Why do young men call each other gay slurs

Professor C. ATTN: What is the origin of the word "fag," and was it always used as a slur? It seems that the general consensus is that it is a British term that was imported to the United States in the early 20th century. From what I can tell, it has been used to refer to sticks, to cigarettes, perhaps women as well, and to gay men.

University of Oregon - uoregon. Your research specifically asserts that the word "fag" is used to "police the boundaries of masculinity. Contemporary masculinity in the West is characterized by two processes — repudiation and confirmation. That is, masculinity is not a given just because one is a boy.

One has to constantly prove that one is masculine. Young men tell me that to be masculine is to be competent, dominant, heterosexual, powerful, and unemotional. However, proving those things on a daily basis is hard to do! So when a young man does anything that is unmasculine, they risk being labeled with that epithet, which young men repeatedly tell me is the worst thing a guy can be called.

Of course, it felt like anything could get a guy called that, but what I saw in my research was that a boy was called a fag when he broke the local rules these expectations can vary by class, race, and region, for instance of masculinity — he cared to much about his clothing, he danced, he was too emotional, too touchy, or was incompetent in some way.

This was especially true for young white men. The African American boys in my research were less likely to use homophobic epithets in this way but were punished more harshly by the school for doing so. This set up a very complicated and tense daily ordeal in which young men strove to escape the epithet while being constantly vulnerable to it.

Do women commonly use the word "fag" as well, or is it mostly used among young men? In my research, I have rarely seen women using the word "fag. This speaks to how important "fag" is to contemporary understandings of masculinity — other research shows that femininity is governed by a slut discourse, rather than what I call a fag discourse.

Historically, we have chalked this difference up to men being more homophobic than women. In one interview, you stated in the context of high school"it's much worse to be an unmasculine man than it is to be a masculine man who is desired by another man. In other words, are feminine straight guys less accepted than masculine-acting gay guys?

For the young men I speak with, it is worse to be a feminine straight guy than a masculine gay guy. Though perhaps worst of all is a feminine gay why do young men call each other gay slurs. These young men told me quite clearly that they were not talking only about gay men when they deployed homophobic epithets.

The "F-Slur": Where It Comes From & How Some Are Reclaiming It

This is a complicated argument to make — that homophobic epithets are about policing masculinity, and they may also be about putting down gay men, or perhaps one and not the other. You have also stated that "90 percent of school shooters who go on rampage shootings have been subject to homophobic harassment and teasing.

This specific statistic is not my work — researchers Michael Kimmel and Matthew Mahler pointed this out in their piece called Adolescent, Masculinity, Homophobia and Violence: Random School Shootings Other scholars are following up on this work to update it to take into account recent school shootings.

We often discuss homophobic epithets as if they are solely a matter of diversity, or that they are solely directed at GLBTQ young people. What this body of research shows is that homophobic epithets are a primary way in which contemporary masculinity is forged.