Is calling something "gay" more sexist than homophobic

An interesting point that I don't entirely agree with.

Finally, this case brings up intersections of gender, sexuality, and culture. Maricon is, after all, a Spanish word, used by Latinos in a culturally specific way. It’s easy for Anglo commentators like me to misconstrue it or take it out of context, or assume it means the same thing as “faggot” means in English. It doesn’t—and that alone tells us a lot about how sexuality and gender are construed in different communities.

At heart, maricon is a term used by two macho cultures, each of which is not so much homophobic as sexist. Really, what was I doing on the sports field back in 1986? I wasn’t homosexual—I was throwing the ball “like a girl”; I was a “pussy,” a sissy, an effeminate man. Maybe maricon’s real target isn’t gays, but women.

Sure it's sexist. And it's homophobic too. The point is to suggest that the guy is like a girl, and being a girl is bad. And that's sexist. But what word do they use to suggest that the guy is like a girl? Gay. Or f-g. Or maricon.

So it's still homophobic in that it's intended to knock a straight man by comparing him to a woman, and who else is like a "bad" woman? Gay men. Read the rest of this post...

Toronto Blue Jays player suspended for writing "f-g" on his face during game

Good for the Blue Jays.

We wrote about this yesterday.

Though it doesn't sound like Escobar entirely "gets it":

Escobar insisted the word is often used within teams and by Latinos and "I didn't see it as something bad at the time."

"For us, it doesn't have the significance to the way it's being interpreted now," he said. "It's a word without a meaning."

"I don't have anything against homosexuals," he said, adding he didn't mean for the term to be "misinterpreted" by the gay community.

Misinterpreted?

I speak Spanish. I know how the word is used by Latinos. It's the same way it's used by Greeks. And the same way it's used by Americans when they pronounce something to be "gay." It's a way of knock something or someone in a somewhat "light-hearted" way.

And there's a reason that that word is used in many cultures as a put down. Because those cultures have contempt for gay people.

A Jewish friend was telling me that someone actually used the expression "to Jew down" with him recently. He was astonished, and called the guy on it. The guy didn't quite get his concern.

A lot of people don't get all of the subtleties of bigotry. And it can be subtle. It's not always so obvious as a white guy calling a black guy the n-word. Sometimes it's a candy company that thinks violence against gays is funny. Sometimes it's a gay guy calling other gay guys bad parents.

But the root of it all is society's subtle, and overt, messaging that being gay is bad. And the culture picks up on that, and Jay Leno keeps telling f-g jokes - because they're funny - and Ron Howard starts putting using the word "gay" as a pejorative in his movies - because it's funny.

People find all sorts of reasons to defend their use of bigoted language. Like this baseball player saying the word "f-g" in Spanish doesn't even mean "gay."

That's because the bigotry is so pervasive and so accepted that it's second-nature.

Yeah, well, not any more.

PS Apparently he's now trotting out the defense that his hair stylist and home decorator are gay.  Seriously.

"My home decorator is gay, my hair stylist is gay and I have several friends that are gay. And they haven't felt offended about the situation."

Read the rest of this post...

Roland Martin’s wife angrily tweets gays "use our history to gain their equality"; slams CNN

Update: Her twitter account is now gone, deleted. According to several people she claimed right before the account was deleted that her account was hacked. Perhaps. It happens. It's also possible that her account wasn't hacked. But in all fairness I obviously wanted to let folks know what she apparently is now claiming.  Oh, and the screen captures below were made by me, personally, from her account before it was deleted - so they're real, not photoshopped.
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This isn't going to make things any better.

Roland Martin's wife, Jacquie Hood Martin, reacted angrily today to the news that CNN is suspending her husband for three days following his unfortunate tweets on Sunday that seemed to endorse violence against gays.

Here is what his wife tweeted today - she is @jhoodmartin.  Keep in mind, Twitter is an odd duck - the posts are in chronological order, top one was written first, next one is a response.  I walk through who said what below each image:

So in the tweets above, someone named Sophia wrote that the gay group GLAAD, which called for CNN to fire Roland Martin, are bullies and that CNN or GLAAD are using Martin as their "whipping boy." Martin's wife Jacquie then appears to respond to Sophia about GLAAD (read: gays) "us[ing] our history go gain their equality" etc.

