Faggot Offends Me!
By: Casey Smith
Tags: LGBTQ, Gay, Mental Health, Therapy, Justice

Faggot Offends Me!

My partner’s grandmother said she didnt like me because I wasn’t masculine, that because I didnt have a big truck and didn’t meet the stereotype of a manly man that I was a “Faggot.” Perhaps it was just hearing it from someone who was in my inner circle, or perhaps there is more to it but hearing it on this day I couldnt help but feel the personal pain of what my father must have felt.

The word “Faggot” we presume is only stated when one is flamboyantly gay but it’s not. The word faggot is part of the American way whenever someone deviates from the “normal stereotype.” On at least two occasions over the last week, the word has been thrown my way one when I was getting Pizza and a woman was mad because I didnt hold the door open for her, the other when someone was stuck on my side when I was at the drive-thru. In both cases, the people waited to say the word as they were driving away and could not be confronted, my partner’s grandmother was much the same; she would never say the word to my face but would behind my back. Despite, being called a faggot I dont view it as a negative but rather a reminder of how lucky I am that I just have the homophobic slur thrown my way were in my father’s day he would be killed for even the assumption that he was gay. I won't speculate on this but rather know this to be fact as the love of his life was killed for being gay, pushed over a bridge, and drowned.

But I wasn’t there, I didnt know my dad then, he didnt adopt me until I was 20 so why does it impact me so much? After all, I am a straight, middle-class white educated male the word should have no impact on me, and yet every time I hear it there is always an impact.

Now I could tell you what everyone tells’s you and what the social justice focus part of me wants to say that the word has impacts beyond my understanding, that it is a start of violence and that every time it is uttered it perpetuates a belief that loving the one you love is somehow wrong. All of these things are true but there is more of it to me.

I am aware of how much my father changed my views, how him being a gay hippie from Baltimore who walked the streets with Martin Luther King changed what was then a Conservative Christian and made me a socially justice-focused human. How do you repay this? How do you repay someone who as a Foster Kid gave you permanency? How do you forgive someone who loves you, hears you, takes you in as your own, and guides you when they didnt need to? The short answer is I may never get to repay him for any of these things.

But I will try! The word faggot in a lot of ways is my activation word because it makes me want to advocate, to stand up, to confront any person who uses it, it makes me want to keep getting better as a therapist so I can keep finding ways to communicate with people across the aisle.

I may never change anyone’s mind, I dont need to I dont think that I can change their mind but rather only make them think. Each time I hear someone say something homophobic I view it as a chance to do what my father was never able to do and advocate. I recognize that my father didnt speak not by choice but rather because it may cost him his life.

Being a white educated male allows me to always say something, it allows me to allow me to be me. Who am I? A therapist who seeks to support those I work with to be who they are regardless of any social manipulation.

Whether you want to be as outspoken about your life and sexuality as Robert Mapplethorpe or as introverted as James Spader it’s more about creating a world where being you doesn’t end in being judged to the point of depression, death, homophobic slurs. My goal as a therapist is to seek to support people think, create, and invent themselves and their life with their voice and understand who and what supports and prevents them from being their true self, and place blame in the right place.

I close this though by calling on any person who is reading this to confront your bias, note the impacts of your words, and more so talk to those you disagree with based on the merits of the conversation not based on the feelings.