My Comments On The F-Word

OMG! Did you hear about the Perez Hilton's BEEF with Azealia Banks?! That's about as much celebrity blogging as I can do, but I am writing about the Hilton vs. Banks fight on Twitter. Well, I'm actually writing about someone else's writing about the feud--it's meta-blogging. First, some background. In case you didn't know (I certainly didn't until a few days ago), Azealia Banks is a dance-club diva.

Perez Hilton is a celebrity gossip blogger and known gay. He's also a total douche. The only good thing he's ever done is use his evil powers against the even bigger douche, John Mayer.

So, this happened:

 
Many more Tweets were sent, but those are the key two. I was actually on Twitter during the interchange but only witnessed it second-hand--I don't follow @AZEALIABANKS or @PerezHilton. I didn't weigh in because I didn't really care about what Banks and Hilton had to say, and I still don't.

Lots of people--including GLAAD, Keo Nozari on HuffPo, Janet Mock on xojane, and Christopher Lowery at Vibe--did, however, give a fuck. Much was blogged and Tweeted, and I paid no mind. Then, there was a post on The Bilrerico Project that caught my attention. If you don't know, the Bilerico Project is a great LGBTQ group blog that has really diverse and interesting contributors. Today, Seth Kaye, "a [white]boy #obsessed with bois, divas, Pokémon, and queer activism, among other things," made a post titled Perez Hilton Actually Is a Faggot: A Defense of Azealia. You should probably go read the whole thing for the full context. It's not that long, but if you're not part of the Twitterati you may need to consult the Urban Dictionary which is the best place to decipher Twitterspeak. Here are the most relevant passages to my comments below:

Perez Hilton is a douche and an obnoxious faggot in all meanings of the word (super annoying), and I'm ok with Azealia Banks saying so.

This is gonna be #TMTH and #TLFT, so listen up.

Azealz was just keeping it real - she is one of us (bisexual and a diva that knows her audience) so it's legit for her to throw such shade.

It's different when str8 rappers throw around faggot and no homo. But Azealz gets insider privilege. #SheCanDoWhatSheWant.

However, she clarifies: "A faggot is not a homosexual male. A faggot is any male who acts like a female. There's a BIG difference."

*This* I find problematic. Here she clarifies that she is insulting his gender performance - acting female, specifically the ACT - and the mismatch between that and his sex (male). I'll admit Perez is annoying as hell, but this gendered comment bothers me. It's heterosexist & transphobic for her to insult Perez for acting femme/flaming and childish/immature - not because he isn't those things, and those things aren't annoying (they often are) - but because she assigns those things as feminine and therefore bad/less than.

More importantly tries to insult him further because those bad things are gender transgressive. She genders him female and denigrates him for not acting "properly" male (like a girl). In this case, I can see GLAAD's argument that any use of the word in this way normalizes anti-female and anti-trans sentiment. So that is what is harmful about this comment.

That said, I ain't even mad tho. #NBD. #triflin. #itsahairflip.

I don't know why I chose this point to jump into the conversation, but jump in I did. Perhaps it's because Kaye and The Bilerico Project are truly trying to engage in a dialogue. Also, I do think words matter and it's important to discuss the use of "faggot" in the LGBT community. In short, this seems like a teachable moment for all of us. My comments on the blog post grew so long that I'm calling them my blogging for the day. FYI: I didn't proofread my comments, so they might be riddled with errors. It seemed unfair to improve them in any way. I did add links for some context.

Ugh. Where to begin? For me the central problem is that the @SethEKaye doesn't explain what he believes the correct use of "faggot in all meanings of the word" would be. I think "faggot" is fairly universally understood to mean a gay and/or effeminate man. @SethEKaye seems to think it would be cool if Azealia used it to indicate "obnoxious douche" and "super annoying"; but that would make no sense because NO ONE thinks that's what faggot means. In fact, Azealia's comment that "A faggot is any male who acts like a female" is a very accurate definition of how almost everyone thinks of the word. I agree that it's really problematic to think of that as a slur because it says that not only is gay inherently less than straight but also femininity is inherently less than masculinity. @SethEKaye seems to think there is some way to use "faggot" as a put down that is not heterosexist and sexist, but I have absolutely no idea what that could be.

One more point, as in all behavior, women's language is policed more than men's, and Azealia is right to point out a double standard. However, it is not true that male rappers (or men in general) do not get called out for using "faggot". GLAAD went after Eminem big time. Also, ask Kobe Bryant about the consequences of dropping f-bombs. The response to Azealia was fast in part because the whole thing was on Twitter which is all about speed. Some of the backlash also came from the fact that she had courted and built a big gay audience. In this whole controversy, I remember someone (who was it?) referencing Donna Summer, and I think it's apt. As to the f-word vs. the n-word issue, I don't think it's my place to say who can use the n-word or in what contexts. I'll leave that to Maya Angelou. 

It's a few years old, but Jay Smooth's Ill Doctrine post on "No Homo" is worth re-visiting as we consider the Perez Hilton & Azaelia feud.

I actually have A LOT of thoughts on the word "faggot," but let's start there. Please, as Seth Kaye says, "Diss.Cuss."

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UPDATE: @SethEKaye & I are now BFFs on Twitter. We're following each other and he sent me these:

To which I replied:

Go check out Seth's blog at: http://sethekaye.net/