Author: Max Weidman
Words, especially those which target historically underrepresented groups, have excess baggage. Sometimes, despite your best efforts, you have no control over this-there is historical subjugation, hatred and violence that even your best intentions cannot escape. It is unfortunate that so many of these words have made their way into a common, public vernacular; many find themselves justifying their speech by assuring the audience that they personally espouse no such sentiments. It’s just how we talk. My point is not to vilify everyone who uses or has used (myself included) these words. I will not try to claim that Ann Coulter is, ironically, probably the spawn of Satan, her most persistent enemy on the crusade for Christianity (although, if I had time for a secondary point, this would likely be it). My point is this: using homophobic language, such as persistently calling everything “gay,” is (a) vague; (b) insensitive to both historical and contemporary grievances; and (c) not worth the potential harm.
Ann Coulter has been the subject of media attention lately for a comment she made about John Edwards, in which she used the word “faggot.” Most people realize that this, on a televised, massively public scale, is totally against normal rules of decorum. Some hesitate to apply this moral standard to private, personal life in which conversations are shared with friends whose sentiments are known to be unaffected by such language. I do not think it is anyone’s intention to regulate what people say in private to their friends. I do think, however, that many of us could improve by cleansing ourselves of what I will new age-ly refer to as “hate baggage.” It will also make us more articulate, precise and innovative in our conversations. Finally, because discourse is never reducible to a hermetic, binary speaker-audience model, breaking this bad habit is a simple way to avoid the possibility of hurting people (I think “offending” tends to trivialize legitimate grievances).
The word “gay,” when not used directly in reference to anything tangibly homosexual, means practically everything. In various contexts I have heard the word used to indicate an event/act/object that is: stupid, annoying, infuriating, unfair, lame, sad, messed up, unlucky or pertaining to musical theater and/or the great sport of gymnastics (both of which I, a devout heterosexual, have participated in). The word has no purchase-it means too many things. Using it is mostly just a lazy way of indicating something which is repulsive in one way or another. This leads to the interesting question of what in us feels this repulsion. Is our heterosexual identity truly so threatened by the The Sound of Music that we can’t sing along, let alone watch it without calling it queer?
Forgive me for dealing so irreverently with these matters, which, make no mistake, are among the more grave facing our civil society and our Oxy community in particular. That being said, I would suggest the following advice: To those who use these words even though they “don’t have anything against gays-I literally have gay friends,” you should do some reading regarding the historical violence, hatred and prejudice that has affected gays, lesbians and transsexuals (Matthew Shepard is just one particularly horrific example). You should meditate on exactly what you mean when you-apparently with no intention of conveying homophobia-use words traditionally acknowledged as homophobic or otherwise bigoted. Ultimately, if you don’t have anything against gays, you should find some new words which don’t denotatively and connotatively have something against gays.
To those who use these words “because my gay friends use them, so if they’re okay with it…” I would say: cool. When you and all of your non-het friends are hanging out you can say whatever you want. I could care less. If you find this a viable justification for using these words in society at large, I wish you the best when constantly explaining yourself. May your audience be open and accepting of your officially gay-sanctioned slang. Pray you don’t encounter a bunch of uptight, fancy-pants homosexuals who will try to make you feel guilty.
To everyone else: you’re constitutionally (at least by its orthodox interpretations) free for the most part to use these words at will. I know some of you mean no harm. Some of us were “just raised that way” or “just think non-heterosexuality is immoral.” Incidentally, other people’s immoral behavior is not, as far as I can see, justification for treating them immorally. And seriously, if you’re a Christian, read your Bible. What people do in their own homes is, pretty much, none of your concern. Hell, turning a blind eye to harmless behavior is even easier than turning the other cheek! If you don’t see casual slang (with a side of heavy “hate baggage”) as immoral treatment, then I’ve got nothing for you. If you have questions about the harm this kind of speech does, you should take those up with the most opposite members of your community, in this case non-heterosexuals.
I would like, however, to say just one more thing. For the dudes who call everything “gay:” it is not “gay” that the Bears lost the Super Bowl. It is not “gay” that Maxim magazine doesn’t print nipple-shots and it is not “gay” that you’ve run out of Natural Ice. I’m not going to say these are solely heterosexual problems; they’re just problems that have nothing to do with homosexuality. Finally, for everyone who thinks “straight” means natural- seriously, get bent.
Max Weidman is a junior ECLS major. He can be reached at mweidman@oxy.edu
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