Here's another:

So Sophia writes about the "high tech lynching."  Then DL responds that this is about CNN protecting its brand.  And Mrs. Martin then responds "What CNN brand?" Read the rest of this post...

CNN suspends Roland Martin over anti-gay tweets

Good for CNN.  I'm not convinced they handled this entirely well up until now, now they have.  And while I initially said to myself, "only three days?", there's something to be said for giving someone a warning shot before destroying their career.  Not that the gay community hasn't given Martin tons of warning shots.  But CNN has not.  Until now.  So in all fairness, I can see why CNN wants to give the guy a chance to correct himself.  But at the same time, give him an incentive to do better next time.  (And while it's "only" 3 days, it's an embarrassing three days he's never going to get back.  He's got a mark now on his permanent record, as it were.  That means next time CNN won't have a choice but to let him go, and if that happens, who's going to hire him besides Fox?)

I know some will find this analysis wimpy, but I really do believe that it's not always necessary to destroy people to get them to change for the better.  It doesn't always work.  But we lose nothing by giving the guy a chance.  Trust but verify, baby.

Background on the story here.

And here's a great deconstruction of Martin's latest apology from Erik Wemple at the Washington Post.

And Dylan Byers at Politico raises the point that while Martin gets suspended, Erick Erickson and Dana Loesch just skid on by. Read the rest of this post...

Signorile: "Roland Martin’s history on gays says it all"

Mike Signorile:

CNN political analyst Roland Martin laughably claims he was talking about soccer fans -- not gay men -- when he tweeted messages during the Super Bowl which now have the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation and the National Black Justice Coalition calling for him to be fired.

But a look at Martin's history shows what group he clearly was referring to when he tweeted, "Ain't no real bruhs going to H&M to buy some damn David Beckham underwear!" and "If a dude at your Super Bowl party is hyped about David Beckham's H&M underwear ad, smack the ish out of him!"

There seems to be a pattern here: smack the ish out, whip dat ass, bowl down your alley, sit in your pew. GLAAD and NBJC say it exposes something ugly and, pointing to Martin's history, that it's time for CNN to show him the door. For too long Martin's gotten away with excuses, while CNN looked the other way. Refraining from suggesting violence against any group -- including soccer players -- isn't much for a news network to ask of its political analysts.

Read the rest of this post...

Roland Martin and the deniability of homophobia

Sometimes we're too sensitive. But I'm not buying that this is one of those times. The best homophobes skirt the line expertly. It doesn't change that what they're doing is wrong. I wrote in my other post, linked above, that perhaps it's subtle, the homophobia surrounding mocking men who wear pink or men react positively to homoerotic ad. One of our readers, Soullite, had a great response in the comments:

I don't think it's that subtle, really. Back in my more homophobic tween years, me and most of my friends would have decked anyone who said this to us [meaning, if they made fun of them for wearing pink etc], because we'd know damn well what they were saying. If a 12 year old would know it, I'm not buying that a grown man wouldn't know that this guy is basically pointing and screaming 'fag!'

I think the big problem here is we let grown ups hide behind a smile and a fake-ass attitude of 'what, me?' We all pretend not to notice what's really going on out of some misguided politeness or a fear of calling these bastards out. But really, this sh*t isn't too subtle and there ain't a man over 10 who doesn't know what's going on here.

Read the rest of this post...

"30 Rock" includes Tracy Morgan’s anti-gay rant in an episode

I'm not sure if this was intended to make up for Morgan's rant, or to mock those of us upset that Morgan "joked" about killing his son if he found out the boy were gay. Considering that Morgan still didn't seem to get it a few months after the incident, and appeared to blame the kid who reported on Morgan's outrageous "jokes," the burden is on 30 Rock to explain itself here. Read the rest of this post...

Amazon and Barnes Noble selling "We all have AIDS" calendar mocking gays, trans

Amazon tells Daily Kos that, gosh, it would take a lot of customer feedback to get the "I'm not gay, I'm just a sissy" calendar pulled. Barnes & Noble's representative seemed actually shocked. But they're still selling it.  Here's February's page in the calendar - above and below "We all have AIDS," it reads "World AIDS Day."  Judging by January's calendar, that makes fun of anal sex, I'll leave the rest of this page to your imagination.

