Reclaiming Homophobic Pejoratives As a Tool for Social Change

Wesleyan University

Unringing the Bell: Reclaiming Homophobic Pejoratives as a Tool for Social Change

By

Joseph Nucci Class of 2016

An essay submitted to the faculty of Wesleyan University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts in the College of Social Studies 2

Acknowledgments & Dedication

I would first like to thank Professor Johnathan Cutler who so graciously agreed to take me on as an advisee at the last minute. This project would have been possible without him. This essay is an expansion of a smaller one I wrote for his class Paternalism and Social Power. He taught me how to be articulate, how to speak my mind and how to do perform the rather uncomfortable but invaluable act of thought experimentation. I will always be grateful for this.

I would also like to thank the faculty and students of the College of Social Studies for providing me with an authentic intellectual atmosphere. I would not be the reader, writer, thinker, or person I am today if it were not them. I would like to specifically thank Professor Moon who helped me develop my own voice and writing style and Professor Cecilia Miller who saw potential in me even when I didn’t see it myself.

I also have three friends I would like to acknowledge. The first is my good friend Brenna Tharnstrom. She was not only an essential resource but taught me the radical possibilities of pleasure and freedom that can be found in the gay lifestyle. I would not have found value in reclamation had I not found that liberty. My friend Johnny Bebbington deserves recognition for being by “straight boy guinea pig” for this project. It was indispensable having someone to test out my theories on. He and my other straight brothers in the Xi Chapter of Psi Upsilon, not only helped me develop my theories by serving as my petri dish, but gave me the honor of pledging their chapter in their first co­educated pledge class. When they accepted women into a traditionally male­dominated sphere, they showed me both the limitations and possibilities of reclamation and assimilation. My friend Will Bellamy took the time to correct this essay for grammar and also deserves recognition.

Finally, I would like to thank my family for teaching me to love myself for who I am. This is dedicated to my little brother— Michael. In the words of of George R.R. Martin, “Never ​ forget what you are, for surely the world will not. Make it your strength. Then it can never be your weakness. Armour yourself in it, and it will never be used to hurt you.” Always stand up for yourself, little brother. In the words of Thomas Watson Jr, “speak your mind and fear less the ​ label of 'crackpot' than the stigma of conformity. And on issues that seem important to you, stand up and be counted at any cost.”

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The Racist Tree

“Once upon a time, there was a racist tree. Seriously, you are going to hate this tree. High on a hill overlooking the town, the racist tree grew where the grass was half clover. Children would visit during the sunlit hours and ask for apples, and the racist tree would shake its branches and drop the delicious red fruit that gleamed without being polished. The children ate many of the racist tree's apples and played games beneath the shade of its racist branches. One day the children brought Sam, a boy who had just moved to town, to play around the racist tree.

"Let Sam have an apple," asked a little girl.

"I don't think so. He's black," said the tree. This shocked the children and they spoke to the tree angrily, but it would not shake its branches to give Sam an apple, and it called him a nigger.

"I can't believe the racist tree is such a racist," said one child. The children momentarily reflected that perhaps this kind of behavior was how the racist tree got its name.

It was decided that if the tree was going to deny apples to Sam then nobody would take its apples. The children stopped visiting the racist tree.

The racist tree grew quite lonely. After many solitary weeks it saw a child flying a kite across the clover field.

"Can I offer you some apples?" asked the tree eagerly.

"Fuck off, you goddamn Nazi," said the child.

The racist tree was upset, because while it was very racist, it did not personally subscribe to Hitler's fascist ideology. The racist tree decided that it would have to give apples to black children, not because it was tolerant, but because otherwise it would face ostracism from white children.

And so, social progress was made.”

By Alexander Blechman

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I Introduction

Trigger warning: This essays appears to use offensive, sexually explicit and politically incorrect language. If this is triggering to you in any way, please stop reading. This essay is not ​ for you. This essay is for you if you are someone who is interested in how language facilitates our social relationships, the politics of reclaiming hateful slurs and the power dynamics that occur when certain pejoratives are reclaimed. In the pages that follow, I will argue against the common assumption that it is helpful to censor language or define the parameters of everyday conversation in the name of social progress (specifically in the context of generating acceptance for oppressed identity groups).

I will only be exploring the use of homophobic slurs. While I believe that similar, even parallel, arguments can be made about other forms of speech, I am cognizant of the fact that in the world of identity politics, I am a white, wealthy, cis­gendered, gay male. While I do not necessarily agree with the view that certain identity groups have community based knowledge that those in the outgroup do not have, I am aware that many who read this do believe this. If I wanted to extend my thesis to other forms of hate speech, I would have to further substantiate my argument for all of these different categories and lack both the desire and the inclination to do so at this time. While I may refer to other forms of hate speech to make a point, I will be primarily addressing homophobic pejoratives in this paper. I would also like to state outright that I do not speak for all gay men or all queer people. Many agree with me, but many understandably do not.

Furthermore, I am a not a free speech absolutist. While “freedom of speech” is a value I care about very deeply, the point of this essay isn’t to develop an elaborate theory about the validities of free speech fundamentalism. The point here is not to present an all­encompassing 5 dismissal of PC language but simply to reevaluate it, critique it and identify where it falls short. I am proposing that in terms of homophobic language, reclamation of homophobic slurs may be a more useful tool. Of course, PC speech is an imperfect tool and, as we will see, reclamation is also flawed. We live in an imperfect world where political, social and economic success is determined by imperfect competition. Just because the tools are imperfect though, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t use them. I hope that in the writing that follows, you might consider reclamation as a valuable weapon in your own toolbox.

II What is Politically Correct Language?

The phrase “politically correct” has an obscure history that many people have yet to understand in any serious depth. Geoffrey Hughes observes in his book, Political Correctness: A ​ History of Semantic and Culture, that the term first became familiar in the west through Mao’s ​ Little Red Book in the 1960s. Ruth Perry, in her essay A Short History of the Term Politically ​ ​ ​ ​ Correct, suggests the same interpretation. The translators of Mao Tse­ Tung’s writings used the ​ words “correct” and “incorrect,” throughout his manifesto. This drew a sharp distinction between speaking correctly and incorrectly. Hughes notes that the text draws a distinction between being politically correct and politically incorrect, “it was concerned with not just doing the right things ​ ​ ​ ​ but thinking the right thoughts.” This is what makes political correctness not only a way of

1 speaking ,​ but also an ideology— it started as a belief system. It separates Marxist economics from its philosophy and marries the philosophy to the culture.

