The word “faggot” has been driving discussion on Queerty since last week, when we reported that Broadway legend Harvey Fierstein warned an interviewer to “leave me alone with that faggot [Johnny Weir.]”
Many supporters argued that gay-on-gay “faggot” use did not amount to an insult, insisting that context and personal history are everything when determining just how offensive a historically disparaging epithet is to be taken. As an LGBT icon and activist, people like Fierstein and comedian Lisa Lampanelli are more or less “allowed” to use the slur, especially when referring to gay men specifically.
“Faggot” is a cultural term that has been appropriated by the gay community as a term of endearment, Queerty reader Ryan Harris wrote in a response to our coverage of the issue. “When you use the words that hurt the most in your own vernacular, the words begin to lose meaning,” he says.
Alternatively, many readers believe the word “faggot” should be retired permanently, and feeble attempts to “reclaim” it should be rightfully squashed. Debate was even more heated when we reported that rap collective Odd Future’s affinity for the word drove heterosexual group leader Tyler, The Creator to use it 213 times on an album — some argued that a straight person does not have the right to “reclaim” a word that isn’t theirs.
How about we take this to the next level?
Our newsletter is like a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.
So you tell us, Queerty readers. Zero tolerance, or tolerance in context? When is it OK to call someone “faggot,” and who is allowed to do it?
B Damion
I only really us the word bitch-please with my friends and a girl… please! But never never ever will I use the word “Faggot”.
That word rubs me the wrong way. It’s not funny at all. But,it is what it is chile.
-smile
DB75
Well, Matthew, you know how I feel. I’ve said it many times. To me, it’s just a word.
I’ve been called far worse in my life. And, I think after almost 40 yrs, I’ve developed an extremely thick skin. Sure, when certain people use it as a slur against me or us it bothers me at first. But I get over it. There are assholes everywhere. It’s part of life to deal with the shit we don’t want to encounter.
My view, I understand, is not everyone’s view. I will not stop using the word. I just won’t use it here in reference to anyone I do not personally know.
ragobash
Thanks for reading and responding, Matthew. It’s good to know that a dialogue has been sparked, even if nothing was officially settled between the two camps; not that that was necessarily the end goal. Maybe like DB75 said, maybe I’ve just developed a thick skin, but my way of thinking was akin to Tyler’s, and the discussion has made me realize that my view on the subject was limited and I was not considering everyone’s various sides to the issue. Thank you for the discussion, again. Have a great week and I can’t wait to read more.
Teeth
I use that word- but I use it in anger. And when I do, I intend all the ugliness that it comes with. Usually I would only say it for some closet case republican who is fighting gay causes and hanging out at Steamworks.
jaycenc
I never use it to refer to people more like tiny, weird objects, for example when I realised my car had a little radio aerial on the back of the roof I laughed said “wtf is this faggot aerial”
Throbert McGee
The “F-word” and variants on it are ALWAYS okay IF you are a heroic marionette fighting the evil subsidiary minions of Kim Jong-il.
(My personal theory is that trash-talking martial artist Chris from Team America was a gay teen boy who socially and psychologically jumped way back into the closet after the trauma of being gang-raped by the entire male cast of CATS — but possibly he’ll figure himself out someday and enjoy consensual man-to-man lovemaking with Spottswoode.)
AJAnders
I’d be fine if the word was retired. Aside from using the term “Fag-hag,” for female friends about 15 years back before it became outdated, I never used the word otherwise.
I will never call a guy that. Ever.
B Damion
@Throbert McGee….LMAO..Too funny.
KDub
It’s always okay. We’re all entitled to free speech. I never get why people get so mad over words. The great thing is everybody has at least one word. Someone calls you your word, call them their word and move on. Sitting around crying foul over name-calling gives people way too much power.
BadlySF
The word “queer” has offended many people for years but there are some who insist and insist we “reclaim” it. How is “faggot” any different?
DK
I never understand these debates pretending that something that is quite simple is complicated. This is just like the n-word: if you’re not part of the group that was demonized with it, don’t use it.
/end thread, and life goes on.
Throbert McGee
The other thing about the “word-rhyming-with-maggot” — it has absolutely NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with gay men being used as “kindling” when medieval fanatics were preparing to burn witches.
