My Being Called a Fag: A Very Short History

Submitted by "Sam the Clam"

The first time I was called a fag, I was walking home from high school. I walked two-and-a-quarter miles to and from school, each way, every day, regardless of the Minnesota weather. The colder and snowier it was, the more I enjoyed it. I was weird in other ways, too, but I wasn't a fag. So it surprised me one day when a young man in the passenger seat of a passing pick-up truck shouted "fag!" at me. I didn't know what to make of it. Just kids having fun.

The second time I was called a fag, I was, once again, walking home from school. This time, it was from graduate classes in Blacksburg, Virginia. And, once again, it was a drive-by affair. "Faggot!" Blacksburg is a surprisingly funky college town. It has better coffee shops than downtown DC and, in symbiosis with neighboring Roanoke, a thriving punk rock scene. Still, I wasn't surprised to encounter anti-gay sentiment; many Virginia Tech students are drawn from regions not exactly known for their appreciation of hot man-love. What was surprising was that anti-gay sentiment would be directed at me. By the time I had moved to Blacksburg, I knew what I hadn't even suspected until my junior year in college: I was gay. But I wasn't a fag! Mick Jagger was deliciously faggy, but I hadn't earned the title. I was gay but not otherwise "queer." I was straighter than some of my straight friends. This time, however, I felt the word's intended sting, and it made me angry.

There has been no third time. A few weeks ago, as I walked home late one night along U Street, with my companion for the remainder of the evening at my side, a passing man teased, "Hello, girls" before walking on. Nasty? Sure, but mostly pathetic, and perhaps some affirmation that the tight shirts I picked up on a recent trip to Macedonia were as sexy as I hoped. (Apparently the clothes overpromise—I can sell guys on sex pretty easily but don't seem to win customer loyalty).

Two drive-by faggings and one drunken remark in a decade. I'm not aware of survey data on such things--what do you queer studies people do with your time, anyway?--but it wouldn't surprise me a bit if many straight young Americans have been accosted more often than I for alleged challenges to the heteronormative order. Hell, when I went to a queer students' happy hour in Minneapolis, one of the organizers asked if I was an "ally." Needless to say, it turned out not to be my scene.

I wish for a world in which people are not jeered for their sexuality, but that world is a long ways off. In the meantime, I hope to be called a fag more often. I’m not looking to be executed by a government, beaten by coworkers, or disowned by my family, but as long as comrades in the acronym are harassed and worse for being themselves, I want at least a small piece of the action. The horned-up excursion to the Macedonian shopping mall was but the start. I need a surge in fagdom. And to the evil-doers and harassers, I say: bring it on.