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chapter three
Dude, You’re a Fag
Adolescent Male Homophobia
The sun shone bright and clear over River High’s annual Creative and
Performing Arts Happening, or CAPA. During CAPA the school’s various art programs displayed students’ work in a fairlike atmosphere. The
front quad sported student-generated computer programs. Colorful and
ornate chalk art covered the cement sidewalks. Tables lined with studentcrafted pottery were set up on the grass. Tall displays of students’ paintings divided the rear quad. To the left of the paintings a television blared
student-directed music videos. At the rear of the back quad, a square,
roped-off area of cement served as a makeshift stage for drama, choir, and
dance performances. Teachers released students from class to wander
around the quads, watch performances, and look at the art. This freedom
from class time lent the day an air of excitement because students were
rarely allowed to roam the campus without a hall pass, an office summons, or a parent/faculty escort. In honor of CAPA, the school district
bussed in elementary school students from the surrounding grammar
schools to participate in the day’s festivities.
Running through the rear quad, Brian, a senior, yelled to a group of
boys visiting from the elementary schools, “There’s a faggot over there!
There’s a faggot over there! Come look!” Following Brian, the ten-yearolds dashed down a hallway. At the end of the hallway Brian’s friend Dan
52
Dude, You’re a Fag / 53
pursed his lips and began sashaying toward the little boys. As he minced,
he swung his hips exaggeratedly and wildly waved his arms. To the boys
Brian yelled, “Look at the faggot! Watch out! He’ll get you!” In response,
the ten-year-olds raced back down the hallway screaming in terror.
Brian and Dan repeated this drama throughout the following half hour,
each time with a new group of young boys.
Making jokes like these about faggots was central to social life at River
High. Indeed, boys learned long before adolescence that faggots were simultaneously predatory and passive and that they were, at all costs, to be
avoided. Older boys repeatedly impressed upon younger ones through
these types of homophobic rituals that whatever they did, whatever they
became, however they talked, they had to avoid becoming a faggot.
Feminist scholars of masculinity have documented the centrality of
homophobic insults and attitudes to masculinity (Kimmel 2001; Lehne
1998), especially in school settings (Burn 2000; Kimmel 2003; Messner
2005; Plummer 2001; G. Smith 1998; Wood 1984). They argue that homophobic teasing often characterizes masculinity in adolescence and
early adulthood and that antigay slurs tend to be directed primarily at gay
boys. This chapter both expands on and challenges these accounts of relationships between homophobia and masculinity. Homophobia is indeed a central mechanism in the making of contemporary American adolescent masculinity. A close analysis of the way boys at River High invoke
the faggot as a disciplinary mechanism makes clear that something more
than simple homophobia is at play in adolescent masculinity. The use of
the word fag by boys at River High points to the limits of an argument
that focuses centrally on homophobia. Fag is not only an identity linked
to homosexual boys but an identity that can temporarily adhere to heterosexual boys as well. The fag trope is also a racialized disciplinary
mechanism.
Homophobia is too facile a term with which to describe the deployment
of fag as an epithet. By calling the use of the word fag homophobia—and
letting the argument stop there—previous research has obscured the
gendered nature of sexualized insults (Plummer 2001). Invoking homo-
54 / Dude, You’re a Fag
phobia to describe the ways boys aggressively tease each other overlooks
the powerful relationship between masculinity and this sort of insult. Instead, it seems incidental, in this conventional line of argument, that girls
do not harass each other and are not harassed in this same manner. This
framing naturalizes the relationship between masculinity and homophobia, thus obscuring that such harassment is central to the formation of a
gendered identity for boys in a way that it is not for girls.
Fag is not necessarily a static identity attached to a particular (homosexual) boy. Fag talk and fag imitations serve as a discourse with which
boys discipline themselves and each other through joking relationships.
Any boy can temporarily become a fag in a given social space or interaction. This does not mean that boys who identify as or are perceived to
be homosexual aren’t subject to intense harassment. Many are. But becoming a fag has as much to do with failing at the masculine tasks of competence, heterosexual prowess, and strength or in any way revealing
weakness or femininity as it does with a sexual identity. This fluidity of
the fag identity is what makes the specter of the fag such a powerful disciplinary mechanism. It is fluid enough that boys police their behaviors
out of fear of having the fag identity permanently adhere and definitive
enough so that boys recognize a fag behavior and strive to avoid it.