(Hint: Gay men, like all other mortal human beings, are made mostly of water, and therefore make extremely poor kindling. On the other hand, real witches are made of wood — as scientifically proved by Monty Python — and therefore burn very easily.)
The boring truth is something more or less like this:
(1) In British slang, the expression “f*g work” has meant boring, dirty, unskilled labor like hauling coal or peeling potatoes or shoveling manure or darning socks for at least three centuries;
(2) During WWI, Americans heard Brits saying “Corporal Johnson has been assigned to do f*g work” and wrongly assumed that this was a British euphemism for “Cpl. Johnson is offering free blowjobs”;
(3) American soldiers brought this totally mistaken homosexual interpretation of “f*g” back home to the States after WWI, and a bit later “f*g” was turned into “f*gette” because it sounded more girly, and still later, “f*gette” got respelled as “f*ggot” (which has meant “bundle of sticks” since the days of Chaucer, at least).
Mezaien
???? why do`s it meters? I call them “the white Christian republicans, names for years why would I stop now??. After all white Republican Christian should be exterminated in concentrations camp.
Throbert McGee
@DB75:
Word. Developing a thick skin — and not sitting around holding hands and singing Kumbaya — is a crucial life-skill for LGBT teens and others who are “at risk of being bullied.”
Another important life-skill for LGBT teens, etc.: Take karate or judo or boxing or MMA or Israeli “krav maga” — but learn the basic techniques of physical self-defense. Bullies have an instinctive aversion to picking on people who look like they might know how to punch a bully in the throat and knock him on the ground.
hotboyvb81
when you’ve done as much as Harvey has for the gay community- you can say whatever the hell you want…if you’re Ken mehlman- don’t ever speak again- the rest of us fall in degrees between them.
jwrappaport
I usually use it when I’m describing the increasingly mealy-mouthed conservative position on gay equality. It’s not that they’re pro-family, pro-marriage, constitutional originalists, populists, or in favor of religious freedom – it’s that they think I’m a faggot and shouldn’t have the same rights that straight people do. They can dress it up however they want and even lie to themselves about it, but that’s what bubbles underneath it all.
It can also be appropriate during sex with an especially dominant top.
(I also love the picture. Brian was always so bold and fearless. Swoon.)
sportsguy1983
Yep, gays should develop a thick skin to the word f@ggot just like blacks should develop a thick skin to the word n1gger, hispanics to sp1c, Jews to k1ke, Arabs to sand n1gger, Asians to ch1nc, and native americans to redskins.
sejjo
@sportsguy1983: What rubbish! Telling people to get over something so painful is just irresponsible and disrespectful. Certain things people will never get over. YOU need to get over that fact.
I’m not sure if it’s ever okay to use the word ‘faggot’. I personally don’t use it. It’s not about using the word, but HOW you use it. Words hurt more than fists.
I’ve seen a personalized license plate that says “Fag 4 Life”, and I say more power to you!
jwrappaport
@sejjo: I think he was being sarcastic – at least I hope.
Blackceo
I use it to describe over the top gay things. Like for instance, one time my ex boyfriend saw a mouse and screamed at an octave I had never heard come out of him, jumped up in the chair, and was screaming my name like the killer was in the house. When I came flying downstairs to see what was wrong and I found out it was a damn field mice, my response was something like “thats some real faggoty shit” or “what kind of faggotry mess is this?”
sportsguy1983
Well, duh i was being sarcastic.
Miss Understood
I just tested and still… people have to write tr_anny or S-emale instead of spelling the words out else or your system rejects their comments. But faggot is fine? What is the point of this filtering? So mindless! Lots of people are offended by the word “queer”Queety.
teejay123
Pretty obvious from the piece here what Queerty’s position on this is.
However, given the apparent ‘just-don’t-use-it’ viewpoint, I’d STILL like to know how the name ‘Queerty’ can be justified.
Here in the UK, you hear ‘fag’ mentioned several times daily, but invariably referring to a cigarette.
If you were going to use someone’s homosexuality as an insult, you’d much more likely call them queer. File alongside bent, poof etcetc.
