chapter three
Dude, You’re a Fag
Adolescent Male Homophobia
The sun shone bright and clear over River High’s annual Creative and
Performing Arts Happening, or CAPA. During CAPA the school’s various art programs displayed students’ work in a fairlike atmosphere. The
front quad sported student-generated computer programs. Colorful and
ornate chalk art covered the cement sidewalks. Tables lined with studentcrafted pottery were set up on the grass. Tall displays of students’ paintings divided the rear quad. To the left of the paintings a television blared
student-directed music videos. At the rear of the back quad, a square,
roped-off area of cement served as a makeshift stage for drama, choir, and
dance performances. Teachers released students from class to wander
around the quads, watch performances, and look at the art. This freedom
from class time lent the day an air of excitement because students were
rarely allowed to roam the campus without a hall pass, an office summons, or a parent/faculty escort. In honor of CAPA, the school district
bussed in elementary school students from the surrounding grammar
schools to participate in the day’s festivities.
Running through the rear quad, Brian, a senior, yelled to a group of
boys visiting from the elementary schools, “There’s a faggot over there!
There’s a faggot over there! Come look!” Following Brian, the ten-yearolds dashed down a hallway. At the end of the hallway Brian’s friend Dan
52
Dude, You’re a Fag / 53
pursed his lips and began sashaying toward the little boys. As he minced,
he swung his hips exaggeratedly and wildly waved his arms. To the boys
Brian yelled, “Look at the faggot! Watch out! He’ll get you!” In response,
the ten-year-olds raced back down the hallway screaming in terror.
Brian and Dan repeated this drama throughout the following half hour,
each time with a new group of young boys.
Making jokes like these about faggots was central to social life at River
High. Indeed, boys learned long before adolescence that faggots were simultaneously predatory and passive and that they were, at all costs, to be
avoided. Older boys repeatedly impressed upon younger ones through
these types of homophobic rituals that whatever they did, whatever they
became, however they talked, they had to avoid becoming a faggot.
Feminist scholars of masculinity have documented the centrality of
homophobic insults and attitudes to masculinity (Kimmel 2001; Lehne
1998), especially in school settings (Burn 2000; Kimmel 2003; Messner
2005; Plummer 2001; G. Smith 1998; Wood 1984). They argue that homophobic teasing often characterizes masculinity in adolescence and
early adulthood and that antigay slurs tend to be directed primarily at gay
boys. This chapter both expands on and challenges these accounts of relationships between homophobia and masculinity. Homophobia is indeed a central mechanism in the making of contemporary American adolescent masculinity. A close analysis of the way boys at River High invoke
the faggot as a disciplinary mechanism makes clear that something more
than simple homophobia is at play in adolescent masculinity. The use of
the word fag by boys at River High points to the limits of an argument
that focuses centrally on homophobia. Fag is not only an identity linked
to homosexual boys but an identity that can temporarily adhere to heterosexual boys as well. The fag trope is also a racialized disciplinary
mechanism.
Homophobia is too facile a term with which to describe the deployment
of fag as an epithet. By calling the use of the word fag homophobia—and
letting the argument stop there—previous research has obscured the
gendered nature of sexualized insults (Plummer 2001). Invoking homo-
54 / Dude, You’re a Fag
phobia to describe the ways boys aggressively tease each other overlooks
the powerful relationship between masculinity and this sort of insult. Instead, it seems incidental, in this conventional line of argument, that girls
do not harass each other and are not harassed in this same manner. This
framing naturalizes the relationship between masculinity and homophobia, thus obscuring that such harassment is central to the formation of a
gendered identity for boys in a way that it is not for girls.
Fag is not necessarily a static identity attached to a particular (homosexual) boy. Fag talk and fag imitations serve as a discourse with which
boys discipline themselves and each other through joking relationships.
Any boy can temporarily become a fag in a given social space or interaction. This does not mean that boys who identify as or are perceived to
be homosexual aren’t subject to intense harassment. Many are. But becoming a fag has as much to do with failing at the masculine tasks of competence, heterosexual prowess, and strength or in any way revealing
weakness or femininity as it does with a sexual identity. This fluidity of
the fag identity is what makes the specter of the fag such a powerful disciplinary mechanism. It is fluid enough that boys police their behaviors
out of fear of having the fag identity permanently adhere and definitive
enough so that boys recognize a fag behavior and strive to avoid it.
An analysis of the fag discourse also indicates ways in which gendered
power works through racialized selves. The fag discourse is invoked differently by and in relation to white boys’ bodies than it is by and in relation to African American boys’ bodies. While certain behaviors put all
boys at risk for becoming temporarily a fag, some behaviors can be enacted by African American boys without putting them at risk of receiving the label. The racialized meanings of the fag discourse suggest that
something more than simple homophobia is involved in these sorts of interactions. It is not that gendered homophobia does not exist in African
American communities. Indeed, making fun of “negro faggotry seems to
be a rite of passage among contemporary black male rappers and filmmakers” (Riggs 1991, 253). However, the fact that “white women and
men, gay and straight, have more or less colonized cultural debates about
Dude, You’re a Fag / 55
sexual representation” ( Julien and Mercer 1991, 167) obscures varied
systems of sexualized meanings among different racialized ethnic groups
(Almaguer 1991). Thus far male homophobia has primarily been written
about as a racially neutral phenomenon. However, as D. L. King’s (2004)
recent work on African American men and same-sex desire pointed out,
homophobia is characterized by racial identities as well as sexual and gendered ones.
