The F-Word
Details’ magazine just came out today with their annual Power 50, a list of not only powerful individuals but also powerful trends in the United States.
I found it interesting that in the top ten, number 9 to be precise, was the F-word. Not my favorite f-word that is always coming out of my mouth at the most inappropriate times, but the word Faggot.
I hate the word faggot. I also hate lezzy. But I really hate the word faggot. In June, I sat and watch a privileged, straight, middle-aged white man I know call a gay man a ‘faggot.’ Straight guy thought it was funny.
He also thought, because he was his ‘friend’ he could call him a faggot. The truth is, it was as ugly as calling a Black man a nigger. Except when I registered my horror, I was told to sit down and be quiet. It wasn’t meant to be hurtful.
Just playing.
The same man, I know, uses the word nigger, only in private moments. He’s careful to choose his company with that word because there is global horror around it. Faggot? Never occurred to him to keep that one in.
There are only few words that I have told my kids are absolutely forbidden in this house. Saying a swear word costs you a dollar, goes in a jar that gets donated to a social change organization (never charity). I have a mouth like a sailor, what do I expect? But if you say “nigger?” or “faggot” or “lezzy” in my house? Not only are you going to sit and listen to a very very long lecture about how those words help celebrate and institutionalize hateful bigotry, you are gong to listen to me explain how it felt to have “lezzy” scrawled in marker on my college dorm room door. How humiliating and frightening it was.
A friend of Jeanine’s who lives in Texas reported that once when a man was trying to spit something angry at her called her a “faggot girl.”
Clearly he didn’t know the word “lezzy.”
Details’ is right on in their list. Between Larry Craig’s antics, and the long list of right wing nightmare politicians who also engaged in “Do me in the bathroom and I’ll Do you on the Senate floor,” screwing men for pleasure and then screwing them politically with anti-gay votes, the word faggot got a lot of action this year.
The age-old taunt continues to haunt us, and not as a sign of power but as a weakness that brings powerful men to their knees.
So to speak.
The full list tackles more than the Time magazine “Man of Year” – zzzzz- stuff. It includes some painful reminders- #2- “The Surge (average age: 27): What do you call 20,000 soldiers sent off to fight a war that’s long since been lost? George W. Bush calls it The Surge, conveying power, momentum, and impermanence."
And some ridiculous irony, like “#7 Good Fathers: Kevin Federline and Larry Birkhead (ages: 29 and 34): Meet America’s new parental role models. We all expected Federline and Birkhead to crash and burn as fathers. Instead, by being more visible presences in their children’s lives than many Hollywood A-listers, they emerged as unlikely candidates for Dad of the Year.”
The F-word has had a comeback. I’m not sure it’s anything to celebrate.
The December issue is on the newsstands now or click here to see it online.
I found it interesting that in the top ten, number 9 to be precise, was the F-word. Not my favorite f-word that is always coming out of my mouth at the most inappropriate times, but the word Faggot.
I hate the word faggot. I also hate lezzy. But I really hate the word faggot. In June, I sat and watch a privileged, straight, middle-aged white man I know call a gay man a ‘faggot.’ Straight guy thought it was funny.
He also thought, because he was his ‘friend’ he could call him a faggot. The truth is, it was as ugly as calling a Black man a nigger. Except when I registered my horror, I was told to sit down and be quiet. It wasn’t meant to be hurtful.
Just playing.
The same man, I know, uses the word nigger, only in private moments. He’s careful to choose his company with that word because there is global horror around it. Faggot? Never occurred to him to keep that one in.
There are only few words that I have told my kids are absolutely forbidden in this house. Saying a swear word costs you a dollar, goes in a jar that gets donated to a social change organization (never charity). I have a mouth like a sailor, what do I expect? But if you say “nigger?” or “faggot” or “lezzy” in my house? Not only are you going to sit and listen to a very very long lecture about how those words help celebrate and institutionalize hateful bigotry, you are gong to listen to me explain how it felt to have “lezzy” scrawled in marker on my college dorm room door. How humiliating and frightening it was.
A friend of Jeanine’s who lives in Texas reported that once when a man was trying to spit something angry at her called her a “faggot girl.”
Clearly he didn’t know the word “lezzy.”
Details’ is right on in their list. Between Larry Craig’s antics, and the long list of right wing nightmare politicians who also engaged in “Do me in the bathroom and I’ll Do you on the Senate floor,” screwing men for pleasure and then screwing them politically with anti-gay votes, the word faggot got a lot of action this year.
The age-old taunt continues to haunt us, and not as a sign of power but as a weakness that brings powerful men to their knees.
So to speak.
The full list tackles more than the Time magazine “Man of Year” – zzzzz- stuff. It includes some painful reminders- #2- “The Surge (average age: 27): What do you call 20,000 soldiers sent off to fight a war that’s long since been lost? George W. Bush calls it The Surge, conveying power, momentum, and impermanence."
And some ridiculous irony, like “#7 Good Fathers: Kevin Federline and Larry Birkhead (ages: 29 and 34): Meet America’s new parental role models. We all expected Federline and Birkhead to crash and burn as fathers. Instead, by being more visible presences in their children’s lives than many Hollywood A-listers, they emerged as unlikely candidates for Dad of the Year.”
The F-word has had a comeback. I’m not sure it’s anything to celebrate.
The December issue is on the newsstands now or click here to see it online.
posted by Sara at 2:21 PM
3 Comments:
I too, despise that "F-Word" and it's abbreviated version. I find it equally offensive as any other slur. If I ever catch my daughter using that word she will be in for one heck of a lecture.
To me, it even has such negative connotation that I have problems with folks from the UK saying it in reference to cigarettes. It just makes me cringe.
Being originally from the South, I find it interesting to see just how many people will let things by with their "inner circle" of friends. It is not uncommon at all to hear a person speak much like the man you described. It is sad. Completely Sad.
We live in very strange times. We make one step forward and then we run back twenty miles.
Or something like that.
But how seriously can we take any "Power List" that includes Kevin Federline and Larry Birkhead in the same sentence as "Good fathers"?
I thought that was pretty funny, about those men...
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