Point is that language is a complicated thing and ownership and context is everything. Anyone calling anyone a faggot just as a way of using their sexuality as an offence isn’t great, whoever says it. But that’s clearly very different to a bunch of gay guys describing someone as a fag, in the sense of pandering to the worst kind of gay stereotypes, which we can all be guilty of, and which we should all have the right to call fellow gays out on. In Harvey’s case, I’d say he was justified in calling Johnny Weir out as an embarrassing display of over-the-top histrionics and shallow material obsession, since the whole ugly affair plays into the expectations of the kind of people who people like Harvey have had to fight so long and hard to convince that we would take marriage as seriously as anyone else.
To respond by saying ‘just-don’t-use-it’ is at best impractical (in addition to fag meaning cigarette, you can still buy faggots in the supermarket; queer obviously also refers to a counter-culture, gay sensibility as well as just meaning ‘odd’; poof is when things go up in smoke; bent is not straight.. And so on..) but at worst is dangerous. Not sure why the point is so readily dismissed here when it’s so true: you start banning/ avoiding words and you lend them a shock and power that people will use when they use them against you. Why do you think c**t is still so shocking?
Elloreigh
Queerty said: When Is It OK To Call Someone “Faggot?”
Let me ask you this: When is it OK for someone to call YOU a “faggot”?
Never, in my book. At best, it will earn you the ‘glare of death’ from me. Depending on the context, you might end up better-informed concerning the reasons that your aren’t the superior person you think yourself to be, and not to try that attitude with me ever again.
I’ve faced way too much abuse in my life that included the use of that word to ever find it the least bit endearing.
But that’s just me.
Daveliam
@BadlySF:
This is the thing that I don’t seem to understand. I personally don’t use the word faggot. I find it distasteful. However, I also find queer to be distasteful as well. I don’t really use that word either, unless I’m using it in academic discourse.
I find it slightly amusing that the author of this article, who also wrote two other articles this week about this particular word, works for an organization that NAMED ITSELF using a gay slur. How is using queer any different than using faggot? Both are historically charged words and both are being ‘reclaimed’ by the community. If Queerty was named Faggotry, would Matthew not work for them? Genuine question.
Dakotahgeo
Intelligent persons do not need to use derogatory names. Those who call their friends by negative names should find better friends with more culture and finesse, not to mention common sense!
Kieran
Why is it okay to use the slur “faggot” here, but the slur “n1gger” is verboten? A slur is a slur.
Blackceo
@Kieran:
Yeah I asked that in another thread. It makes no sense you can use faggot, yet get censored for r*acist.
samwise343
I can’t stand gay people who essentially work against their own kind (you know who they are). But I would never, ever call them “faggots”.
Steve318
On the one hand: sticks and stones, on the other, the last word guys heard before being beat to death. I’m a Kinsey 2. Lived straight for 40 years. But as a child and a teenager I was called a fag more times them I can count. I took the sticks and stones approach then, and the reclaim approach now. But I have sympathy for those who would like to retire the word totally. Realistically, retiring it won’t happen. So let’s reclaim it, and adopt sticks and stones if it is used disparagingly.
Allen D.
I find that it’s perfectly ok when discussing 2 self-identified males with gigantic purse collections.
Tackle
@sportsguy1983: You’re overexaggerating and generalizing. No group is monolith. There-for, you have MANY gays, Blacks, Hispanics, Jews, Arabs, Asians, and Native Americans, who have developed thick skin, and don’t give a danm about someone using thoes words. We realize that there will always be hateful/evil people in the world, who are NOT worth the time and energy to fuss over. So we consider the source. And about playing it off by claiming to just ( being) sarcastic, and or just joking. Well behind every (sarc) or (jest) is a truth.
Tackle
@sejjo: I believe you mean well.But you to are Overexaggerating about thoes words being (so painful), and
(words hurt more than fists.) No they don’t. It’s not like if someone hear these or other hateful words directed at them that they are going to be emotionally crippled, or need therapy for the next ten yrs. The main ones who hateful words will bother are thoes who are highly sensitive, with the added need for everyone to like and accept them. There are many parents who teach their children from a very early age ( mine did) that “sticks & stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me”.
This mentally toughens a child up through adolescence, on through adulthood. When people make claims about words being so painful, and hurts more than fists, ( even though they may mean well) they unknowling give reason and desire for the for the hateful to use thoes words. Because the desire and satisfaction is to hurt…
David
The last time I was called faggot was when I slammed the door on an obnoxious cab driver and they yelled after me “you f*cking little faggot.”