An analysis of the fag discourse also indicates ways in which gendered
power works through racialized selves. The fag discourse is invoked differently by and in relation to white boys’ bodies than it is by and in relation to African American boys’ bodies. While certain behaviors put all
boys at risk for becoming temporarily a fag, some behaviors can be enacted by African American boys without putting them at risk of receiving the label. The racialized meanings of the fag discourse suggest that
something more than simple homophobia is involved in these sorts of interactions. It is not that gendered homophobia does not exist in African
American communities. Indeed, making fun of “negro faggotry seems to
be a rite of passage among contemporary black male rappers and filmmakers” (Riggs 1991, 253). However, the fact that “white women and
men, gay and straight, have more or less colonized cultural debates about
Dude, You’re a Fag / 55
sexual representation” ( Julien and Mercer 1991, 167) obscures varied
systems of sexualized meanings among different racialized ethnic groups
(Almaguer 1991). Thus far male homophobia has primarily been written
about as a racially neutral phenomenon. However, as D. L. King’s (2004)
recent work on African American men and same-sex desire pointed out,
homophobia is characterized by racial identities as well as sexual and gendered ones.
WHAT IS A FAG? GENDERED MEANINGS
“Since you were little boys you’ve been told, ‘Hey, don’t be a little faggot,’ ” explained Darnell, a football player of mixed African American
and white heritage, as we sat on a bench next to the athletic field. Indeed,
both the boys and girls I interviewed told me that fag was the worst epithet one guy could direct at another. Jeff, a slight white sophomore, explained to me that boys call each other fag because “gay people aren’t really liked over here and stuff.” Jeremy, a Latino junior, told me that this
insult literally reduced a boy to nothing, “To call someone gay or fag is
like the lowest thing you can call someone. Because that’s like saying that
you’re nothing.”
Most guys explained their or others’ dislike of fags by claiming that
homophobia was synonymous with being a guy. For instance, Keith, a
white soccer-playing senior, explained, “I think guys are just homophobic.” However, boys were not equal-opportunity homophobes. Several
students told me that these homophobic insults applied only to boys and
not to girls. For example, while Jake, a handsome white senior, told me
that he didn’t like gay people, he quickly added, “Lesbians, okay, that’s
good.” Similarly Cathy, a popular white cheerleader, told me, “Being a lesbian is accepted because guys think, ‘Oh that’s cool.’ ” Darnell, after
telling me that boys were warned about becoming faggots, said, “They
[guys] are fine with girls. I think it’s the guy part that they’re like
ewwww.” In this sense it was not strictly homophobia but a gendered homophobia that constituted adolescent masculinity in the culture of River
56 / Dude, You’re a Fag
High. It is clear, according to these comments, that lesbians were “good”
because of their place in heterosexual male fantasy, not necessarily because of some enlightened approach to same-sex relationships. A popular trope in heterosexual pornography depicts two women engaging in
sexual acts for the purpose of male titillation. The boys at River High are
not unique in making this distinction; adolescent boys in general dislike
gay men more than they dislike lesbians (Baker and Fishbein 1998). The
fetishizing of sex acts between women indicates that using only the term
homophobia to describe boys’ repeated use of the word fag might be a bit
simplistic and misleading.
Girls at River High rarely deployed the word fag and were never
called fags. I recorded girls uttering fag only three times during my research. In one instance, Angela, a Latina cheerleader, teased Jeremy, a
well-liked white senior involved in student government, for not ditching
school with her: “You wouldn’t ’cause you’re a faggot.” However, girls
did not use this word as part of their regular lexicon. The sort of gendered homophobia that constituted adolescent masculinity did not constitute adolescent femininity. Girls were not called dykes or lesbians in
any sort of regular or systematic way. Students did tell me that slut was
the worst thing a girl could be called. However, my field notes indicate
that the word slut (or its synonym ho) appeared one time for every eight
times the word fag appeared.