1 I will not be addressing gender neutral pronouns or transphobic language in this paper. That is a subject that deserves it’s own essay (and perhaps a series of them) and I simply am not educated enough about the subject. 6

In the United States, people started using the terms “politically correct” and “politically incorrect” in various contexts. Hughes writes, “Once [the term PC] was borrowed into a democratic and liberal political milieu, it became an anomaly, an empty formula for conformity open to subversion.” The term was used by both the left and the right during the McCarthy era to poke fun at government members who “toed the party line,” insinuating that they were communists or communist sympathizers. Perry observes that movements of the New Left in the

1960s used it for their own purposes. The Black Panther Movement, for an example, not only sold Mao’s writings to raise money, but also would use the term PC to guilt trip other people of color into joining the movement. In the same vein, it was used by feminists to criticize supporters of the black movement who also did not support the women's liberation movement. A lecture that was given at Livingston College Black Women’s Seminar in 1969 quipped, “A man cannot

st be politically correct and a chauvinist too.” Additionally, in the 21 ​ century, conservatives, ​ ​ ​ libertarians and classical liberals like to point out how “political correctness” runs amok on college campuses, suppressing free speech and rigging the marketplace of ideas that colleges should (in theory) embrace. In short, like most language, the term political correctness is almost entirely defined by the historical context it appears in. Perry describes the phrase as a

“will­o­wisp,” appearing and reappearing throughout our history in different forms every time it becomes culturally significant.

Today and in the West, PC speech is still both a way of talking, a way of thinking and intuitively appears to make a lot of sense. The idea is that certain words or certain ways of talking about certain oppressed groups should be impermissible because we, as a society, should cultivate a certain level of morale, equality and dignity so that these groups can participate freely 7 in the democratic process and live life to their fullest potential. When certain words and slurs are allowed to circulate in a society, it is usually oppressed groups who have to endure the psychological and emotional consequence of it. Why can’t the oppressors or the majorities simply choose a different word? Is that really so much of a burden to pick a synonym? Why should minorities, on top of all of the other oppression and obstacles they have to face, pay a psychic tax that nobody else has to?

The idea that certain words are “off limits,” and that it is “politically correct” not to use them is derived from a linguistic concept called the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis. The hypothesis ​ comes in two different flavors— hard and soft. The hard version of the hypothesis proposes that language determines thought, and that linguistic categories determine cognitive categories and certain kinds of non­linguistic behavior. This is sometimes called linguistic determinism and many experts consider it outdated. You can be a racist without saying the “n­word” just like you ​ can be sexist and never call women degrading names. Thoughts and their connection to our speech are surely more nuanced than that.

The softer version of the hypothesis proposes that language merely influences thought ​ ​ and certain kinds of non­linguistic behavior. This in itself, interestingly enough, is a somewhat tricky semantic move since how language and thought are interconnected is a subject that is still intensely debated to this day. It is a question we might never have a perfect answer to. In the words of Emerson Pugh, “If the human brain were so simple that we could understand it, we ​ would be so simple that we couldn’t.”

While Sapir did not strive to study exactly how language might exactly influence thought,

Benjamin Whorf has become associated with what he called the "linguistic relativity principle,” ​ 8 which is sometimes used interchangeably with the Sapir­Whorf hypothesis. The principle states that varying terms for concepts or categories affect the cognitive classification of the experienced ​ world in such a way that speakers of different languages think and behave differently because of it. In other words, language shapes thoughts in a way that different words constitute a different experience and mental reaction to the subject matter. A famous invocation of this idea is that the

Inuit (Eskimo) language, sometimes called Inuktitut, has a myriad of terms for the subject matter

“snow.” If we do not share the same language, according to the linguistic relativity principle, ​

2 then we do not share the same experience or have the same thoughts about snowflakes. ​ If this is ​ ​ true, then PC speech should be able to make our society more accepting of minorities. If we make certain terms like the word faggot a taboo and introduce new terms like homosexual male, we should be able to leave the discriminatory baggage behind in the more antiquated term.

Therefore, PC language is defined as using the acceptable, non­offensive modern day terms.

Instead of “faggot,” say “homosexual” or “gay.” Instead of “negro,” say “person of color.” If we can regulate how we can talk about minorities, we should be able to effectively cultivate an accepting atmosphere.

In addition to these linguistic concepts, there have been several movements in the legal and philosophical spheres in favor of supporting speech regulation to protect minorities. Some ​ scholars point to the theorist Herbert Marcuse (sometimes called “The Guru of the New Left”) as the catalyst for how many view “offensive” speech today. In the wake of the Berkeley Free

2 I think the idea that Inuits experience several different types of snow that nobody else can simply because they ha​ ve words for them is completely unsubstantiated. Anyone who has spent time in a snowy climate will concede that there is more than just one type of snow. Inuits may be more articulate in describing different types of snow and therefore might be more aware of their varying experiences in a snowy climate. This is very different from saying their experience is entirely separate. Additionally, we have all been subject to the “tip of the tongue” phenomenon. Many times we have a very vivid or emotional word that we are thinking and feeling but for some reason cannot articulate. 9

Speech Movement in 1964, Marcuse published an essay titled Repressive Tolerance. In this ​ ​ extraordinarily influential piece, he argued that the freedoms of those in power would have to be regulated in order to cultivate greater equality and freedom for all. He posited that a supposedly neutral tolerance for ideas was actually oppressive because that mindset only ​ ​ ​ ​ benefited those in power and maintained the status quo. Those in power, Marcuse argued, operated in a society with a hierarchical structure. He believed that “within the framework of such a social structure, tolerance can be safely practiced and proclaimed” only by those in power ​ ​ because anyone who dared challenge the existing status quo were essentially powerless to do so.

Marcuse rejected the notion that societal change should be, in his words, “prepared, defined, and tested in free and equal discussion, on the open marketplace of ideas.” According to Marcuse, the marketplace was rigged. If the powerful and the weak were required to play by the same rules, the powerful would always win.

