From: jessec@yang.earlham.edu
Newsgroups: alt.politics.homosexuality
Subject: Re: Gays using Gay-offensive terms
Date: 6 Nov 92 04:00:32 GMT
Organization: Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana

In article <Bx8H1u.DBy@unix.amherst.edu>, jmfuchs@unix.amherst.edu (JESSE MICHAEL FUCHS) writes:
> 
> 	Hi, I'm Jesse Fuchs, and I'm new to the net. 

  Hi, I'm Jesse Cohn, and I'm not... :-)

> Although I am heterosexual
> (so far - after all, I'm not dead yet!) I am the co-chairman of the Amherst
> College LBGA. Don't ask - my parents don't understand it either. 
> 	Anyway, one of the fun fun things I get to do is hold workshops on
> homophobia for first-year of them had an interesting question; we had put up
> a Gay Pride Banner on Coming-Out day, and everyone basically wrote their own 
> stuff randomly on it. Some of the statements were on the order of "I'm a Dyke
> and I'm proud," "Fags Unite!" and other stuff. (I'm having problems with the 
> darn computer, if you didn't guess - the sentence a few lines up should say 
> that we had a workshop for first-year students, and one of them had an 
> interesting question.) Anyway...some stuff that didn't seem out of the ordinary
> to me. However, he asked why it was okay for GLBs to use these terms, and 
> wasn't it just hurting our own cause. 
> 	The first part I didn't have much trouble answering, to my own
> intellectual satisfaction if not his (he was, admittedly, kind of a weiner.) 
> 	Basically, I just thought of the entire history of groups making fun
> of themselves - Richard Pryorprobably said the word "nigger" more times than 
> any redneck on earth, and I don't think anyone misunderstood what he meant or
> were offended.
> 	The second part, however, I'm having some thoughts about. Any ideas
> pro or con the use of normally derogatory terms by GLBs?
> 
> 							-Jesse Fuch

   I think the key is the word "normally".  Why let the dominant society 
define "normalcy" for you?
   At a recent meeting of our campus lesbigay group, we had an interesting 
discussion about exactly this kind of thing (somewhat more generally, the 
subject of labels and definitions and identity).  I think it's really not 
so hard to see why the use of "fag" and "dyke" in certain contexts (i.e., 
from one gay man/lesbian or friend thereof to another, in a positive way) 
is not only not a derogatory use, but can be a kind of 
community-reinforcing and powerful thing.
   A friend of mine addresses me as "dork" all the time.  "Hey, dork!  How 
ya doing?" Between us, it's a friendly code and kind of a joke.  If a 
complete stranger came up and said to me, "hey dork", it would be a.) a 
non sequitur, b.) rude, and c.) possibly threatening.  In other words, 
language doesn't have rigidly defined meaning outside of context all the 
time.  Imagine that!
   Groups that feel threatened by the outside world often can gain some 
courage by creating a sort of private space for themselves; one way of 
doing this is through the use of a private language.  I remember reading 
about the invention of pig latin for the expression, sometimes in blues 
songs, of dangerously uppity sentiments on the part of the black 
speakers/singers; those who knew the code would laugh, while the whites 
would simply assume it was nonsense speech.  There's a billion more 
examples of such.
   I think that a good deal of the confusion comes from the fact that our 
society is very much based around literacy.  Writing shapes societies in 
certain patterns, one of which is a tendency towards standardization.  
Whenever you write a paper or an article, you tend (unless you are writing 
in a special "style") to use a very formal, standard language, eliminating 
spoken usages and regionalisms.  One of Plato's criticisms of the 
then-somewhat-new medium of writing (which nevertheless shaped his 
thinking to an incredible degree) was that a written text is dead, 
lifeless; where a speaker could be questioned or challenged by his/her 
audience, a book would just sit there, being non-interactive.  In a sense 
this is true, and thus we tend to think of language with a dangerously 
abstract disregard for considerations of audience.  It is *not* 
necessarily a double standard to insist that some words are hurtful when 
spoken by some people or in some kinds of contexts, and not when spoken by 
others in other contexts.


   --Jesse.

   "Nonsense doesn't break down the codes; speaking precisely that which 
the codes forbid breaks the codes."

                                   --Kathy Acker
                                     *Empire of the Senseless*
From: Alan.Moorman@f31.n282.z1.tdkt.kksys.com (Alan Moorman)
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