Here's the product at B&N and Amazon. Read the rest of this post...

Michigan Tea Party mayor calls gays "queers"

Clearly something in the water in that state. And she's a Tea Partier. From ABC's Chris Bury:

Protesters are planning a rally tonight outside the Troy, Mich., city hall to protest anti-gay remarks made by Mayor Janice Daniels.

Daniels, the newly-elected mayor of one of Detroit’s biggest and most cosmopolitan suburbs, is under fire for making vulgar remarks about gays on her Facebook page. A Tea Party supporter elected last month, she posted a status report in June saying: “I think I am going to throw away my I Love New York carrying bag now that queers can get married there.”

Equally outrageous is the fact that she apparently hasn't figured out that "queers" is kind of old-fashioned, as slurs go, unless of course you're trying out for a part in the remake of "Deliverance." Read the rest of this post...

The debate over "tranny"

Actor Neal Patrick Harris used the word "tranny" on morning television this week.  He used the word to mock a funny voice he made.  Clearly it wasn't appropriate.  We used to make fun of Ann Coulter by calling her Mann Coulter, until it was pointed out to me that this is just like trying to belittle someone by suggesting they're gay (i.e., the insinuation is that being gay is somehow "bad" or at the very least "funny").  And it's a fair point.  But it's also something people are learning, and Harris, to his credit, apologized profusely, and sincerely, via a tweet to his 2m followers this morning, which was a pretty big learning moment right there.  Good for him.

Mike Signorile did an interesting series of interviews last year with various three trans activists, and a lesbian spokesperson from GLAAD, about the use of the word "tranny," and they disagreed about whether it is always inappropriate, always a slur, or not.  I can't say I've ever even heard anybody use the term in person.  I've never used it, though I also never realized until last year's Glee brouhaha that it was even considered a slur by some.  Then again, some people still say "orientals" for Asians, and I've even heard people say "colored" for black people, not even intending for it to be negative (seriously) - in both cases, they honestly didn't realize the words were once okay but now are considered negative.  So it seemed like a good time to link to Mike's series of interviews. Read the rest of this post...

Paroled rapper "T.I." defends Tracy Morgan’s joke about killing his gay kid

From Reuters we learn that Tracy Morgan has some really classy defenders.

He's more on "T.I." from Wikipedia.  Lovely fellow.

On October 13, 2007, federal authorities arrested T.I. four hours before the BET Hip-Hop Awards in Atlanta.[30] He was charged with two felonies — possession of three unregistered machine guns and two silencers, and possession of firearms by a convicted felon.

Yeah, I'm sure he does find it funny when a guy talks about killing his son if his son ended up gay.  Keep digging, Tracy.  (Background on the Tracy Morgan brouhaha here.) Read the rest of this post...

UC Davis pepper-spray cop accused of previously slurring gay cop

AP:

But an alleged anti-gay slur by Pike also figured in a racial and sexual discrimination lawsuit a former police officer filed against the department, which ended in a $240,000 settlement in 2008. Officer Calvin Chang's 2003 discrimination complaint against the university's police chief and the UC Board of Regents alleged he was systematically marginalized as the result of anti-gay and racist attitudes on the force, and he specifically claimed Pike described him using a profane anti-gay epithet.

Read the rest of this post...

Dan Savage glitter-bombed again

UPDATE: It seems the trans activist glitter bombed Dan just as he was about to educate MTV viewers about anti-trans defamation.  That was one hell of a rare opportunity lost.
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One sentence in this Bilerico post stood out:

It was hard not to notice all the cis (non-trans) people rushing to defend Savage's transphobic actions and argue that he should be free to continue them.

It's also hard not to notice the gratuitous use of a slur against non-trans people in a piece about the evil of using slurs.  Is this any better than referring to straight people as "breeders," or transgender people as "trannys"?

A commenter noted another point:

I noticed the person, who wrote that article about Savage's use of slurs criticizes his defenders for having "only a minimal understanding of the complaints against him." That's kind of odd, because if this person, knew anything about Dan Savage, they would know that his philosophy (whether they agree with it or not) is that using slurs in a non-derogatory way takes away their power.