These ideas have a made a mark in our intellectual history. Many intellectuals and legal scholars such as Mari Matsuda, Charles Lawrence, Richard Delgado, and Jeremy Waldron all have advocated for the regulation of hateful speech. Catherine McKinnon has built a name for herself developing complex legal theories about sexist speech. Their ideas have no doubt inspired speech codes that now appear on almost every college campus. For example, McKinnon is famous for being vocal against pornography. In the late 1980s, the anti­porn crusaders retreated from the public legislative arena and reemerged with new strength on college campuses, especially in feminist and academic circles. The Atlantic reports, “The dominant ​ ​ poststructural dogma of the late 1980s denied the First Amendment the transcendent value that the liberal belief in a marketplace of ideas has always awarded it.” The 1980s were a time that 10 the left started to sincerely believe that speech must be regulated in order to achieve equality.

This was the decade speech codes (that supposedly protect minorities) first appeared on college campuses.

III What’s Wrong with Politically Correct Language?

The supporters of PC language present a seductive argument, but they sew the seeds of their own destruction when they remind everyone that certain words are offensive because of

“history.” When they do this, they are arguing that it is not the words themselves that cause

3 harm, but the socio­political power behind these words. ​ Clearly, changing a word or censoring it, is not and has never been the same thing as changing the institution or context. The chairman ​ of Harvard’s African American studies department, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. once wrote, “The war ​ against bigotry has always been waged through language, not against language itself.” Even more ironically, the PC movement has ignored much of their own history when it comes to speech regulation. Speech codes, censorship and PC culture have tried to protect minorities but time and time again censorship has failed them.

3 The philosopher Robert Mark Simpson explores the ability of language to be harmful or not. The asymmetric pliability of language is the idea that “it is easier to introduce sexist [or homophobic, racist, etc.] presuppositions and expectations into a conversation that it is to remove them,” and that, “responding to a sexist remark... is like trying to

‘unring a bell.’” T​ herefore when one makes a politically incorrect statement by using a word that is offensive, they ​ are also introducing a network of historical, sociological, and political oppression into that conversation and this introduction cannot be removed. On the surface level, Simpson would appear to be in line with supports of PC speech, but what he is arguing in more slightly nuanced. He is saying that hate speech is not hateful in itself but what is damaging is the power of the oppressive forces it carries behind it. He does not resolve the issues of whether or not offensive speech causes injury or if it is a symptom of an injurious system. I would argue that it is both and that the context and intentionality (aka the potentially bigoted presupposition) behind a word matters far more than the word itself.

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The first times speech codes were implemented, they were often followed by disastrous consequences. In Canada, when laws were passed banishing obscene pornography, it was considered a victory for women everywhere. After all, I think any decent human being can get behind the prohibition of rape fantasy porn. In the wake of this ruling, the first establishments to get shut down were not establishments distributing “obscene” pornography. The first establishments shut down were lesbian book stores and gay clubs. A book by Bell Hooks was confiscated as hate literature. In Britain, college campuses banned racist speech to curb anti­Semitism. It’s no surprise that right after that, Zionism was considered a form of racism and it was also banned, much to the anti­Semite’s delight. University of Michigan was one of the first colleges to implement speech codes against racist speech. The first year they were in effect, not a single instance of racist speech against blacks was punished. But black students were reprimanded not once, but twice because they had called white students “cracker.” How can this be possible? The question Marcuse never asked is who writes, who passes, who interprets and who enforces these laws regulating speech and ideas? The answer— those in power. Those in power are often not the minorities that speech codes are supposed to protect. This is not to say that speech codes never protected anybody, but if they had the radical effect we wanted them to, the college protests that rocked academia in the Fall of 2015 would not have happened like they did.

Let me be clear: there is a difference between legal and cultural censorship, but I include the legal history because I think it helps highlight the slippery slope PC supporters climb on when they disavow offensive speech or ideas. If the legal consequences were so drastic, what is happening in the cultural sphere? In order to understand the cultural implications of censorship ​ 12 or PC speech, in order to understand the the steepness of the slope we dangle from, we must turn back to the linguistic and cultural justifications for PC speech. The study of language, semantics and culture will be able to highlight not only why PC speech causes more harm than good, but will allow me to explicate how to go about “reclaiming” hateful terms.

When supporters of PC speech predicate that censorship equals progress, they often proclaim that they are simply exercising their own right to free speech when the protest the bigoted speech they find so offensive. They contend that “you can have your freedom of speech, but you’ll never escape freedom of consequences.” This is yet another seductive argument which collapses in on itself with a quick analysis. First of all, the problem with this mindset is that it fails to take into account something very basic about human nature. Humans hate to be criticized.

When you are criticized you immediately clam up and stop listening to the other person.

Human beings hate to be criticized because human beings are usually convinced of the purity of their own intentions. In the Bible, Lucifer thought he was unfairly cast out of heaven by god. It only takes a casual reading of Mein Kampf to see that Adolph Hitler was convinced that ​ ​ what he was doing was right. The genuine horrors of the Nazi regime occurred because Hitler and his followers were convinced of the purity of their intentions. Al Capone, the most infamous gangster to terrorize Chicago, thought of himself an unfairly hunted man who lived to give people “the lighter pleasures” in life. The examples I can offer are endless, but the point is nobody thinks of themselves as bad or evil. I think Dale Carnegie summed it up best in the first chapter of his bestselling book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, when he wrote ​ ​ “Criticism is futile because it puts the person on the defensive and usually makes him strive to 13 justify himself. Criticism is dangerous because it wounds a person’s pernicious pride, hurts his sense of importance, and arouses resentment.”