WHAT IS A FAG? GENDERED MEANINGS
“Since you were little boys you’ve been told, ‘Hey, don’t be a little faggot,’ ” explained Darnell, a football player of mixed African American
and white heritage, as we sat on a bench next to the athletic field. Indeed,
both the boys and girls I interviewed told me that fag was the worst epithet one guy could direct at another. Jeff, a slight white sophomore, explained to me that boys call each other fag because “gay people aren’t really liked over here and stuff.” Jeremy, a Latino junior, told me that this
insult literally reduced a boy to nothing, “To call someone gay or fag is
like the lowest thing you can call someone. Because that’s like saying that
you’re nothing.”
Most guys explained their or others’ dislike of fags by claiming that
homophobia was synonymous with being a guy. For instance, Keith, a
white soccer-playing senior, explained, “I think guys are just homophobic.” However, boys were not equal-opportunity homophobes. Several
students told me that these homophobic insults applied only to boys and
not to girls. For example, while Jake, a handsome white senior, told me
that he didn’t like gay people, he quickly added, “Lesbians, okay, that’s
good.” Similarly Cathy, a popular white cheerleader, told me, “Being a lesbian is accepted because guys think, ‘Oh that’s cool.’ ” Darnell, after
telling me that boys were warned about becoming faggots, said, “They
[guys] are fine with girls. I think it’s the guy part that they’re like
ewwww.” In this sense it was not strictly homophobia but a gendered homophobia that constituted adolescent masculinity in the culture of River
56 / Dude, You’re a Fag
High. It is clear, according to these comments, that lesbians were “good”
because of their place in heterosexual male fantasy, not necessarily because of some enlightened approach to same-sex relationships. A popular trope in heterosexual pornography depicts two women engaging in
sexual acts for the purpose of male titillation. The boys at River High are
not unique in making this distinction; adolescent boys in general dislike
gay men more than they dislike lesbians (Baker and Fishbein 1998). The
fetishizing of sex acts between women indicates that using only the term
homophobia to describe boys’ repeated use of the word fag might be a bit
simplistic and misleading.
Girls at River High rarely deployed the word fag and were never
called fags. I recorded girls uttering fag only three times during my research. In one instance, Angela, a Latina cheerleader, teased Jeremy, a
well-liked white senior involved in student government, for not ditching
school with her: “You wouldn’t ’cause you’re a faggot.” However, girls
did not use this word as part of their regular lexicon. The sort of gendered homophobia that constituted adolescent masculinity did not constitute adolescent femininity. Girls were not called dykes or lesbians in
any sort of regular or systematic way. Students did tell me that slut was
the worst thing a girl could be called. However, my field notes indicate
that the word slut (or its synonym ho) appeared one time for every eight
times the word fag appeared.
Highlighting the difference between the deployment of gay and fag as
insults brings the gendered nature of this homophobia into focus. For
boys and girls at River High gay was a fairly common synonym for “stupid.” While this word shared the sexual origins of fag, it didn’t consistently
have the skew of gender-loaded meaning. Girls and boys often used gay
as an adjective referring to inanimate objects and male or female people,
whereas they used fag as a noun that denoted only unmasculine males.
Students used gay to describe anything from someone’s clothes to a new
school rule that they didn’t like. For instance, one day in auto shop, Arnie
pulled out a large older version of a black laptop computer and placed it
on his desk. Behind him Nick cried, “That’s a gay laptop! It’s five inches
Dude, You’re a Fag / 57
thick!” The rest of the boys in the class laughed at Arnie’s outdated laptop. A laptop can be gay, a movie can be gay, or a group of people can be
gay. Boys used gay and fag interchangeably when they referred to other
boys, but fag didn’t have the gender-neutral attributes that gay frequently invoked.
Surprisingly, some boys took pains to say that the term fag did not
imply sexuality. Darnell told me, “It doesn’t even have anything to do
with being gay.” Similarly, J. L., a white sophomore at Hillside High
(River High’s cross-town rival), asserted, “Fag, seriously, it has nothing
to do with sexual preference at all. You could just be calling somebody an
idiot, you know?” I asked Ben, a quiet, white sophomore who wore
heavy-metal T-shirts to auto shop each day, “What kind of things do guys
get called a fag for?” Ben answered, “Anything . . . literally, anything.