And this involves two issues, really. First, is it ever okay for anyone to use a slur - e.g., can a gay person say "f*ggot," can a black person say "n*gger," in any context? (I'm using the asterisk only because the automatic ad filter gets annoyed sometimes.)  Second, if it is okay for a member of a group to sometimes use a derogatory term that defines their own group, then why would it be okay for Dan to say "f*ggot" but not also "tranny."  We're all one community, right? Or are even our most strident activists claiming, tacitly, that we're not? Read the rest of this post...

New guy picked to produce Oscars had his own anti-gay blow up a year ago

Oscar photo via Shutterstock

He produced the movie where they had the characters say electric cares were "gay."  I still think it was in appropriate, regardless of how silly some might find it.  You don't use slurs like that, especially when they're intended to be funny in a "ha ha, I like that character" kind of way, rather than an Archie Bunker kind of way.  It's hard to believe that the Academy Awards didn't realizes this as soon as someone suggested the man to take the place of the other guy who left because he used an anti-gay slur.  And with Ron Howard, his co-producer on the movie, getting all high and mighty about his right to use anti-gay slurs as some kind of art form, it's not as if the issue was ever really resolved to anyone's satisfaction. Read the rest of this post...

Producer of next Oscars out for saying "rehearsal is for f*gs"

UPDATE: He's gone. (H/t to TC)

Great piece by Patrick Goldstein in the LA Times:

If the cloistered elders at the motion picture academy were shocked, surprised, appalled or dismayed to discover that Brett Ratner said that “rehearsal is for f*gs” in a Q&A session after a screening of his new film, “Tower Heist,” well, it just goes to show how little due diligence they did before they hired Ratner to produce next year's Oscars.

Ratner's remark, made in response to a question about his creative process, was actually, in terms of self-inflicted wounds, a two-for-one deal. Ratner not only embarrassed the academy by insulting legions of gay people (who are perhaps the Oscars’ last remaining loyal demographic), but he also made himself look like even more of an artistic featherweight by making it clear that he views the hard work and preparation that most filmmakers put into their craft -- i.e. rehearsal time -- as being for chumps, not fast-talking smoothies like himself.

Yeah, like when my nephew, who was in college at the time, told me he never edits his papers. They're always much better when he waited until the last minute and wrote them really fast, all in one fell swoop. Uh huh. Kids are so cute. When they become adults and still think this way, not so much. Read the rest of this post...

Tracy Morgan defends his right to be a homophobe, blames guy who was offended

What a pig.

Read this Gawker piece, then check out the video that's over there as well. Tracy Morgan, who joked a few months ago about how he'd kill his son if he ended up being gay, went on Letterman last night. Letterman spent nearly ten minutes trying to get Morgan to give a satisfactory answer as to why he did it. Morgan just squirmed and gave a lot of really bad excuses, including he just can't remember what he said, it was so long ago you know.

Oh yeah, Morgan blamed the gay kid who was offended and told everyone what he hard at the club.  Apparently, you're not supposed to speak out when Tracy Morgan acts like a homophobic jerk.

Keep digging. Read the rest of this post...

Executive committee of GLAAD’s board votes for ED Barrios to step down, Barrios says no

Getting very interesting. Read the rest of this post...

Second City's Andy Cobb on the Tracy Morgan brouhaha

I saw my friend Andy Cobb, a comedian with Second City, at Netroots Nation and asked him to talk a bit about the Tracy Morgan brouhaha.

Read the rest of this post...

Tracy Morgan to return to Tennessee to apologize to audience

That's nice, but if the first apology wasn't enough, it's not clear how a second apology is.  I thought the idea was to get him to actually do something?  Flying back to TN and meeting with gay audience members is something, I guess, but it doesn't sound like much more than what he already did.

Btw, GLAAD brokered this. Read the rest of this post...

Chris Rock backs off defense of Tracy Morgan

Good for him. I've always liked Chris Rock, and it surprised me that he would defend this. Well, he's not any longer.

Tracy morgan is a tad off we all know that so when tracy says something i usually don't take it anymore serious than i would a statement from gary busey or flavor flav .when i first heard the statement i thought it was offensive but it also reminded me of my father saying ill kill you if you ever bring home a white girl but after reading everything tracy said . wow i get it that shit wasn't called for and i don't support it at all. now can i please go to the tony awards without getting my ass kicked.

Read the rest of this post...