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 Dictionarywhich is the best place to decipher Twitterspeak. Here are the most relevant passages to my comments below:
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.
