(Cross posted at DKos)
What if your whole life was a joke? What if you’re lifestyle was considered a bad word?
I begin to think about those questions recently in relation to gay issues. I am not gay, so any insight I may have is pure guess-work.
I am Albanian. No one really knows exactly where Albania is, and since I’m white I can’t think of any discrimination that has happened to me because I am Albanian. It has happened because I am foreign, but not relating to my specific country of birth. What if two friends were talking and jokingly:
“You know that guy Jack? Always thinks he’s a big shot and shit.”
“Yeah I hate that dude, totally Albanian.”
I would be pretty pissed off. I would be pretty pissed off if something that I have absolutely no say over, something that determines exactly 0% of what kind of person I am, was used as a joke. But I have a confession to make. I have used the word fag repeatedly.
Now, I tend to watch my mouth when I use disses. I have switched to things like “idiot” or “ignorant” instead of “faggot” or “bitch”. Mainly because sense I have gotten into politics more and more, and read this site, I have gotten a sampling at the full range of human rights issues and have heard the experiences gay people have faced. It’s forced me to think about the things I said, and in a sense it makes me a little scared.
Scared because when I was using the word fag, I didn’t feel any animosity towards homosexuals. I didn’t care one way or the other. To me it was just sex. And now I realize just how discriminatory I was.
Imagine some place in Alabama where nigger is used as an insult. A person growing up there would use it because it was the norm. But what if that person harbored no ill feelings towards blacks? I’m sure I, along with everyone else, would still say it was wrong. That nigger has a horrible connotation that has a racist legacy. Anybody calling someone a nigger on T.V., even to a white person, would face an onslaught of criticism.
But for gays, it’s a different story. If you don’t hate gays and use fag its assumed to be alright. In the recent movie Team America World Police, Alec Baldwin is part of a group called “fag”. It’s meant to be funny because it means he is a “pussy”. But would we call George Bush a nigger because he is stupid? Does the mention of such a thing invoke strong emotions? But did you find Team America funny?
The point I am trying to get is that there is a double standard on using derogatory terms, and making jokes, about homosexuals than there is for something just as arbitrary; race. I know that I was once a part of the problem even if I was more liberal than 90% of the population.
Looking back, the only thing I can say is that I hope one day fag becomes just the same as nigger and becomes a symbol of how far we have to go.
Thanks for the cross post. I’m actually still thinking about this.
You can write it better than I can. I just wanted to a express a quick thought I had that doesn’t seem to have been given much time around the sphere.
Actually better than my written German (which is admittedly very rusty these days).
What I liked in your diary was an objective evaluation of words that English speakers use without a second thought. That’s why I’m still thinking about it…
I haven’t gone so far as to use “fag” myself. But in my teen years, I do recall using “gay” in a derogatory manner. Not toward people who were homosexual, exactly, but just like “that’s gay”, meaning “that’s lame”. At a certain point I started thinking about how bad it was to associate “gay” with “lame” and I stopped. But I considered myself a pretty progressive, enlightened person even during the time period I did use it, so point taken.
Alan
Maverick Leftist
All derogatory terms need to be dumped. I would have liked to see dick and bitch added to words that should be avoided and lots more.
It’s interesting that this came up today – I’ve been out buying books for my grandkids this past week. They are just starting into ‘chapter’ books as the school calls them. Being an avid reader we collect banned books and classic literature and are now collecting classics for kids.
As parents and grandparents we read out loud to the kids. We also explain that some words are not to be used when they come up in the books – like nigger and fag and spick and jap and ….the list is too long.
How many times to children get books without explanations of terms used?
Are we as liberal parents and grandparents and teachers addressing the issues associated with derogatory terms?
Just my $.02
I do not think dick and bitch will be going away anytime soon. And, to be honest, dick does not bother me at all–people will use insults, and that is a pretty innocuous one, much less poisonous than fag or nigger IMHO. I do avoid bitch when referring to women. However, I’ve found it can be used often to humorous effect in reference to men (just ‘bitch’, not SOB), to their face (whom I know well and I only mean it jokingly). I guess I would say that dick, bitch, and bastard have a qualitatively different feel to me than fag and nigger–I would never use the latter two, even in jest, but the language would lose a lot of color if words used as ‘friendly insults among friends’ like ass or dick or even bitch were stripped away. I suppose that in time other words would arise to replace them, and I have perhaps been lucky enough to avoid being seriously subjected to bias-based insults, so it may be that I lack perspective…
Agree that some words are just easier to use like bitch etc.