Like you were trying to turn a wrench the wrong way, ‘Dude, you’re a
fag.’ Even if a piece of meat drops out of your sandwich, ‘You fag!’ ” Each
time Ben said, “You fag,” his voice deepened as if he were imitating a
more masculine boy. While Ben might rightly feel that a guy could be
called a fag for “anything . . . literally, anything,” there were actually specific behaviors that, when enacted by most boys, could render them more
vulnerable to a fag epithet. In this instance Ben’s comment highlights the
use of fag as a generic insult for incompetence, which in the world of
River High, was central to a masculine identity. A boy could get called a
fag for exhibiting any sort of behavior defined as unmasculine (although
not necessarily behaviors aligned with femininity): being stupid or incompetent, dancing, caring too much about clothing, being too emotional, or expressing interest (sexual or platonic) in other guys. However,
given the extent of its deployment and the laundry list of behaviors that
could get a boy in trouble, it is no wonder that Ben felt a boy could be
called fag for “anything.” These nonsexual meanings didn’t replace sexual meanings but rather existed alongside them.
One-third (thirteen) of the boys I interviewed told me that, while they
might liberally insult each other with the term, they would not direct it
at a homosexual peer. Jabes, a Filipino senior, told me, “I actually say it
58 / Dude, You’re a Fag
[fag] quite a lot, except for when I’m in the company of an actual homosexual person. Then I try not to say it at all. But when I’m just hanging
out with my friends I’ll be like, ‘Shut up, I don’t want you hear you any
more, you stupid fag.’ ” Similarly J. L. compared homosexuality to a disability, saying there was “no way” he’d call an actually gay guy a fag because “there’s people who are the retarded people who nobody wants to
associate with. I’ll be so nice to those guys, and I hate it when people
make fun of them. It’s like, ‘Bro do you realize that they can’t help that?’
And then there’s gay people. They were born that way.” According to this
group of boys, gay was a legitimate, or at least biological, identity.
There was a possibility, however slight, that a boy could be gay and
masculine (Connell 1995). David, a handsome white senior dressed
smartly in khaki pants and a white button-down shirt, told me, “Being gay
is just a lifestyle. It’s someone you choose to sleep with. You can still throw
around a football and be gay.” It was as if David was justifying the use of
the word fag by arguing that gay men could be men if they tried but that
if they failed at it (i.e., if they couldn’t throw a football) then they deserved
to be called a fag. In other words, to be a fag was, by definition, the opposite of masculine, whether the word was deployed with sexualized or
nonsexualized meanings. In explaining this to me, Jamaal, an African
American junior, cited the explanation of the popular rap artist Eminem:
“Although I don’t like Eminem, he had a good definition of it. It’s like taking away your title. In an interview they were like, ‘You’re always capping
on gays, but then you sing with Elton John.’ He was like ‘I don’t mean gay
as in gay.’ ” This is what Riki Wilchins (2003) calls the “Eminem Exception. Eminem explains that he doesn’t call people ‘faggot’ because of their
sexual orientation but because they’re weak and unmanly” (72). This is
precisely the way boys at River High used the term faggot. While it was
not necessarily acceptable to be gay, at least a man who was gay could do
other things that would render him acceptably masculine. A fag, by the
very definition of the word, could not be masculine.
This distinction between fag as an unmasculine and problematic identity and gay as a possibly masculine, although marginalized, sexual iden-
Dude, You’re a Fag / 59
tity is not limited to a teenage lexicon; it is reflected in both psychological discourses and gay and lesbian activism. Eve Sedgwick (1995) argues
that in contemporary psychological literature homosexuality is no longer
a problem for men so long as the homosexual man is of the right age and
gender orientation. In this literature a homosexual male must be an adult
and must be masculine. Male homosexuality is not pathologized, but gay
male effeminacy is. The lack of masculinity is the problem, not the sexual
practice or orientation. Indeed, the edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (a key document in the mental health field)
that erased homosexuality as a diagnosis in the 1970s added a new diagnosis in its wake: Gender Identity Disorder. According to Sedgwick, the
criteria for diagnosis are different for girls and boys. A girl has to actually assert that she is a boy, indicating a psychotic disconnection with reality, whereas a boy need only display a preoccupation with female activities. The policing of boys’ gender orientation and of a strict masculine
identity for gay men is also reflected in gay culture itself. The war against
fags as the specter of unmasculine manhood appears in gay male personal
ads in which men look for “straight-appearing, straight-acting men.”
This concern with both straight and gay men’s masculinity not only reflects teenage boys’ obsession with hypermasculinity but also points to
the conflict at the heart of the contemporary “crisis of masculinity” being
played out in popular, scientific, and educational arenas.
BECOMING A FAG: FAG FLUIDITY
“The ubiquity of the word faggot speaks to the reach of its discrediting
capacity” (Corbett 2001, 4). It’s almost as if boys cannot help shouting it
out on a regular basis—in the hallway, in class, or across campus as a
greeting. In my fieldwork I was amazed by the way the word seemed to
pop uncontrollably out of boys’ mouths in all kinds of situations.1 To
quote just one of many instances from my field notes: two boys walked
out of the PE locker room, and one yelled, “Fucking faggot!” at no one
in particular. None of the other students paid them any mind, since this
60 / Dude, You’re a Fag
sort of thing happened so frequently. Similar spontaneous yelling of
some variation of the word fag, seemingly apropos of nothing, happened
repeatedly among boys throughout the school. This and repeated imitations of fags constitute what I refer to as a “fag discourse.”