Highlighting the difference between the deployment of gay and fag as
insults brings the gendered nature of this homophobia into focus. For
boys and girls at River High gay was a fairly common synonym for “stupid.” While this word shared the sexual origins of fag, it didn’t consistently
have the skew of gender-loaded meaning. Girls and boys often used gay
as an adjective referring to inanimate objects and male or female people,
whereas they used fag as a noun that denoted only unmasculine males.
Students used gay to describe anything from someone’s clothes to a new
school rule that they didn’t like. For instance, one day in auto shop, Arnie
pulled out a large older version of a black laptop computer and placed it
on his desk. Behind him Nick cried, “That’s a gay laptop! It’s five inches
Dude, You’re a Fag / 57
thick!” The rest of the boys in the class laughed at Arnie’s outdated laptop. A laptop can be gay, a movie can be gay, or a group of people can be
gay. Boys used gay and fag interchangeably when they referred to other
boys, but fag didn’t have the gender-neutral attributes that gay frequently invoked.
Surprisingly, some boys took pains to say that the term fag did not
imply sexuality. Darnell told me, “It doesn’t even have anything to do
with being gay.” Similarly, J. L., a white sophomore at Hillside High
(River High’s cross-town rival), asserted, “Fag, seriously, it has nothing
to do with sexual preference at all. You could just be calling somebody an
idiot, you know?” I asked Ben, a quiet, white sophomore who wore
heavy-metal T-shirts to auto shop each day, “What kind of things do guys
get called a fag for?” Ben answered, “Anything . . . literally, anything.
Like you were trying to turn a wrench the wrong way, ‘Dude, you’re a
fag.’ Even if a piece of meat drops out of your sandwich, ‘You fag!’ ” Each
time Ben said, “You fag,” his voice deepened as if he were imitating a
more masculine boy. While Ben might rightly feel that a guy could be
called a fag for “anything . . . literally, anything,” there were actually specific behaviors that, when enacted by most boys, could render them more
vulnerable to a fag epithet. In this instance Ben’s comment highlights the
use of fag as a generic insult for incompetence, which in the world of
River High, was central to a masculine identity. A boy could get called a
fag for exhibiting any sort of behavior defined as unmasculine (although
not necessarily behaviors aligned with femininity): being stupid or incompetent, dancing, caring too much about clothing, being too emotional, or expressing interest (sexual or platonic) in other guys. However,
given the extent of its deployment and the laundry list of behaviors that
could get a boy in trouble, it is no wonder that Ben felt a boy could be
called fag for “anything.” These nonsexual meanings didn’t replace sexual meanings but rather existed alongside them.
One-third (thirteen) of the boys I interviewed told me that, while they
might liberally insult each other with the term, they would not direct it
at a homosexual peer. Jabes, a Filipino senior, told me, “I actually say it
58 / Dude, You’re a Fag
[fag] quite a lot, except for when I’m in the company of an actual homosexual person. Then I try not to say it at all. But when I’m just hanging
out with my friends I’ll be like, ‘Shut up, I don’t want you hear you any
more, you stupid fag.’ ” Similarly J. L. compared homosexuality to a disability, saying there was “no way” he’d call an actually gay guy a fag because “there’s people who are the retarded people who nobody wants to
associate with. I’ll be so nice to those guys, and I hate it when people
make fun of them. It’s like, ‘Bro do you realize that they can’t help that?’
And then there’s gay people. They were born that way.” According to this
group of boys, gay was a legitimate, or at least biological, identity.
There was a possibility, however slight, that a boy could be gay and
masculine (Connell 1995). David, a handsome white senior dressed
smartly in khaki pants and a white button-down shirt, told me, “Being gay
is just a lifestyle. It’s someone you choose to sleep with. You can still throw
around a football and be gay.” It was as if David was justifying the use of
the word fag by arguing that gay men could be men if they tried but that
if they failed at it (i.e., if they couldn’t throw a football) then they deserved
to be called a fag. In other words, to be a fag was, by definition, the opposite of masculine, whether the word was deployed with sexualized or
nonsexualized meanings. In explaining this to me, Jamaal, an African
American junior, cited the explanation of the popular rap artist Eminem:
“Although I don’t like Eminem, he had a good definition of it. It’s like taking away your title. In an interview they were like, ‘You’re always capping
on gays, but then you sing with Elton John.’ He was like ‘I don’t mean gay
as in gay.’ ” This is what Riki Wilchins (2003) calls the “Eminem Exception. Eminem explains that he doesn’t call people ‘faggot’ because of their
sexual orientation but because they’re weak and unmanly” (72). This is
precisely the way boys at River High used the term faggot. While it was
not necessarily acceptable to be gay, at least a man who was gay could do
other things that would render him acceptably masculine. A fag, by the
very definition of the word, could not be masculine.