When this came up for me was when a 3 or 4 year old starts repeating what comes out of your mouth. <My granddaughter is now 8 – heaven help me!> I never gave much thought to what I said until that first time and it stopped me cold. And it was something as simple as saying I was in a bitchy mood.
Back on topic – living in the SF Bay Area – fag has been out of the general vocabulary forever. And I’ve been here for 30+ years so it would floor me if I heard it used.
What we say will be repeated – whether we want it or not.
I grew up in Kentucky but lived in Berkeley from 99-04, and am in Cambridge MA now; I heard fag from time to time in KY (but not nigger) but now that you mention it, it did not appear in Berkeley. One could probably make a lexigraphic map of the country with red for high frequency and blue for low frequency of fag and nigger and I have a feeling it would look pretty familiar…
Then there’s the whole subtext I guess of how white people can’t use the word nigger at all but if you’re black you can. Or at least I believe that is an issue blacks are divided on themselves. From everything I’ve read or heard on this issue.
Yeah, the impression I get is that some blacks think it’s OK for blacks to use it, but nobody thinks whites should ever use it. I guess it doesn’t matter to me that much (I’m white), but I can see how it would be confusing.
My girlfriend is Asian, and she introduced me to some terms I had not come across before: “twinkie” for an Asian who acts white, “egg” for a white who acts Asian, (white on the inside, yellow on the outside, or vice versa), “hapa” for a half-asian (it’s a badly-pronounced contraction of half-asian), and “fob” for fresh-off-boat for an Asian not well acclimated to the US. These seem not to be derogatory because they are mostly self-referential.
Then there’s the whole Oriental/Asian thing. I personally think Oriental is a useful term (it implies a subclass of Asian: Chinese/Japanese/Vietnamese/Korean/Thai (etc.?) but not Indian/Pakistani/Persian/otherwise not-Far-Eastern). However, some people find it offensive, although I’ve never really understood why. It is extremely rare in CA but common in KY (to the point that supermarket aisles will be labeled “Asian” in Berkeley but “Oriental” in KY. If anyone can explain the offensivity, I’d appreciate it.
Good, I learned some new language today…and I’d be interested in the why/how Oriental would or is offensive or not.
Never understood “oriental”…I always thought that would have applied to “the Orient” which – in the original European perspective – was actually the middle east/Ottoman Empire.
I always got confused as to its applications to Asians.
It seems to me that one major difference is that a lot of people, particularly on the right, think that homosexuality is a choice or disease and so in some circles the term fag is more defensible than nigger. I have a feeling that the use of fag will recede as homosexuality becomes more tolerated/accepted, and while there is a sort of feedback loop between such terms and the mindset with which they fit, it seems probably more effective to change the mindset as an immediate goal rather than simply suppress one term.
Homophobes like Dobson choose to believe that gays choose being gay because that makes it easier for people like him to sell the idea that being gay is somehow a sin. If they had to believe that gay people are gay just like hetero’s are hetero then they’d have to come up with a whole different justification for their reasons why being gay is supposedly wrong. Thats my opinion anyway on why Dobsonites believe it’s a choice(after all if god creates gays then how do they justify their god is never wrong theme)
I had not seen how consistency virtually required them to have that position. On the other hand, even if forced to hold an inconsistent position, it would probably continue to be difficult to convince them that tolerance is a good idea, but it would be a start.
will break my bones but words will never hurt me was always one of the most incorrect little ditties ever made up.
I keep coming back to this diary today but didn’t quite know what to write as these two words are such an anethma to me. I find it hard to even write the word nigger much less not being able to say it outloud.
I don’t think most people realize how much influence words do have on a person or can shape your thinking even subconsciously. During the fight to get the ERA passed in the 70’s words themselves were very much on display. So I think that shaped much of the way I view many words ….we did go from mailman to mailcarrier for example and the unliberals kicked and screamed all the way on all these word changes.
Anyway as to ‘fag’, that is one word I too hope will go the way of nigger and out of the common lexicon.
When people use gay as you mentioned as when something you don’t like is said as ‘oh, thats gay’ then the underlying theme is still there that this somehow means gays themselves are bad.
“Would we call Bush a nigger because he is stupid?”
Nah, if he were a real Texan, we’d just call him a cracker. As it is, he’s just plain stupid. Unfortunately, in this case, stupid doesn’t mean ineffectual. He’s stupid and dangerous.
A great diary,words spoken unthinkingly can hurt a great deal. I have never used either term but I’ve heard both used, way too often. The casual contempt of both terms is the thing that really frosts me most I think. I hope the terms disappear but I don’t foresee it any time soon.