Fag discourse is central to boys’ joking relationships. Joking cements
relationships among boys (Kehily and Nayak 1997; Lyman 1998) and
helps to manage anxiety and discomfort (Freud 1905). Boys both connect
with one another and manage the anxiety around this sort of relationship
through joking about fags. Boys invoked the specter of the fag in two
ways: through humorous imitation and through lobbing the epithet at
one another. Boys at River High imitated the fag by acting out an exaggerated “femininity” and/or by pretending to sexually desire other boys.
As indicated by the introductory vignette in which an older boy imitated
a predatory fag to threaten little boys, male students at River High linked
these performative scenarios with a fag identity. They also lobbed the fag
epithet at each other in a verbal game of hot potato, each careful to deflect the insult quickly by hurling it toward someone else. These games
and imitations made up a fag discourse that highlighted the fag not as a
static but rather as a fluid identity that boys constantly struggled to avoid.
In imitative performances the fag discourse functioned as a constant
reiteration of the fag’s existence, affirming that the fag was out there;
boys reminded themselves and each other that at any moment they could
become fags if they were not sufficiently masculine. At the same time
these performances demonstrated that the boy who was invoking the fag
was not a fag. Emir, a tall, thin African American boy, frequently imitated
fags to draw laughs from other students in his introductory drama class.
One day Mr. McNally, the drama teacher, disturbed by the noise outside
the classroom, turned to the open door, saying, “We’ll shut this unless
anyone really wants to watch sweaty boys playing basketball.” Emir
lisped, “I wanna watch the boys play!” The rest of the class cracked up at
his imitation. No one in the class actually thought Emir was gay, as he
purposefully mocked both same-sex sexual desire (through pretending to
admire the boys playing basketball) and an effeminate gender identity
Dude, You’re a Fag / 61
(through speaking with a lisp and in a high-pitched voice). Had he said
this in all seriousness, the class most likely would have responded in
stunned silence. Instead, Emir reminded them he was masculine by immediately dropping the fag act. After imitating a fag, boys assure others
that they are not a fag by instantly becoming masculine again after the
performance. They mock their own performed femininity and/or samesex desire, assuring themselves and others that such an identity deserves
derisive laughter.
Boys consistently tried to force others into the fag position by lobbing the fag epithet at each other. One day in auto shop, Jay was rummaging through a junk-filled car in the parking lot. He poked his head
out of the trunk and asked, “Where are Craig and Brian?” Neil responded with “I think they’re over there,” pointing, then thrusting his
hips and pulling his arms back and forth to indicate that Craig and Brian
might be having sex. The boys in auto shop laughed. This sort of joke
temporarily labeled both Craig and Brian as faggots. Because the fag discourse was so familiar, the other boys immediately understood that Neil
was indicating that Craig and Brian were having sex. However, these
were not necessarily identities that stuck. Nobody actually thought
Craig and Brian were homosexuals. Rather, the fag identity was fluid—
certainly an identity that no boy wanted but that most boys could escape,
usually by engaging in some sort of discursive contest to turn another
boy into a fag.
In this way the fag became a hot potato that no boy wanted to be left
holding. One of the best ways to move out of the fag position was to
thrust another boy into that position. For instance, soon after Neil made
the joke about Brian having sex with Craig, Brian lobbed the fag epithet
at someone else, deflecting it from himself, by initiating a round of a favorite game in auto shop, the “cock game.” Brain said quietly, looking at
Josh, “Josh loves the cock,” then slightly louder, “Josh loves the cock.” He
continued saying this until he was yelling, “JOSH LOVES THE
COCK!” The rest of the boys laughed hysterically as Josh slunk away,
saying, “I have a bigger dick than all you motherfuckers!” These two in-
62 / Dude, You’re a Fag
stances show how the fag could be mapped, for a moment, onto one boy’s
body and how he, in turn, could attach it to another boy, thus deflecting
it from himself. In the first instance Neil made fun of Craig and Brian for
simply hanging out together. In the second instance Brian went from
being a fag to making Josh into a fag through the “cock game.” Through
joking interactions boys moved in and out of the fag identity by discursively creating another as a fag.
Given the pervasiveness of fag jokes and the fluidity of the fag identity, it is difficult for boys to consistently avoid the brand. As Ben stated,
it almost seemed that a boy could get called a fag for “anything.” But
most readily acknowledged that there were spaces, behaviors, and bodily comportments that made one more likely to be subject to the fag discourse, such as bodily practices involving clothing and dancing.
