Alternet: 'Fag' Is Turning Into A High School Insult For Any Guy Who Doesn't Play Football

http://www.alternet.org/sex/65697

"Fag" Is Turning into a High School Insult for Any Guy Who Doesn't Play Football

By C. J. Pascoe, American Sexuality Magazine. Posted October 20, 2007.

"I'm talking like sixth grade, I started being called a fag. Fifth grade I was called a fag. Third grade I was called a fag," seventeen-year-old *Ricky recounted as we sat at a plastic picnic table outside of a fast food restaurant in California's Sacramento delta region. Though he experienced this type of harassment throughout elementary and junior high school, Ricky said that the threats intensified as he entered *River High School.

At "all the schools the verbal part . . . the slang, 'the fag,' the 'fuckin' freak,' 'fucking fag,' all that stuff is all the same. But this is the only school that throws water bottles, throws rocks, and throws food." Harassment like this hounded him out of his school's homecoming football game. "Two guys started walking up to get tickets said, 'There's that fucking fag.'" During the game boys threw balloons and bottles at Ricky along with comments like, "What the fuck is that fag doing here? That fag has no right to be here."

While this singular event stands out as particularly hate filled, Ricky's story also illustrates the larger problems of homophobia and gender-based teasing in high school. Homophobic taunting is especially intense during adolescence, a time when sexuality and romance are at the fore of social life. For boys, and not just those who are branded as gay, walking through a hallway is like running a gauntlet of homophobic insults as their male classmates imitate effeminate men and hurl homophobic slurs. My book, Dude, You're a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School, examines this ubiquitous homophobia. During my year and a half of research at River High, I found that these comments, when coming from and directed at boys, often have as much to do with shoring up definitions of masculinity as they do with reinforcing notions of "normal" heterosexuality.

This is particularly true of the slur "fag." While the term "gay" is frequently used as a synonym for stupid, it lacks the gender loaded skew of the term "fag." Oftentimes when boys call someone a "fag" they simultaneously imitate effeminate men (in other words, behavior they consider to be "fag-like"). Their homophobic comments, jokes, and interactions, in a sense, serve to punish others into behaving in stereotypically masculine ways. Though homophobia is usually thought of as fear of same sex attraction, in high school, boys' homophobia is also about policing gendered norms.

At River High I saw and heard boys imitate effeminate behavior and hurl the word "fag" so frequently at one another that I came to call it a "fag discourse." Invoking this epithet and joking about "fags" were not just random incidents, but systemic and well accepted ways for teenage boys to communicate. Boys talked about others they considered to be "fags," made jokes about unmasculine mannerisms, imitated those mannerisms, and used the term to insult one another both jokingly and seriously. They lisped, pretended to lust after men, and drew laughs from primarily male onlookers. They frantically lobbed the epithet at one another, in a sort of compulsive name calling ritual. Because the "fag" slur is and isn't about sexual desire, both self-identified gay boys and heterosexual boys were subject to the label for failing at stereotypically masculine tasks or revealing, in any way, weakness or femininity.

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have made it easier for this kind of thing to go on.

endless tirades about ''lifestyle'' and hate speech around marriage equality simply gives the impression that this sort of thing is ok.

and like any kind of bigotry -- often good speech will not counteract hate speech like this.

Not with my kids though.... they know that they'll suffer the wrath of their father if they behave that way.

the bigger message out there, in higher frequency than many parents cannot compete with, is the macho manly manly crap - and to be macho you have to denigrate any feminine qualities. to the macho having feminine characteristics is the ultimate insult.

isn't homo erotic at all.

Because it's steeped in violence and "building character" and "winning in the game of life" and all that.

if a dude doesn't like you and wants to fight, he'll insinuate you're a fag, but it generally only happens when you're boning his ex-girlfriend.:thumbsup:

n/t

It's been that way for forty years. George Carlin even did a bit about it on one of his early albums.

I'm 44 and there were asshat jocks calling the band, choir and math club kids this when I was in high school. :grr:

I ran track, but didn't play football, and was called "faggot" (over 30 years ago). I guess being 6'2" and 135 pounds didn't help me out much.

If you don't enjoy a sport where every play begins with a man touching another man's ass then you're gay?

Whatever.

When I was dating, it was on the top of my deal-breakers list. Any man who referred to another man as a "fag" or anything as "faggy" was immediately discarded as potential date material. I wasn't friends with those kind of losers either. I HATE that kind of macho, bigoted bs. Hate hate hate HATE it.

BTW, girls occasionally do this to one another also: certain types of girl groups will sometimes use sexuality as a way to single victim girls out and give others a reason to dislike them (dyke!). Like the behavior identified in this article, the victim in question doesn't necessarily actually have to be a lesbian. I've never been friends with those kind of mean girls either.

Does that still make me a "fag"?

but this attitude isn't. It's born of ignorance, plain and simple. There are people who don't realize that sexuality and doing stereotypical 'guy' things have absolutely NOTHING to do with each other.

I knew one guy in high school who, for several months, REFUSED to believe that I liked girls. He wasn't trying to be insulting about it like these jackasses in the article, he just couldn't believe it. I didn't care about sports. I didn't care about projecting some masculine image. I was okay with the fact that I was more 'pretty' than 'handsome'. I was a musician. Therefore I MUST be gay. That was his logic. Whether or not I liked girls or guys had absolutely no effect on this train of thought. The only way he finally shut up about it was when I started dating... wait for it... a girl. One who up until she met me hadn't been all that interested in guys too. So not only did I prove that I was into girls, but that I was 'manly' enough to turn the head of an attractive girl who up until then hadn't shown much interest in guys as a whole. :)

In my case that stereotype is rather ironic though, considering that the only 'sports'-like thing I've ever been interested in is martial arts... so anyone who might go so far as to start a physical confrontation would have more than likely gotten his ass kicked. I may be a nonviolent person, but when it comes to self-defense or defense of others I won't hesitate any longer than I would need to figure out how to take them down with a minimum amount of damage. Thankfully I seem to have developed a fairly innate bully-b-gone attitude somewhere in my school years so it never came to that. (And I wish I could describe it to anyone here who might need that attitude, but like I said, it was fairly innate. I'm not sure exactly how I did it. Probably just by not showing fear and looking them in the eyes. That always seems to work with wild animals... :) )

They'd go after boys who had the physique to play football or basketball but weren't on the team and ask them why they didn't go out for sports. Were they "fags"?

Count me as another woman who hates hates hates machismo. It usually goes along with being mean and dumb. The person in question may not have been born stupid, but since only "fags" read books, according to the macho code, the guy usually ends up pig-ignorant.

Never did never will . I was called all sorts of names but let it roll off my back because I know myself , what others think I could care less .

I am a while male who is straight but just could care less about sports , so what , big deal . I only becomes a big deal when you allow it to . If people don't get a rise out of you they usually give up out of bordom .

in first grade music class. I'm not sure I knew what it really meant at the time, but I definitely knew the intent was to inflict pain.