On the philological front, the PC movement fails to take into account several important linguistic concepts, including the one they use to justify making offensive words a taboo. They don’t take into account humor, sarcasm, or satire. Perhaps most damning, they fail to take into account the concepts of euphemism, dysphemism and orthophemism. A euphemism is a generally innocuous word or expression with a positive charge used in place of one that may be found offensive or unpleasant. The idea of the euphemism treadmill is that concepts or categories ​ ​ ​ ​ can be represented by multiple words and the connotations and meanings behind these words ​ 4 cycle. It goes like this: a PC term is chosen ​ as an acceptable descriptors but it is then adopted by racists, sexists, homophobes, etc. who then give the negative charge to the word that the PC term was supposed to remove. The word “retarded” used to be a medical definition with a neutral charge (this is called an orthophemism). It was then used in a derogatory manner (this is called a dysphemism, which has a negative charge) and was labeled as offensive, and the term “mentally handicapped” was preferred. “Mentally handicapped” went from being an orthophemism to a euphemism to a dysphemism so now the PC term is “differently abled.” I would guess that in a couple decades we will have a new term because differently abled will be considered not PC

4 I wonder who exactly chooses the culturally acceptable PC term? Is it those in power? It is the liberal majority? Were gay people consulted on how we feel about the word faggot? What about black people and racial pejoratives? Was there a poll? Gayatri Spivak’s essay “Can the Subaltern Speak?” is a really important piece of work that explores how post colonial intellectuals imposed a biased lens on the subjects they were trying to study. She highlights that when Britain outlawed the practice of Sati (the act of widows throwing themselves on their husband’s funeral pyre) they may have saved some women from this gruesome fate but ended up classifying the English as “civilized” and the Indian culture to be “barbaric,” ironically embedding oppression of the Indian culture by the British. She argues that any attempt to give the oppressed a voice will only result in their speaking the language of their oppressors, which actually makes them more dependent on oppressors to speak for them and perpetuates the oppression they were trying to remove. While she as referring to women who were literally illiterate, I still wonder who is deciding the PC terms for queers? 14 enough and the cyclical nature of the euphemism treadmill continues, although I wonder if we

5 can get any more PC than that.

Furthermore, the justifications for PC speech is predicated on just one theory of how language and thoughts are connected. The linguistic relativity principle is one way to look at language as it relates to thought, but it’s not the only way. In order to understand how they could view language and thought differently, I need to briefly explain two different philosophies behind thought and then compare them to language. The way Whorf and those who follow his teachings view thought are heavily influenced by Sigmund Freud. Freud believed your thoughts are closely connected to who are as a person. He viewed thoughts like they were the tip of an iceberg. The part you can see is consciousness and below the surface there is the ego, superego, and id. Psychologists, psychotherapists and the like who treat thoughts like this encourage their patients to talk about their thoughts and see where it takes them.

Many professionals view this as a narrow­minded way of looking at thoughts or consciousness. For example, while Freud is hailed as the father of psychotherapy, Aaron Beck is considered the father of a modified version of Freud’s craft— cognitive behavioral therapy

(CBT). Beck found that when he was working with depressed patients, they often experience negative ideas about themselves, the world, and the future almost spontaneously. He found that a traditional Freudian approach meant patients would spend a set amount of time reflecting on these thoughts and this would ironically lead the patients to validate these thoughts as facts.

Beck thought that various disorders arose from different types of “distorted thinking” and he hypothesized that frequent negative automatic thoughts reveal a person's core beliefs. He

5 Ironically, the terms “special” or “gifted” have been euphemisms to describe differently abled individuals this ​ entire time. 15 believed that core beliefs are formed over lifelong experiences. In other words, we “feel” these beliefs to be true because we have ruminated on them and treated them as real. In order to improve our mental health, Beck taught his patients to combat these thoughts instead of fall victim to them. He encouraged his patients to question their validity and ask for proof. For an example, if you are plagued by thoughts of insecurity (Nobody loves me. Nobody could ever love ​ ​ ​ someone like me) he would advise he patients to be critical of these thoughts (What proof do I ​ ​ have of this? How can I be sure that I will always be alone?). He found that this approach to ​ ​ ​ viewing thoughts to be incredibly helpful in improving mental health and CBT has been widely disseminated outside academic circles because of its success.

In summary, psychologists who practice CBT believe that your thoughts do not actually matter as much as your relationships to them. Many of us spontaneous negative and automatic thoughts all the time, but most of us can dismiss those thoughts as random or inconsequential and let them go out the other ear. I would like to propose that in a similar way, words themselves matter less than the speaker’s and listener’s relationship to them. This is also in line with the idea that the history context, and intentionality behind a word matters far more than the word itself. I am proposing that reclaiming hateful terms is a useful way to go about changing the system and will use homophobic pejoratives as a test case for this idea.

IV What is Homophobic Language?

Before I can expand upon the idea of reclamation, I need to clarify my working definition of homophobic language. Throughout the rest of this essay, I will focus mostly on the slur

“faggot”, but I do not wish to imply that is the only homophobic word or phrase there is.

Throughout my own life, I have encountered several different slurs of this variety. There is 16 faggot, it’s little brother fag, ass bandit, butt pirate, butt buddy, cocksucker, fairy, gay, queen, sissy, fruit, pansy, queen, shit stabber, quag (queer + fag) and gaysian (referring to a gay Asian) just to name the most popular ones I remember being used in high school. The word faggot has an interesting history and has taken on many different meanings in the English lexicon. For an example, in England it is slang for a cigarette and various cultures around the world have their

6 own unique slang for homosexuals or same sex acts more generally .​ Today and in the most recent past, the word fag is a pejorative term used primarily in North America for gay men but can and has been used against gay women.

In her book Dude, You're a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School, CJ Pascoe ​ ​ ​ ​ suggests that boys in high school use the word fag (or other homosexual epithets) as a way to assert their masculinity and police gender. This is sharply different from being merely

“homophobic.” A number of boys she interviewed claimed they would never call a homosexual friend or compatriot a fag since the term aims to ridicule others who fail to live up to the masculine ideal which they would fall short of if they were incompetent, care about their appearances, show emotion (unless it is anger), and things of this nature. Still, she found that homosexual epithets actually affect the gender expression of homosexual boys growing up, placing them too on the “specter of being a fag.” It is also worth pointing out that she found that the use of these insults is not necessarily malicious since it is manifested in much of their joking

language. T​ he point of bringing this up is not to deny the fact that words like fag can be used in a ​ homophobic manner. The point here is that homophobic words have sexist underpinnings and ​

6 In England, the pejorative for gay men tends to be “bender” or “poof.” 17 this is crucial to understand before one can take the linguistic, psychological and philosophical

7 concepts justifying reclamation seriously.

V Reclamation in Our Past

As we keep in mind the fact that homophobic language has sexist motivations, we cannot lose sight that it still carries homophobic connotations. The words “faggot” and “fairy,” for an example, had an overwhelming impact on me growing up gay in high school. Prior to coming out of the closet my senior year, I was very convinced that many of my peers who used these words hated me. I also know that these words can be very damaging to straight boys growing up as well. During the AIDS crisis, these words killed people. HIV positive men did not seek help because they desperately wanted to hide their sexuality not just because of the pervading homophobia, but because of homophobic language. They hid because if they didn’t, they were risking not just verbal harassment. They were risking their safety. Given these circumstances, why would anybody take arguments for “reclamation” seriously?