According to boys at River, fags cared about the style of their clothes,
wore tighter clothes, and cared about cleanliness. Nils explained to me
that he could tell that a guy was a fag by the way he dressed: “Most guys
wear loose-fitting clothing, just kind of baggy. They [fags] wear more
tight clothes. More fashionable, I guess.” Similarly, nonfags were not
supposed to care about dirtying their clothes. Auto shop was a telling example of this. Given that the boys spent two hours working with greasy
car parts, they frequently ended up smudged and rumpled by the end of
class. While in the front of the classroom there was a room boys could
change in, most of them opted not to change out of their school clothes,
with a few modifying their outfits by taking their shirts off and walking
around in their “beaters.” These tank tops were banned at River High
because of their association with gang membership. Auto shop was the
one place on campus where boys could wear them with impunity. Like
most of the boys in auto shop, Ben never changed out of his jeans or
heavy-metal T-shirts. After working on a particularly oily engine he
walked in to the classroom with grease stains covering his pants. He
looked down at them, made a face, and walked toward me laughing, waving his hands around with limp wrists, and lisping in a high-pitched singsong voice, “I got my good panths all dirty!” Ben’s imitation indicated
Dude, You’re a Fag / 63
that only a fag would actually care about getting his clothes dirty. “Real”
guys didn’t care about their appearance; thus it didn’t matter if they were
covered in grease stains. Of course, to not care about one’s clothes, or to
make fun of those who care about their clothes, ironically, is to also care
about one’s appearance. In this sense, masculinity became the carefully
crafted appearance of not caring about appearance.
Indeed, the boys’ approach to clothing and cleanliness mirrored
trends in larger society and the ascendance of the “metrosexual.” Metrosexual is the recently coined label for straight men who care about their
appearance, meticulously piecing together outfits, using product in their
hair, and even making manicure appointments (for clear polish, of
course). Because these sorts of grooming practices are associated with
gay men, straight men developed a new moniker to differentiate themselves from other straight men and from gay men.
Dancing was another practice that put a boy at risk of being labeled a
fag. Often boys would jokingly dance together to diffuse the sexualized
and feminized meanings embedded in dancing. At dances white boys frequently held their female dates tightly, locking their hips together. The
boys never danced with one another unless they were joking or trying to
embarrass one another. The examples of boys jokingly dancing together
are too numerous to discuss, but the following example was particularly
memorable. Lindy danced behind her date, Chris. Chris’s friend Matt
walked up and nudged Lindy aside, imitating her dance moves behind
Chris. As Matt rubbed his hands up and down Chris’s back, Chris turned
around and jumped back, startled to see Matt there instead of Lindy.
Matt cracked up as Chris turned red and swore at his friend.
A similar thing happened at CAPA as two of the boys from the band
listened to another band play swing music. These two boys walked toward each other and began to ballroom-dance. Within a second or two
they keeled over in laughter, hitting each other and moving away. This
ritualized dance, moving closer and then apart, happened again and again
when music played at River High. Boys participated in this ritualized exchange to emphasize that indeed they weren’t fags.
64 / Dude, You’re a Fag
When boys were forced to dance with one another, as in classroom activities, this sort of joking escalated. In the drama class Mr. McNally
walked the students through an exercise that required them to stand so
close to each other that most parts of their bodies touched. He instructed
the students to stand in two circles on the stage, with each person on the
outer circle directly behind someone in the inner circle. He began to play
a haunting instrumental song with no vocals. As the song continued Mr.
McNally told the students in the inner circle to close their eyes and let
their bodies go limp, while still standing. He instructed the students in
the outer circle to move the person in front through an interpretive
dance, following his lead as he moved the student in front of him. As the
music continued, most of the students in the outer circle watched Mr.
McNally’s movements intently, trying their best to mirror his actions.
The result was an intimate and beautiful puppet-and-puppeteer–like
dance with the student in back moving the student in front through slow,
fluid poses. Instead of following Mr. McNally’s movements like the rest
of the class, one pair of white sophomores, Liam and Jacob, barely
touched. Jacob stood in back of Liam and, instead of gently holding
Liam’s wrist with their full arms touching as the other students did,
picked up Liam’s wrist with two fingers as if picking up something repulsive and flung Liam’s hand to its destination. He made jokes with
Liam’s arm, repeatedly flinging it up against Liam’s chest in a movement
that indicated Liam was “retarded.” The jokes continued as the students
switched places, so that the inner circle became the outer circle, with
Liam now “in control” of Jacob. Liam placed Jacob’s hand against his
forehead as if saluting, made his arms flap like birds, and used Jacob’s finger to poke at his eyes, all the while, unlike the other students, never letting the majority of his body touch Jacob’s. At the end of the exercise Mr.
McNally asked for the students’ feedback. One of the girls said, a little
embarrassed, “I hate to say it, but it was almost sexual.” To which Mr.
McNally responded, “Yeah, it’s full physical contact,” at which point
Liam and Jacob took two steps apart from one another. Even though the
entire class was assigned to touch one another simultaneously, Jacob and
Dude, You’re a Fag / 65
Liam had a hard time following the instructions because it was so dangerous to actually “dance” together like this. Even in a class situation, in
the most nonsuspect of interactions, the fag discourse ran deep, forbidding boys to touch one another.