I was overwhelmed with a sense of pride as I realized he was looking at my ass and still calling me “little.”
I guess this conversation proves that we don’t all have to like the same thing and it’s silly to try. However, I am a faggot. I am what the person is referring to. They may have all kinds of pejorative associations with the word, however, I simply don’t. Being a faggot is fine with me.
WilV
Look, my friends and I use the terms fag, queer, queen and homo ALL the time. It’s not offensive to us because we are past the point where we let words define us. Also, we know we mean no harm by it.
Having said that, even when the words are flung my way in an attempt to belittle me, I never let them. Words only have power to hurt IF you let them. I don’t. That usually leaves the person trying to insult me in a state if confusion because I’ve made them impotent with no effort.
JaimeGandarilla
I find it very simple. It’s our N-word, it’s re-appropriation. I can say it, they can’t.
ChiChi Man
I love Harvey Fierstein and I loathe Johnny Weir, but Fierstein used a hateful word in a hateful manner. It’s pretty cut and dried to me. He didn’t say he had a crush on that cute little F-word. He was insulting and denigrating Weir. Harvey is still my hero, but he’s out of line.
The whole black people use the N word garbage is tiresome. There are 45 million black people in the U.S. Do you know all of us? I never use the N word – but there’s a big difference between calling a friend the N word and using the N word to insult people.
Throbert McGee
@Blackceo:
Heh-heh! I’ve had numerous pet rats over the years, and it always “amused” me (in a bad way) if I invited a date back to my place after dinner and a movie and the dude was like “Eeek! A rat!”
Of course I’d try to explain how tame pet rats can be and that they enjoy sitting on your lap while you scratch behind their ears, but SOME guys (who did not get invited back!) would continue squealing “Ew, gross, could you put that thing back in its cage?”
Meanwhile, my very girly sister thinks rats are cool and has happily rat-sitted at her own home if I had to be out of town for more than a couple days.
Throbert McGee
@Tackle:
I don’t agree 100% with this. I think it’s important to tell BULLIES that “words can hurt more than fists,” but what you should say to the BULLIED is “names can never hurt you.”
It’s a really bad idea, however, if you say to the BULLIED: “you poor injured victim — words can cut like knives!” This approach helps to create job security for “Anti-Bullying Crusaders” — whose livelihood depends on a perpetual class of “downtrodden, voiceless victims” — but it doesn’t really help bullied people (except those whose life aspiration is to become an Anti-Bullying Crusader).
Throbert McGee
Regarding “the N-word” — in a famous tirade from his Bring the Pain concert, Chris Rock used the word dozens and dozens of times, but he defined the word in a very specific way.
He argued that a “n*gger” is a “low-expectations-having motherf***er” who demands special credit for doing perfectly normal things (such as NOT being a deadbeat dad), and who blames The Media for “giving us a bad name” (“Mike Wallace ain’t never stole nothing from me — n*ggers have!”), and who takes perverse pride in being uneducated (“Wanna keep your money safe from n*ggers? Hide your cash inside a book! Books are like kryptonite to n*ggers!”).
So, I think that self-respecting gay people can use “f*ggot” in a similar way — not just for “Gay Republican sell-outs,” but just as much for “low-expectations-having motherf***ers” of any political persuasion who want to blame other people’s homophobia for all gay problems, rather than recognizing and criticizing the bad influences that come from within our gay-made gay culture.
For example, Larry Kramer is not a “f*ggot” for denouncing Truvada as a bad approach to the HIV problem — but some of the people who attacked Larry Kramer as an out-of-touch “slut-shamer” DEFINITELY ARE “f*ggots.”
