a faggot? Or even worse referring to oneself as a faggot amongst other gays?
I don’t get all this deliniation of who can or cannot say derogatory comments. I find it all destructive and repellent.
You stop people behaving this was by telling them to stop as it’s occurring or it continues to occur. You condone this behavior when you use these terms in the common vernacular.
Today I’m VERY disappointed in you! :(
PS-I’m directing this at Zach the writer of the article
Zach, This is where I stand on this matter. No passive aggression, just take charge!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWS0GVOQPs0
I think the nature of the use of the word is what is so alarming in this situation. I think there is definitely a concerted effort to “take back” the word fag/faggot within the “queer” (another re-appropriated epithet) and ally community, similar to bitch or cunt with women and a multitude of ethnic/racial slurs. However, in the context the person is clearly not using it in an empowering, supportive way. He may *think* he is, which is a huge problem. He may think that cool, acceptable gay men do not want to be faggots, with the connotations of difference and stereotype. What is equally interesting is that this person has absolutely no problem hearing about graphic, quasi-violent, vaguely offensive gay “sex”, but finds it appropriate to throw out fag as a synonym for someone being a–pardon the expression–pussy. If that isn’t a psychosexual quagmire, I don’t know what is.
DUKE,
“Taking back” of ANY derogatory comment/words by the group to which it is directed is a sotto voce granting of approval to those who are looking for a chance to use it under the guise of “just kidding around”.
Besides, why would women want to call one another cunt or bitch or beyotch? Being called that by my women friends in casual parlance is offensive. Do you like it?
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I would have asked the guy what he meant by “faggot.” Sometimes straight men, regardless of how connected or not they are to the gay community, don’t realize what they’re saying. And much like it is anyone’s “job” to stop someone from referring to a person of color as the “N” word or a woman as the “C” word we also must stop the use of the “F” word. It didn’t have to be a big confrontation. In fact something tells me he would have benefited from knowing your point of view, Zack.
So…next time!
@don Apologist!
If you were with your gal pals and some guy called her a “cunt”, you would have reacted. No double standards here!
How about: “It surprises me that you would use that word. Why do you think it’s okay?” Not to confront him or shame him, but to have an actual conversation about it.
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