First, I think that even in the age of “marriage equality”, there is still a prevailing attitude that being straight inherently has more value than being gay. In order to reclaim a term, you have to reject this premise. You have to believe that being gay, if it isn’t simply an even trade off, is somehow better. If you cannot do this, you can never actually reclaim a homophobic pejorative.

Finding pride has been a necessary step for any minority liberation movement— a sentiment that being different, if not an even trade off, is somehow better. Women have to do it (Just read The ​

7 Quick feminist rant: If we are going to accept that homophobic language has more to do with gender expression than it does homophobia, then we are accepting the premise that homophobia is rooted in misogyny. What this means is this entire time we have been worried about protecting the feelings of (effeminate) men when what we should really be doing is changing attitudes about femininity and women. In other words, this was always about women but we made it about men by overgeneralizing it as “homophobic” language. Ironically, the patriarchy has struck again by making this conversation about (gay) men instead of all women more generally. 18

Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan). Blacks have to do it (Have you heard of Malcom X?). ​ What people often confuse about Malcom X is that he wasn’t necessarily “hating” on white people. I think it is more appropriate to say that these activists, by drawing such a hard line between the two identity groups, wanted to give their in­group a reason to be proud, a reason to stand up, and a reason own their identity. I think gay people are learning how to do this (this is why we have gay pride every year), but I still think there’s a slight longing to be in the majority.

As Andrew Sullivan wrote in Virtually Normal, ​ ​ “No homosexual child, surrounded overwhelmingly by heterosexuals, will feel at home in his sexual and emotional world, even in the most tolerant of cultures... anyone who believes political, social, or even cultural revolution will change this is fundamentally denying reality... at the age of eleven, no one wants to be the odd one out; and in the arena of dating and hormones, the exclusion is inevitably a traumatic one… and children are particularly cruel.”

In order for reclamation to work, this “exclusion” needs to not just be embraced, but preferred. How should we go about doing this for gay people? Well, the idea that homophobia is rooted in misogyny is only complimented by the fact that less than fifty years ago, you weren’t considered gay if you were a male and got fellatio performed on you by a guy but you did not reciprocate. You could not be a gay “top.” That didn’t exist until recently. What was shameful about being the one performing fellatio or being the receptive partner is that you were acting like a woman.

In order to take reclamation seriously, you have to sincerely believe that being a homosexual, effeminate, or a woman is not only acceptable, but is preferable. You’re dating 19 pool, as a homosexual, might be smaller. You are anywhere between two and five percent of the

8 population. I think it is worth the trade off. Why? Because you are free.

Maybe you don’t agree with the above, but that is the mindset you have to get comfortable with if you are going to reclaim homophobic pejoratives. It doesn’t matter if you are gay or straight or in between. That’s the only way this can work because this is the only way is has worked in the past. Reclamation has already happened on several fronts. First of all, the word

“queer” has been so successfully reclaimed already that some people don’t even know it was once used in a hateful way. The word faggot has also already been reclaimed. Dan Savage is a popular syndicated columnist and the founder of the It Gets Better Project. When he started his ​ ​ advice column, he would give relationship advice to heterosexuals and it was titled Hey, Faggot. ​ ​

8 If you live in a liberal culture where you are not fearing for your life, the gay person is the most liberated person in society. You are free from gender norms and expectations. How sad is it that straight men cannot love fashion or theater or dancing without people whispering and speculating whether or not they also would like to take up the ass? How sad is it that so much of the world is closed off to them? Furthermore, when you’re gay, your relationships have no gendered baggage. There is no predetermined script. Who opens the door for who and who picks up the check and who “wears the pants” is entirely circumstantial. When you get into bed with someone, you immediately have to communicate about who is going to be fucking who (and that is if you are going to fuck at all. Maybe you just want to jack off like a couple of boy scouts. It is totally up to you!). Remember, communication is the key to good sex. A lack of communication is why there is a supposed epidemic of “rape culture” on college campuses. How sad to be straight and not even know how to ask you partner to give it to you like you like it. Furthermore, gay sex, in my humble biased opinion, is better than straight sex. That’s right I said it! It’s more pleasurable (and yes, I ​ ​ have had sex with women). The majority of women cannot climax with vaginal penetration and the those that can, only do so because their clitoris extends into their vaginal wall lining. Meanwhile, every straight man is so paranoid about letting anything up his rectum even though every single one of them has a prostate. Every. Single. One. Of. Them. I cannot even count how many straight men have approached me, blacked out drunk, asking me if the fact that they like getting fingered when their girlfriend sucks them off makes them a faggot! There is no amount of fingering that would make a woman sucking my dick TOLERABLE. I am not suggesting that every man should take in the ass and every woman should go lesbian. I don’t think everyone is secretly gay. I am just saying that all of you people are seriously limiting your possibilities of pleasure just because you are so afraid of feeling gender different. Get over it! And don’t give me that bullshit that sex is about having kids. It’s not 99% of the time. Yes, making a human being with someone you love is an experience I will probably never have. I understand that it is incredible, but it’s also an experience that closes a lot of doors. When you are gay, the doors do not close. When you are gay and open the closet, every door from then on out is open to you. You can have kids, or not. You can get married, or not. You can behave in a masculine way or in an effeminate way or neither. Your agency and expression is entirely up to you. So fuck that haters. Fuck the people who are so concerned with what is (or isn’t) in between your legs and what you want (or don’t want) in between your partners. Do whatever the fuck you want. You’re gay, you’re out, and you earned it. When you are gay, you are free! 20

Larry Kramer, an American playwright, author, public health advocate, and LGBT Activist, ​ 9 titled his bestselling novel Faggots. ​ Michael Thomas Ford titled his 1999 collection of (mostly) ​ ​ comedic essays about gay life That’s Mr. Faggot to You. None of these instances of ​ ​ “reclamation” should be THAT surprising. Many expressions connected to our social lives are only appropriate in certain situations because words vary with context and intentionality. The

Stanford linguist Arnold Zwicky notes in his essay The Other F Word notes that the word faggot ​ ​ is “semantically double barreled” since it simultaneously refers to multiple things. It can be an

(effeminate) gay man in general. It counts as a pejorative for gay men or it can “reclaimed” like you read above.