The constant threat of the fag regulated boys’ attitudes toward their
bodies in terms of clothing, dancing, and touching. Boys constantly engaged in repudiatory rituals to avoid permanently inhabiting the fag position. Boys’ interactions were composed of competitive joking through
which they interactionally created the constitutive outside and affirmed
their positions as subjects.
EMBODYING THE FAG: RICKY’S STORY
Through verbal jockeying, most boys at River continually moved in and
out of the fag position. For the one boy who permanently inhabited the fag
position, life at River High was not easy. I heard about Ricky long before I
met him. As soon as I talked to any student involved with drama, the choir,
or the Gay/Straight Alliance, they told me I had to meet Ricky. Ricky, a
lithe, white junior with a shy smile and downcast eyes, frequently sported
multicolored hair extensions, mascara, and sometimes a skirt. An extremely
talented dancer, he often starred in the school’s dance shows and choreographed assemblies. In fact, he was the male lead in “I’ve Had the Time of
My Life,” the final number in the dance show. Given how important other
students thought it was that I speak to him, I was surprised that I had to wait
for nearly a year before he granted me an interview. His friends had warned
me that he was “heterophobic” and as a result was reluctant to talk to authority figures he perceived were heterosexual. After I heard his stories of
past and present abuse at the hands of negligent adults, cruel teenagers, and
indifferent school administrators, I understood why he would be leery of
folks asking questions about his feelings, experiences, and opinions. While
other boys at River High engaged in continual repudiatory rituals around
the fag identity, Ricky embodied the fag because of his homosexuality and
his less normative gender identification and self-presentation.
66 / Dude, You’re a Fag
Ricky assumed (rightly so in this context) that other people immediately identified him with his sexuality. He told me that when he first met
people, “they’ll be like, ‘Can I ask you a personal question?’ And I’m like,
‘Sure.’ And they say, ‘Are you gay?’ And I’m like, ‘Yeeeaahh.’ ‘Okay, can
I ask you another question?’ And I’m like, ‘Sure.’ And they’ll go, ‘Does
it hurt?’ It always goes . . . ” He rolled his eyes dismissively, telling me,
“They go straight up to the most personal question! They skip everything else. They go straight to that. Sometimes I’ll get the occasional
‘Well, how did you know that you were [gay]?’ ” He answered with “For
me it’s just always been there. I knew from the time I could think for myself on. It was pretty obvious,” he concluded gesturing to his thin frame
and tight-fitting tank top with a flourish.
Ricky lived at the margins of school, student social life, and society in
general. His mother died when he was young. After her death, he moved
around California and Nevada, alternately living with his drug-addicted
father, a boyfriend’s family, his aunt, his sister, and his homophobic
grandmother (who forbade him to wear nail polish or makeup). The resulting discontinuities in his education proved difficult in terms of both
academics and socialization:
It’s really hard to go to a school for a period of time and get used to
their system and everything’s okay. Then when all of a sudden you
have to pick up and move the next week, get into a new environment
you have no idea about, you don’t know how the kids are gonna react
to you. You don’t know what the teachers are like and you don’t know
what their system is. So this entire time I have not been able to get
used to their system and get used to the environment at all. That’s
why I had to say, “Fuck it,” cause for so long I’ve been going back and
going back and reviewing things I did in like fifth grade. I’m at a
fourth-grade math level. I am math illiterate, let me tell you.
In addition to the continual educational disruptions, Ricky had to contend with intense harassment. Figuring out the social map of the school
was central to Ricky’s survival. Homophobic harassment at the hands of
teachers and students characterized his educational experience. When he
Dude, You’re a Fag / 67
was beat up in a middle school PE class, the teacher didn’t help but rather
fostered this sort of treatment:
They gave them a two-day suspension and they kind of kept an eye on
me. That’s all they could do. The PE coach was very racist and very
homophobic. He was just like “faggot this” and “faggot that.” I did not
feel comfortable in the locker room and I asked him if I could go somewhere else to change, and he said, “No, you can change here.”
Sadly, by the time Ricky had reached River High he had become accustomed to the violence.
In a weird sense, in a weird way, I’m comfortable with it because it’s just
what I’ve known for as long as I can remember. I mean, in elementary
school, I’m talking like sixth grade, I started being called a fag. Fifth
grade I was called a fag. Third grade I was called a fag. I have the paperwork, ’cause my mom kept everything, I still have them, of kids harassing me, saying “Gaylord,” at that time it was “Gaylord.”
Contrary to the protestations of boys earlier in the chapter that they
would never call someone who was gay a fag, Ricky experienced this harassment on a regular basis, probably because he couldn’t draw on identifiably masculine markers such as athletic ability or other forms of dominance to bolster some sort of claim on masculinity.
Hypermasculine environments such as sporting events continued to
be venues of intense harassment at River High. “I’ve had water balloons
thrown at me at a football game. Like, we [his friends Genevieve and
Lacy] couldn’t have stayed at the homecoming game. We had to go.” The
persecution began immediately at the biggest football game of the year.
