We need to talk about the word ‘faggot’

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/31/need-to-talk-about-word-faggot

Version 0 of 1.

I want to talk about the word “faggot”. Bear with me as I set the scene. I was on the train coming back to Manhattan from a yearly gathering on Fire Island of a portion of my New York queer family that comes together to celebrate summer. We walked on the beach, gathered seashells and played with the small humans some of us are having now. We celebrated each other’s families and unions, shared food and listened to our successes, heartaches and failures, our stories of worries and of celebration from the year. Some of us had newly formed scars from transitioning, some of us bois and topless, some of us, fabulous femmes in bikinis, and others somewhere in between, happily chatting, happily bearing witness.

On the ferry ride back over the bay, my two friends and I worried about some of the elders who hadn’t been able to make it this year, some from illness, some had simply moved away. We wondered if and how this gathering, which had started as a small group of friends many years ago, would keep going. We spoke about this in relation to Aids and HIV and the fact that many of us lost our elder men to the virus and many of our elder lesbians to grief at the losses and weekly funerals they all bore witness to. We wondered what it meant for us, on top of this ferry in 2014, to be the first generation of gays and queers to grow old “after” Aids. What does that look like? What did it mean for us, raised up on the night scene where we had found family, to not go out any more? What about all of us who had stopped doing drugs, by choice or circumstance, and the concern over some of us who were still using? Was this gathering one of the resolutions to some of this?

We docked and waited for the train. Full of sustenance and family. Concerned about the future and hopeful for it.

And then: “Hey, fucking faggot.” In one second and with three words, all of that love came to a screeching halt as my travelling companions and I, now on the train, were jolted out of our conversation and automatically assessed, with fine-tuned habit, whether or not we were safe.

We eyed each other from under our hats as a group of three huge men walked on to the train and bellowed a welcome to their friend, with his girlfriend, behind us: “Hey, fucking faggot.”

Faggot. In these instances, which are a million and everyday for us, there are three options: 1) to make yourself invisible (this is impossible for a lot of us because we are, in fact, so fabulous), 2) if we’re lucky, the setting is safe, and we know how to use it as a teaching opportunity, and 3) to lose it and lay into whoever has threatened you with anger and ferocity. This last choice often ends in a beating. I chose a hybrid of option 2 and 3. I had to.

So I stood up, shaking inside, and towered over these three young men, showing them: me. In all of my glorious faggotry, I stretched, and said: “Man, I love being a faggot.” And while flawed in its attempt to right a wrong, this was the best I could do, and it was necessary.

I had privilege and chose to use it in however limited a way I could to try to right what had just happened – to stand and try to make it safe for any other faggot who may or may not have been on that train. To show them that there was an ally here, and to show these four young men that, actually, this tall beautiful creature, this gay-andro beach sun-kissed butch creature in a fitted cap and a muumuu towering in front of them, and whom they were now staring at, was a fag and proud and standing.

While this was all I could do in that moment, I should like to take this opportunity here, now, to share how deeply incorrect this young man was. I would have engaged in that discourse then and there but they were bigger than me, there were four of them, and the truth is, I don’t like getting beaten up. My physical safety now intact, I should like to say now what I couldn’t then.

“Faggots” are beautiful, magical, brave humans who have overcome the loss of an entire generation of their elders to HIV and Aids and who have, despite this, approached life with resilience, grace, and class, despite opposition, beratement, beatings, oppression, and exclusion from their families, their kin, their jobs, and their homes. They are some of the most beautiful human beings I know, who have overcome huge adversity and grief, with their hearts intact and smiles in their eyes. And so being called a faggot is, in fact, a compliment of the highest order. Those of you who use it as anything less than a term of celebration are incorrect.

Furthermore, and with the humour granted to me from the queens that raised me, I would have liked to argue that in this instance the term “faggot” was not actually apt. This young man had in fact misread his friend’s look. If stereotypes are going to be used, one should get it right: his friend was serving up more of a “Chelsea gay” look, with the tight, button-up shirt, the beautiful muscles and the tan. My look was serving “faggot fairy”, my friend fierce queer fem, and my other pal eastern-Euro realness with some 90s flashback. I would have pointed out that the closest thing to a faggot on this train car was in fact me and this purely for my own aspirational reasons, despite being biologically female. Anyone should be so lucky to be called one.

I would have then sat down. And worried whether or not I was now going to be killed.

Happily, I am not. I am tucked away in my apartment after having brunch with my very straight sister and her very straight boyfriend who were as offended by what had happened as I was horrified.

So. Friends and fellows who use the word “faggot”. Really. You may want to reconsider it as a slur. I don’t know how to tell you this but all the faggots I know are fabulous, wonderful, glorious, generous, and kind men. MEN. The world is in desperate need of as many of this type of man as possible and what happened to me the other night might give the rest of us pause to consider how it is that we have raised these young men to not be able to see that.