Replace any of the titles above with a PC term, and you don’t get quite the same effect.

Hey, gay man! Just sounds awkward. Gay Men just sounds boring and That’s Mr. Homosexual to ​ ​ ​ ​ You strikes me as verbose. “I’m a faggot” conveys a lot more emotion and meaning than “I’m ​ gay.” It’s meaningful. It’s effective. The word faggot makes people, gay or straight, flinch. It makes them twitch and squirm and raise their eyebrows in a way that the word gay or homosexual cannot. This is what makes it so damaging in the first place and why it is so ripe for the picking when it comes to reclamation. You can only reclaim negative terms, not neutral ones.

VI Reclamation in Our Present

I would like to share two different anecdotes when it comes to reclaiming the word faggot. In order to preserve the anonymity of the other characters in these stories, I am going to

9 Faggots is a book about a gay man who is unable to find love while encountering the drugs and emotionless sex in ​ ​ the trendy gay neighborhoods of New York City. According to Kramer, the term faggot refereed to an irresponsible gay man who chose to live a hedonistic lifestyle and found little fulfillment from it. It was criticized by the gay community who viewed Kramer as a traitor and by the straight community who was collectively appalled at the lifestyle some of these men lived. It was one of the best selling gay novels of all time.

21 alter their names and a few details but the bulk of it is very truth and very relevant. The first type of reclamation could be called positive association. It’s when I am stressed because I didn’t know whether I should wear my khaki pants or my white denim jeans to go with that shirt. It’s when I am in a gay panic and keep trying the different pants on in the mirror and get so fed up I change the shirt and the pant combination all together. When I do this, I am being a little bit of a ​ fag, aren’t I? My follow up question to that would be, and what is wrong with that? In this ​ instance, I am associating being gay or effeminate with caring about fashion and your ​ appearance, which is a fine quality to have. You could do this with any number of traditional effeminate qualities. For an example, the next time your masculine straight friend is rocking out to Beyoncé shamelessly, you could remind him that he is being such a faggot right now and that’s totally ok!

The second anecdote is much more interesting. I was in a friend’s room drinking once and an acquaintance of mine, let’s call him Bryan, was using the word faggot pretty frequently.

Not only was he joking and throwing slurs at his straight friends, he eventually turned to me and told me “Joe, I think it’s really weird and strange that you actually like guys. I mean, the fact that you are attracted to dudes makes me so fucking uncomfortable.” I just looked at him and realized he was shorter than me and most likely weaker than me so instead of yelling or crying or walking away I did something I have never done before— I smiled. I smiled and I said “it’s so funny you

10 say that Bryan, because you’re such a skinny little twink ,​ I always thought you were a fag until ​ ​ I found out you had been hooking up with Jessica. Oh but that’s right, you’ve been having

10 For those of you in the audience who are unfamiliar with this colloquialism, a twink, according to the ever­reliable ​ Urban Dictionary, “is an attractive, boyish­looking, young gay man. The stereotypical twink is 18­22, slender with ​ ​ little or no body hair, often blonde... and is not particularly intelligent. A twink is the gay answer to the blonde bimbo cheerleader stereotype.” 22 trouble getting it up for Jessica, haven’t you?” See Bryan didn’t know that as a gay guy, excuse me, as a FAGGOT, I have many girlfriends who were friends with Jessica and they had been talking, as girls sometimes do. All Bryan did was shudder, asked me to never call him a fag again, and we have been friends ever since (this might be a stretch but we’ve been friendly to ​ ​ each other).

In these stories, I was using the word “faggot” for gender policing. This is not a point I want to simply gloss over. In the first, even though I was doing “positive association,” I was still prescribing that caring about fashion or being effeminate was atypical male behavior. Even though I was being positive, even though I was proving something to myself or those around that

I have no problem appearing effeminate, I am still conflating with being gay with being feminine. I am not sure if this actually helpful. Not all gay men are feminine and not all straight ones are masculine. I do not think perpetuating said stereotypes is actually “reclaiming” anything. Furthermore, I am not sure if this situation provided a potent enough statement to reclaim a word that is so negatively charged. In this instance, I fear that the negativity associated with the word faggot outweighed the positivity I tried to imbue into it.

In the second story, when I called Bryan a fag, I was able to defend myself on his terms, but in doing so, I partially assimilated. I used sexist language and I may have compromised my ability to appropriately represent another gay person. By proving that I was tough and masculine enough to play ball, Bryan ended up extending an invitation to me to sit with the cool kids at lunch and, as a result, I would appear to have been “accepted” by my straight peers. The question we must ask then is am I actually a fag if I can walk, talk, and defend myself like a straight 23 person? To a certain extent, I did assimilate. I suggested to Bryan that I may be a homo, but that doesn’t mean his masculine qualities outweigh my own. The suggestion that I am unable to properly represent another gay person (because another gay person would not be able to use the word faggot like that or shouldn’t use it like that) rests on some truly homophobic assumptions.

First, it assumes that there is a singular type of gay person to represent. Secondly, it implies that gay men are inherently weaker than straight ones and are less capable of defending themselves. I am thinking of the navy couple who, after getting married in New York this past summer, were physically harassed and proceeded to physically subdue their harasser. This claim that we are inherenetly weaker has no basis. The only difference between myself that reclaimed the word and myself who would have been offended by Bryan and did nothing, is that my latter self was able to successfully defend who I am because I do not have a problem with being a faggot.

The capability of defending oneself in the face oppression actually gives one the agency to represent other queer folk by breaking stereotypes. Furthermore, Bryan was forced to alter his definition of masculinity by accepting me. His definition of masculinity mandated heterosexuality, but I was able to use the same language he uses to debunk this definition. So even if I am less of a “fag” by speaking the language of the oppressor, Bryan, by engaging with me, is less of a man for accepting a queer boy as an equal. This does not prevent me from representing other gays; in fact, it does the opposite because now Bryan realizes the possibility of equality between gay and straight men. Perhaps most importantly, forcing Bryan to reconsider stereotypes of heterosexual and homosexual males, he has to reconsider his definitions of gender

(by acknowledging that being masculine/feminine is not code for straight/gay or man/woman).