When he entered with his friend Lacy, “Two guys that started walking
up to get tickets said, ‘There’s the fucking fag.’ ” When Ricky responded
with “Excuse me?” the boy shot back, “Don’t talk to me like you know
me.” The boy and his friends started to threaten Ricky. Ricky said, “He
started getting into my face, and his friends started saying, ‘Come on,
man, come on, man’ ” as if they were about to hit Ricky. Ricky felt frustrated that “the ticket people are sitting there not doing a damn thing.
68 / Dude, You’re a Fag
This is right in front of them!” He found Ms. Chesney, the vice principal, after the boys finally left. While Ms. Chesney told him, “We’ll take
care of it,” Ricky said he never heard about the incident again. Later at
the game he and Lacy had water bottles thrown at them by young boys
yelling, “Oh look, it’s a fag!” He said that this sentiment echoed as they
tried to sit in the bleachers to watch the half-time show, which he had
choreographed: “Left and right, ‘What the fuck is that fag doing here?’
‘That fag has no right to be here.’ Blah blah blah. That’s all I heard. I
tried to ignore it. And after a while I couldn’t take it and then we just went
home.” While many of the boys I interviewed said they would not actually harass a gay boy, that was not Ricky’s experience. He was driven out
of the event he had choreographed because of the intense homophobic
harassment.
Ricky endured similar torment at CAPA, the event at which Brian and
Dan socialized the young boys to fear faggots by chasing them. Boys reacted with revulsion to Ricky’s dance performances while simultaneously
objectifying the girls dancing on the stage. The rear quad served as the
stage for CAPA’s dancers. The student body clustered around the stage
to watch the all-female beginning jazz dance class perform. Mitch, a
white senior, whose shirt read, “One of us is thinking about sex. It must
be me,” muttered, “This is so gay” and began to walk away. Jackson yelled
after him, “Where are you going, fag?” As Mitch walked away, Jackson
turned back to the dancing girls, who now had their backs to the boys,
gyrating their behinds in time to the music, and shouted, “Shake that
ass!” Jackson reached in his pocket to grab his glasses. Pablo commented, “He’s putting on his glasses so he can see her shake her ass better.” Watching the girls’ behinds, Jackson replied, as he pointed to one
of them, “She’s got a huge ass.” Mitch turned to Pablo and asked, seriously, “Why are there no guys?” Pablo responded, “You’re such a fag.”
The advanced dance troupe took the stage with Ricky in the center.
Again, all the dancers sported black outfits, but this time the pants were
baggy and the shirts fitted. Ricky wore the same outfit as the girls. He
danced in the “lead” position, in the front and the center of the dance for-
Dude, You’re a Fag / 69
mation. He executed the same dance moves as the girls, which is uncommon in mixed-gender dance troupes. Usually the boys in a mixedgender dance troupe perform the more “physical” moves such as flips,
holding up the girls, and spinning them around. Ricky, instead, performed all the sexually suggestive hip swivels, leg lifts, arm flares, and
spins that the girls did.
Nils and his group of white male friends made faces and giggled as
they stared at Ricky. Soon Nils turned to Malcolm and said, “It’s like a
car wreck, you just can’t look away.” Both shook their heads in dismay as
they continued to watch the “car wreck” with what can only be described
as morbid absorption. Other boys around the stage reacted visibly, recoiling at Ricky’s performance. One of them, J. R., a hulking junior and
captain of the football team, shook his head and muttered under his
breath, “That’s disgusting.” I asked him, “What?” J. R. turned to me with
his nose wrinkled in revulsion and responded, “That guy dancing, it’s just
disgusting! Disgusting!” He again shook his head as he walked off. Soon
afterward an African American boy turned to his friend and admiringly
said of Ricky, “He’s a better dancer than all the girls! That takes talent!”
He turned to me and said, “Can I wiggle my hips that fast?” and laughed
as he tried. The white boys’ revulsion bordering on violence was common for boys when talking about Ricky and his dancing. More surprising was the African American boys’ admiration, if tinged with humor, of
these skills. In these moments boys faced a terrifying, embodied abject,
not just some specter of a fag.
Even though dancing was the most important thing in his life, Ricky
told me he didn’t attend school dances because he didn’t like to “watch
my back” the whole time. Meanings of sexuality and masculinity were
deeply embedded in dancing and high school dances. Several boys at the
school told me that they wouldn’t even attend a dance if they knew Ricky
was going to be there. In auto shop, Brad, a white sophomore, said, “I
heard Ricky is going in a skirt. It’s a hella short one!” Chad responded,
“I wouldn’t even go if he’s there.” Topping Chad’s response, Brad
claimed, “I’d probably beat him up outside.” K. J. agreed: “He’d proba-
70 / Dude, You’re a Fag
bly get jumped by a bunch of kids who don’t like him.” Chad said, “If I
were a gay guy I wouldn’t go around telling everyone.” All of them
agreed on this. Surprised and somewhat disturbed by this discussion, I
asked incredulously, “Would you really not go to prom because a gay
guy would be in the same room as you all?” They looked at me like I had
two heads and said again that of course they wouldn’t. Ricky’s presentation of both sexual preference and gender identity was so profoundly
threatening that boys claimed they would be driven to violence.
