Saturday, August 14, 2010

Fucking Faggots

“Get in the car you fucking fag!” A large cab had just pulled up as I waited at a bus stop outside the London club in which I had been dancing. It was filled with drunken men, and I didn’t get the impression they were inviting me to join them in a 6-way. I looked up from my phone, raised my eyebrows in astonishment, and caught the eye of the man who had yelled. “Not you! My friend!” He pointed to the man standing next to me, who was now stumbling toward the cab’s open door. “You do look like a fag though”. And they drove away.



There is something irresistible, it seems, in the combination of “fuck” and “faggot”. The explosive opening combined with the harsh close, the alliteration, and the offensive power of both words combine to make it a potent verbal concoction, a linguistic Molotov Cocktail that men (and in my short experience, it has only been men) like to fling at those they suspect to be gay.

I first received this delightful greeting in the most unexpected of places – while walking round the Castro in San Francisco at night. I was with a group of men and women,  gay and straight, in what you might imagine to be one of the safest areas for gay people in the USA, if not the world. As we neared a corner, a passing car slowed down just long enough for a young man to lean his head out of the window and, in a loud, leering voice, yell “Fucking faggots!”

There are two things shocking here. First, of course, the location – it’s possible that the yelling man was himself in more danger than we were, given where he chose to express his hatred. But second, it is shocking that none of my party were really shocked. For gay people, even in spaces considered safe, it is an expected part of your life to be abused on the street.

Women know this very well, as I’ve learned through discussions with female friends and through observation of cities on nights out: they are subject to remarkable harassment (again most often by straight men) simply for being women. They are presumed to be sexually available and interested, open to any advance, and are frequently yelled at, whistled at, stroked and fondled. The number of times female friends had to fend off unwanted attention in the clubs I visited on a recent trip to London truly boggled the mind, once I was attuned to and looking for it.

But this is a (somewhat) new experience for me, and I still find it unnerving and upsetting. Thus, I’m going to start a counter on the right side of the blog which I will add to every time I get called a “faggot” (“fucking” or otherwise) by someone I don’t know in a public space. The counter currently stands at 3: once in the Castro as I’ve described, once after Rhode Island’s Pride March, and once the other night in London. I’ll keep you updated as it ticks up as, I’m upset to admit, it almost certainly will.

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