While my use of the term fag was “gender policing,” it ultimately broke down gender stereotypes 24 which actually achieves one of the goals that PC language attempts to accomplish yet cannot accomplish if its sole purpose is censoring the use of certain words. If reclamation is the goal, then I think reconsidering our definitions of masculine and feminine is the first step we ought to take. And if gender policing is a way I can do that on an individual level, then so be it.

VII Reclamation in Our Future

Reclamation seems to raise as many questions as it answers. I think one of the most important questions it raises is this: can straight identified people reclaim homophobic pejoratives? Thus far I have defended reclaiming hate speech and criticized PC language as paradoxically confining the identity groups it aims to protect. I have done so with my real life examples as an out and proud gay man. The tricky thing about sexuality is that it is not always obvious who falls into the category of the “other.” Referring to myself as a fag in an already inclusive environment is far different from Pascoe’s high school boys who may not completely understand why they are saying what they are saying. Furthermore, hearing straight boys use the terms faggot, queer, and the phrase “that’s so gay,” can be psychologically damaging to an individual who is still in the closet.

Judith Butler, in her work titled On Excitable Speech, summarizes this dynamic quite ​ ​ succinctly. “It is not enough to find the appropriate context for the speech act in question, in order to know how best to judge its effects… To be injured by speech is to suffer a loss of context, that is, not to know where you are.” Here, Butler suggests that what was damaging about the use of the word “faggot” for me in high school was not the context since the context was about gender policing. What was damaging was that I did not know exactly what they meant and 25 how it directly related to me. Butler would agree that achieving acceptance and equality is not as simple as censoring certain words since the ability of a word to be hateful or not depends upon the context or lack of context. Furthermore, unlike most other identities, sexual orientation is not something that one innately knows. A white baby knows it is white as soon as it looks into a mirror just like a black baby knows it is black but the implications of one’s whiteness or blackness takes time to understand. Sexual orientations that fall outside the norm are especially complicated because not only does it take time for one to come out to oneself, but it also takes for them to come out to others and implications of being a queer person can take even longer to realize.

After all, we’ve all heard of men getting married, having kids, growing old and finally cracking under the pressure of the lie they have lived. There is no doubt in my mind that this desire to conform to a norm starts in high school when a peer innocently (or perhaps not so innocently) tells you that that pink shirt you’re wearing is sooo gay. In this sense, it seems that ​ ​ PC language is incredibly important and seems to undermine my entire argument. I would still contend that policing language does more harm than good. No homosexual child will feel completely at home in a heterosexual world, and when one deems a certain word off limits, it not only gives the term more power, but partially removes the subject of that speech from public discourse except to say that it is forbidden. Even if it is forbidden to say the word faggot, someone in the closet will continue to feel isolated. Changing or attempting to change the context behind a word is not the same thing as changing the word. Therefore, PC language, even in this instance, fails to live up to its own expectations. At the very least, if the word is allowed, then when it is used in a homophobic or gender­policing way, gays who are out of the closet and 26 allies can use it in a positive way or they can combat the negative use of the word and attempt to change the context behind it.

The only thing we can do about a loss of context is to look for where we lost it. For this, we need to turn to the study of linguistics for advice. Linguists stress a difference between shared knowledge and mutual knowledge. Shared knowledge can be described by the following equations:

A knows X

B knows X

In this instance, person A and person B both know concept X. This is distinct from mutual knowledge which can be summarized by these equations:

A knows X

B knows X

A knows that B knows X

B knows that A knows X

A knows that B knows that A knows X

B knows that A knows that B knows X.

[This continues into infinity]

This distinction is so important because mutual knowledge, unlike shared knowledge, portrays that both parties know the full extent of the context in which they are speaking. This will be important when discussing the awkward politics of reclaiming hateful terms. If a straight

11 person is to reclaim the word fag ​ (or another homophobic epithet), they need to have mutual

11 In many of my interviews with people of color, the one’s who were comfortable reclaiming the word “nigger,” often point out that they never say it with the “­er” syllable at the end. The pronounce it “nigga” to lighten the 27 knowledge of the subject matter. They have to check in with each other every once in a while and clarify that the words they choose to use (whether or not they are racist, sexist, homophobic, etc.) do not reflect their internal attitudes. I think this is especially significant for homophobic language because unlike other identities, being queer is not immediately noticeable.

In one of the interviews I conducted, a young straight identified man actually made this distinction between shared and mutual knowledge without realizing it. He explained that at home, his high school friends and him use the most offensive language around each other with little to no regard of the words connotations. He added that every once in awhile, they all had a serious talk about racism, sexism, etc. and clarified their beliefs. This is something that I do not have with my PC peers or compatriots. Straight men that who are “nice” or “polite” to gay ones by simply not abusing them with politically incorrect terms are, from my point of view, whipping them into a certain sort of submission. As a gay man, what would you rather have? A friend who sometimes used the word faggot (in a negative away) but who makes a point to throw his arm around you and tell you that you’re his friend and that he loves you like a brother? Or someone who does neither of those things? Of course, these categories are not mutually exclusive, but in my own experience, and throughout the interviews I conducted, they seem to be the two choices.

I am thinking of the Queer Nation Manifesto which points out “In cultured circles, queers ​ ​ may quietly coexist with an otherwise disapproving power elite… These disapprovers have taught us that good queers don't get mad.” They teach us that good queers stay quiet. I am not

connotation. It has been suggested to me that when straight (or gay) people use the term “fag,” regardless of exactly how they are reclaiming it, they should pronounce it “fig.” It is certainly less negative but still manages to carry an emotional charge that can be useful for claiming pride in a homosexual identity. So the next time your straight male friend is rocking out to Beyoncé, try calling him a fig instead. 28 about staying quiet. After all, it is only within the realm of language that the homosexual lifestyle can exist. It is only through our imaginations that the reality of living out and proud can be realized. I am not about avoiding awkward and necessary conversations that make this reality possibile. If both straight people and queer people do indeed care about social acceptance for queers, I don’t understand how PC language can cultivate this while creating a silence surrounding such issues. I sincerely think it is better to know what people think of you than to live in a blissfully ignorant PC universe where nobody is harmed by language. All of us, gay or straight or what have you, participate in systems of heteronormativity. Failing to uttering a word or voting in favor of marriage equality doesn’t change that.

