Foul! After using a homophobic slur in a YouTube video, a professional FIFA gamer with more than 250,000 YouTube subscribers found himself banned from FIFA 19 tournaments by EA Sports. And in his apology video, Tassal “Tass” Rushan claims he didn’t know any better because he’s from London.
In the original video, Rushan is frustrated to draw Uruguayan football star Matías Vecino from a random card pack in the game. “And just like that, we’re seeing this f*cking fag again,” he seethed.
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Addressing the controversy in his followup vid, Rushan calls the incident a “very unfortunate, unintentional misunderstanding from my end” and blamed his London upbringing.
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“Due to where I’ve been brought up, the connotation of that word from my perspective, it was like another word for ‘prick’ or ‘idiot’ or ‘rubbish,’” he said. “Not even one percent of me thought or knew it had any type of derogatory connotation towards homosexuality at all.”
“I’m sitting here laughing a little bit because it just comes down to stupidity and [it was] purely unintentional from my perspective,” Rushan continued. “I think some of you guys could back me up on this extent. Who’s from London? Did you know that word had that connotation? Some of you will, some of you won’t.”
Trouble is, we can’t find any reference to the f-word meaning “prick” or “idiot” or anything of the sort in the dozen definitions listed in the Oxford English Dictionary, which has to be the definitive dictionary for both the Queen’s English and British slang.
The OED mentions the original meaning of the word — a bundle of sticks or twigs — as well as a few interesting Anglo-centric meanings. In the olden days of the British Army, for instance, a faggot was “a man who is temporarily hired as a dummy soldier to make up the required number at a muster of troops.” In British politics, it was “a vote for a particular candidate or party fraudulently contrived by nominally transferring sufficient property to a person who would not otherwise be qualified to vote.” And in regional English, it’s “a woman, esp. one considered to be troublesome, useless, or slatternly.”
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Indeed, a lot of people aren’t buying Rushan’s excuse. “As a homosexual that goes to London every now and then, I’ve had that shouted at me enough times to say, yes, they know what it means in London,” said one Eurogamer commentator.
“I’m from London, and I’d definitely put my neck on the line and say everyone I know would be able to tell you exactly why that word isn’t acceptable,” wrote another.
The eSports industry has struggled to combat homophobic slurs and other hateful speech on its platforms in recent months and years. In January, for instance, an Overwatch League player was caught calling another player a “f*cking faggot kid,” and the ESPN reporter who broke the story was found to have used the same slur on Twitter years before.
Sparkyu1
Englishman here who has lived in London – this excuse is ludicrous. Yes it can mean “cigarette” or a kind of meat ball in the long form – but it is never used as an insult in that context
If you call someone a f@g in any part of England we know EXACTLY what it means and exactly why it’s unacceptable
Chrisk
A Pro Gamer? Wtf Lol
Anyways as my dad used to say. You can fool some of the people some of the time but you can’t fool all the people all the time. Clearly he’s fooling nobody.
charlie_jackpot
What a load of bollocks – he knew exactly what he was saying, everyone in the UK knows the different meaning of the f-word
o.codone
I’m gonna give him the benefit of the doubt, it’s possible that his head is that far up his arse. Which is something I’d rather like to do myself. Stick something of mine up his arse. Cutie.
karl schroeder
I stayed in London for two years and while it is true that that that word is not generally used to describe gays, everyone still knows what it means. When he used that word he knew exactly what he was saying – nothing to do with meatballs or cigarette ends.
cancorv
Maybe Mr. Rushan thinks that Matías Vecino is a fag. Maybe his frustration with having to play against a fag is not because he dislikes fags, but knows that fags are really good players. And when he says, “that fag”, maybe he means that this fag in particular is going to beat his arse in this round (or however the game works). Announcing in the first sentence that the word fag is a homosexual slur creates the problem that the rest of the article proceeds to exacerbate. By the time political correctness has run its full course, everyone will be afraid to say anything. And/or the language will be so denuded of its expressive power that we will have caught up with Orwell, or he will have caught up with us. My heart goes out to the English language. God save the Queen.