Ms Urethra Johnson
Here goes… I own a STRAIGTH bar / lounge… The whole city knows we’re gay… WHO CARES… I bartend…and guess what? I use whatever term I want, whenever I feel like it, the difference is the absence of HATRED or disrespect or ATTACK of people’s character or physical shortcomings: you dish it out= I dish it right back on the same level. It’s all in the DOSAGE / context too. Some nights it’s all serious and “proper”, some nights it’s just CRAY-CRAY (cameras should be filming) The point is everyone is entertained NOT HURT. Examples:”… listen dude, you know I’m gayer than Gay Gayerson but WOW your girlfriend’s tits are spectacular…” to round-the-bar laughter… It has become somewhat of a right-of-passage for the hot girls to have me motor-boat them, weird huh? …”(cust.)I think I should slow down, (me)don’t worry I’ll pour you a gay one this time…” or the ever popular ” if it was up your arse you’d know it”… It defuses the whole “discompfort” issue. I let them be “funny and silly”, vulgar/rude gay jokes and all ( I call it group therapy ) get it off your chest gurl…I even introduced them to CONCHITA WURST… they LOVED IT ( I was the one that was the most uncompfortable/embarrassed with it at first, much like the ESPN kiss). Now they’re actually “annoying me” every night to play RUPAUL’s “Sissy that WALK” , fills the dance floor…95% of my regulars are now BREEDERS ( from all walks of life and age groups )… and they LOVE the punishment I dish out… If some actual homophobe walks in, my BREEDER customers will be the first ones to read them to filth and physically remove them… In my bar we’re all HUMANS first, whomever we prefer to play with is secondary. PAAAWRTEEEYY, fun nights, real frienships.
I OWN my own “gaydomness”, don’t like it? Go to HELL !!!
Throbert McGee
@teejay123:
Hi, teejay123! I had the vague impression that “c**t” is a lot less shocking in the UK than it is here on the left side of the Atlantic. Not because Brits are such horrible misogynists that they don’t realize how hurtful the word is, of course, but because the word is used in a somewhat more “gender-neutral” way in the UK than it is in North America.
I mean, I thought that it was perfectly normal slang usage in UK English if a straight guy says about another straight guy “He was being a c**t” (meaning “he was acting like an insufferable selfish jackass”). But “he is a c**t” sounds extremely strange in US English (except, perhaps, in campy Gayspeak).
Throbert McGee
@Miss Understood:
Not only that, but I’ve found that if you use the word “homosexual” more than about three times in a post that also includes the word “Bible”, the system will assume that you’re some kind of Christian troll who’s trying to lure gullible f*gs into an ex-gay ministry.
Still, the nuisance of dealing with these hyper-sensitive “censor-bot” programs is a lot better than being constantly invaded by actual missionaries from Exodus and NARTH.
Throbert McGee
@Ms Urethra Johnson:
+100
Ms. Urethra, ma’am, you and I have very different styles — but I think we’re pretty much on the same team.
Fighting homophobia is so complicated that sometimes you need to take an I’ll-be-Good-Cop / You’ll-be-Bad-Cop / He’ll-be-Crazy-Cop-Played-by-Mel-Gibson approach to the problem.
(And this goes for gay misbehaviors that stem from internalized homophobia, not just the more obvious homophobia of Christian fundamentalists.)
DickieJohnson
“Gay Speech Mafia”, NO! We don’t need one!!! F*ggot, n., A male homosexual who gets his/her panties in a wad over something, then whines and bitches about it to others to others of his/her kind.
teejay123
@Throbert McGee:
It is less shocking, but not, I suspect, because it’s gender-neutral, but just because it’s used more – which was what I was trying to say about the power you give to language when you so actively avoid it.
Though don’t come over here and think it’s ok to call someone a c**t apropos of nothing, like a term of endearment! It’s usually still fairly extreme, and still a pretty damning insult, but yeah, with the right friend you could call them a stupid c**t in passing. See Danny Dyer for the full range and colour of using the word!
Tobi
Ahh, but Queerty’s totally OK with labelling the hets as “straight” which leaves the rest of us bent, crooked or twisted, huh? Nice.
lusitania
For all those faggots, queers, poof and butt munchers out there. that have been aroun the scene for 2 minutes, and seem to think that, the words we call each other. are what the fight for gay equality is all about. for those that think that o ne gay person calling another gay person a fag is internal homophobia. and the what the gay movement is all about i say to u this…. grow the hell up! watch HBO’s the normal heart. then manage to obtain a copy of “And the band played on” and watch that to. THAT is what Equality is all about.
fighting to literally stay alive and not be ignored by those that want us dead. that is what we should still be fighting for. not attacking our ally’s and each other…take a look at those films, and remembering that the reality was so much worse than u and i will ever know. because of those that came and died before us. then tell me that u have the right to tell those very people what word is considered offensive…like a word is even important!!!