Wouldn’t it be nice if equality and acceptance were so simple? Just don’t call me a mean name and we’ll all get along just fine, right? Don’t hurt the poor little faggot’s feelings, he already has a hard enough time being queer. This is what I call the paradox of politically correct language. It is the fact that not only does PC language take away one’s agency to positively identify with the term, not only does it inadvertently remove the queer identity from discourse, but it also equates being nice with being accepting. It identifies politeness as a precursor to social progress. This is hypocritical. And for the gay community, this is a dangerous idea. It feels too

12 easy. Too passive. Too weak to actually chip away at the institution of heteronormativity. ​ I think reclamation can be an effective tool for everyone, regardless of their sexual orientation, to get these issues out into public discourse. Sitting around not offending each other and not getting

12 Straight people should be just as concerned with this as gay people are. Heteronormativity doesn’t just harm queer people, it constricts straight people too by dictating how they act, how they communicate and express themselves and who you are. The critically acclaimed African feminist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie said it the best. “The problem with gender is that it prescribes how we should be, rather than recognizing how we are. Imagine how much happier we would be, how much freer to be our true selves, if we didn't have the weight of gender expectations.” 29 these problems out in the open is lazy. And if it doesn’t feel like work, I promise you it is not going to work.

Furthermore, just like the high school boys who call each other fags as a form of bonding, jokes and insults are tools people use to reinforce and validate their friendships. In a perverse way, teasing someone or making fun of them is a signifier that you are friends and that you accept one another, despite your differences. It’s when there is no teasing and joking that you might suspect that you are not as close to them as you thought. Before I started calling myself a faggot (or starting making jokes concerning my sexuality), my straight peers were more reluctant to acknowledge my sexuality. They never teased or joked with me like they did with each other.

It made me feel like more of an outsider, constantly walking on eggshells. When I started to positively identify myself as a fag, something very interesting started to happen. My straight friends and peers started acting differently towards me in the best way possible. They started asking me about my love life and asked me questions about being gay just because they were

13 curious. They started making gay jokes and but not the malicious kind. ​ The jokes they made were harmless, funny, and affectionate. This change in behavior would not have been possible if everyone operated within the confines of PC language. It was only possible through reclamation.

Additionally, I have noticed that through exposing myself to the word, I have become desensitized to it when it is used maliciously.

Lastly, I would like to touch upon something that has been implicit throughout this entire

13 When people do use the word “faggot” in an intentionally homophobic way (which they sometimes do), at least I know where they stand. In my opinion, it is far better to know who your enemies are, and what people really think of you then remain ignorantly and blissfully content in a politically correct world. I think it is actually quite useful to know who the homophobes in the room are. PC language complicates that for me and ironically puts me in a potentially unknowing and dangerous situation. 30 essay but should be stated outright. It is the issue of privilege. When I called Bryan a faggot, if ​ he had been a little taller, a little buffer, if I perceived him as more of a viable threat, I most likely would not have said that. Similarly, if I had not played water polo for ten years, if I wasn’t six foot two, I would not have said that and the times I have defended myself in this way could’ve ended much more differently. After all, it is not just an offensive speech act, but also the potential of real physical harm that I was risking there. Even in my example of calling myself a fag because of my conundrum with white denim, I arguably still occupy a privileged position because someone who is shorter and more effeminate than I am may not be able to effectively reclaim such a word, depending on the context and people they are around. Reclaiming the word fag on Wesleyan’s campus is very different from doing it out in the real world. I once discussed these dynamics with a professor here and we half jokingly concluded that the topic we should all be concerned with is not male privilege or straight privilege but that of “tall privilege.” Maybe we were right and maybe we weren’t but that is a topic for a different essay altogether.

VIII Conclusion

A wise person once wrote, and I am not sure who it was, that “a myth is like an air mattress. It’s wonderfully comfortable, but it’s essentially filled with nothing. And deflation causes an uncomfortable jolt.” I hope this essay delivered such a jolt. I hope it deflated the myth of what I call politically correct language and how it supposedly generates acceptance for those who identify on the LGBTQ spectrum. When I challenge a myth like PC speech, a myth that has been accepted by the public at large, I risk being labeled a crackpot. I will nonetheless take the risk of being dismissed as a crackpot because it seems to me urgent that we deflate this myth. It 31 seems to me urgent that we recognize what the reality is in order to provide a basis for a change in our philosophy. It is my opinion that if we do not do so, if we do not change our philosophies on this subject, the astonishing progress we have seen for queer folk over the last decade will stagnate, or even worse, begin to reverse.

I think the success we have had in reclaiming the word “queer” highlights the exciting potentialities to be found in reclaiming a word like faggot. Judith Butler notes that the word queer was so successfully reclaimed not only because people yelled back at their oppressors, but because political and social forces also made it acceptable for the word to change. Therefore, we must always take a multilateral approach to social change. Reclamation is a positive tool of empowerment, but it is not the final solution nor can it be applied to every situation. Instead of labeling the term fag as not PC or simply “reclaiming” it, it is perhaps better to ask why appearing effeminate or “fag­like” is a bad thing. It is better to ask why a straight high school boy feels the need to remind those around him that is not a fag. Censorship cannot mediate such ​ ​ useful conversations because it is a purely subtractive notion of progress. I am suggesting that reclaiming offensive words as an additive endeavor to combat inequality and oppression. Simply telling high school boys to choose a different adjective is not getting at the root of the problem. It is sweeping the problem under the rug.

We have to remember that it was determined that homosexuality was not an illness in ​ 14 1990. Matthew Sheppard was beaten to death in 1998. ​ My heart breaks as I remember several years ago, the media was fond of reporting the string of LGBT youth committing suicide because

14 Matthew Shepard was a University of Wyoming student who was beaten, tortured, and left for dead on the side of a road in October 1998. The trial following his death was accompanied intense media scrutiny and sparked a nationwide debate about the legitimacy of hate crimes. 32 they couldn’t picture a future worth living… these kids needed more speech, not less. And all we give them is the Day of Silence. While we have seen much progress with marriage equality, homophobia has not gone away just because we’ve deemed it inappropriate to call effeminate guys fags. I think we should get off the euphemism treadmill and instead engage in a context tug­o­war over the meaning behind the word in order to get at the root of the problem of oppressive language. As Steven Pinker of Stanford University once wrote, “We will know we have achieved equality and mutual respect when names for minorities finally just stay put.”