This distinction between fag as an unmasculine and problematic identity and gay as a possibly masculine, although marginalized, sexual iden-
Dude, You’re a Fag / 59
tity is not limited to a teenage lexicon; it is reflected in both psychological discourses and gay and lesbian activism. Eve Sedgwick (1995) argues
that in contemporary psychological literature homosexuality is no longer
a problem for men so long as the homosexual man is of the right age and
gender orientation. In this literature a homosexual male must be an adult
and must be masculine. Male homosexuality is not pathologized, but gay
male effeminacy is. The lack of masculinity is the problem, not the sexual
practice or orientation. Indeed, the edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (a key document in the mental health field)
that erased homosexuality as a diagnosis in the 1970s added a new diagnosis in its wake: Gender Identity Disorder. According to Sedgwick, the
criteria for diagnosis are different for girls and boys. A girl has to actually assert that she is a boy, indicating a psychotic disconnection with reality, whereas a boy need only display a preoccupation with female activities. The policing of boys’ gender orientation and of a strict masculine
identity for gay men is also reflected in gay culture itself. The war against
fags as the specter of unmasculine manhood appears in gay male personal
ads in which men look for “straight-appearing, straight-acting men.”
This concern with both straight and gay men’s masculinity not only reflects teenage boys’ obsession with hypermasculinity but also points to
the conflict at the heart of the contemporary “crisis of masculinity” being
played out in popular, scientific, and educational arenas.
BECOMING A FAG: FAG FLUIDITY
“The ubiquity of the word faggot speaks to the reach of its discrediting
capacity” (Corbett 2001, 4). It’s almost as if boys cannot help shouting it
out on a regular basis—in the hallway, in class, or across campus as a
greeting. In my fieldwork I was amazed by the way the word seemed to
pop uncontrollably out of boys’ mouths in all kinds of situations.1 To
quote just one of many instances from my field notes: two boys walked
out of the PE locker room, and one yelled, “Fucking faggot!” at no one
in particular. None of the other students paid them any mind, since this
60 / Dude, You’re a Fag
sort of thing happened so frequently. Similar spontaneous yelling of
some variation of the word fag, seemingly apropos of nothing, happened
repeatedly among boys throughout the school. This and repeated imitations of fags constitute what I refer to as a “fag discourse.”
Fag discourse is central to boys’ joking relationships. Joking cements
relationships among boys (Kehily and Nayak 1997; Lyman 1998) and
helps to manage anxiety and discomfort (Freud 1905). Boys both connect
with one another and manage the anxiety around this sort of relationship
through joking about fags. Boys invoked the specter of the fag in two
ways: through humorous imitation and through lobbing the epithet at
one another. Boys at River High imitated the fag by acting out an exaggerated “femininity” and/or by pretending to sexually desire other boys.
As indicated by the introductory vignette in which an older boy imitated
a predatory fag to threaten little boys, male students at River High linked
these performative scenarios with a fag identity. They also lobbed the fag
epithet at each other in a verbal game of hot potato, each careful to deflect the insult quickly by hurling it toward someone else. These games
and imitations made up a fag discourse that highlighted the fag not as a
static but rather as a fluid identity that boys constantly struggled to avoid.
In imitative performances the fag discourse functioned as a constant
reiteration of the fag’s existence, affirming that the fag was out there;
boys reminded themselves and each other that at any moment they could
become fags if they were not sufficiently masculine. At the same time
these performances demonstrated that the boy who was invoking the fag
was not a fag. Emir, a tall, thin African American boy, frequently imitated
fags to draw laughs from other students in his introductory drama class.
One day Mr. McNally, the drama teacher, disturbed by the noise outside
the classroom, turned to the open door, saying, “We’ll shut this unless
anyone really wants to watch sweaty boys playing basketball.” Emir
lisped, “I wanna watch the boys play!” The rest of the class cracked …
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