Ricky developed different strategies to deal with the fag discourse,
given that he was not just a fag but the fag. While other boys lobbed the
epithet at one another with implied threats of violence (you are not a man
and I am, so watch out), for Ricky that violence was more a reality than
a threat. As a result, learning the unwritten rules of a particular school
and mapping out its social and physical landscape was literally a matter
of survival. He found River High to be one of the most homophobic
schools he had attended: “It’s the most violent school I think that I’ve
seen so far. With all the schools the verbal part about, you know the
slang, ‘the fag,’ the ‘fuckin’ freak,’ ‘fucking fag,’ all that stuff is all the
same. But this is the only school that throws water bottles, throws rocks,
and throws food, ketchup, sandwiches, anything of that nature.”2
While there is a law in California protecting students from discrimination based on sexual identity, when Ricky requested help from school
authorities he was ignored, much as in his interaction with the vice principal at the homecoming game. Ricky responded to this sort of treatment
with several evasion strategies. He walked with his eyes downcast to
avoid meeting other guys’ eyes, fearing that they would regard eye contact as a challenge or an invitation to a fight. Similarly he varied his route
to and from school:
I had to change paths about three different times walking to school. The
same people who drive the same route know, ’cause I guess they leave at
the same time, so they’re always checking something out. But I’m always
prepared with a rock just in case. I have a rock in my hand so if anything
happens I just chuck one back. I always walk with something like that.
Dude, You’re a Fag / 71
Indeed, when I was driving him home from the interview that day, boys
on the sidewalk glared at him and made comments I couldn’t hear. He
also, with the exception of the homecoming football game, avoided
highly sexualized or masculinized school events where he might be subject to violence.
Soon after my research ended, Ricky dropped out of River High and
moved to a nearby city to perform in local drag shows. While other boys
moved in and out of the fag position, Ricky’s gendered practices and sexual orientation forced him to bear all that the other boys cast out of masculinity. His double transgression of sexual and gender identity made his
position at River High simply unlivable. The lack of protection from the
administration meant facing torture on a daily basis. The abuse that was
heaped on him was more than one person, certainly more than one parentless, undereducated, sweet, artistic adolescent, could bear.3
R ACIA LIZING THE FAG
While all groups of boys, with the exception of the Mormon boys, used
the word fag or fag imagery in their interactions, the fag discourse was not
deployed consistently or identically across social groups at River High.
Differences between white boys’ and African American boys’ meaning
making, particularly around appearance and dancing, reveal ways the
specter of the fag was racialized. The specter of the fag, these invocations
reveal, was consistently white. Additionally, African American boys simply did not deploy it with the same frequency as white boys. For both
groups of boys, the fag insult entailed meanings of emasculation, as evidenced by Darnell’s earlier comment. However, African American boys
were much more likely to tease one another for being white than for being
a fag. Precisely because African American men are so hypersexualized in
the United States, white men are, by default, feminized, so white was a
stand-in for fag among many of the African American boys at River High.
Two of the behaviors that put a white boy at risk for being labeled a fag
didn’t function in the same way for African American boys.
72 / Dude, You’re a Fag
Perhaps because they are, by necessity, more invested in symbolic
forms of power related to appearance (much like adolescent girls), a given
African American boy’s status is not lowered but enhanced by paying attention to clothing or dancing. Clean, oversized, carefully put together
clothing is central to a hip-hop identity for African American boys who
identify with hip-hop culture. Richard Majors (2001) calls this presentation of self a “cool pose” consisting of “unique, expressive and conspicuous styles of demeanor, speech, gesture, clothing, hairstyle, walk, stance
and handshake,” developed by African American men as a symbolic response to institutionalized racism (211). Pants are usually several sizes
too big, hanging low on the hips, often revealing a pair of boxers beneath.
Shirts and sweaters are similarly oversized, sometimes hanging down to
a boy’s knees. Tags are frequently left on baseball hats worn slightly
askew and perched high on the head. Meticulously clean, unlaced athletic
shoes with rolled-up socks under the tongue complete a typical hip-hop
outfit. In fact, African American men can, without risking a fag identity,
sport styles of self and interaction frequently associated with femininity
for whites, such as wearing curlers (Kelley 2004). These symbols, at
River High, constituted a “cool pose.”
The amount of attention and care given to clothing for white boys not
identified with hip-hop culture (that is, most of the white boys at River
High) would certainly cast them into an abject, fag position, as Ben indicated when he cried, jokingly, “I got my good panths all dirty!” White
boys were not supposed to appear to care about their clothes or appearance because only fags cared about how they looked. However African
American boys involved in hip-hop culture talked frequently about
whether their clothes, specifically their shoes, were dirty. In drama class
both Darnell and Marc compared their white Adidas basketball shoes.
Darnell mocked Marc because black scuff marks covered his shoes, asking incredulously, “Yours are a week old and they’re dirty, I’ve had mine
for a month and they’re not dirty!” Both laughed. Monte, River High’s
star football player, echoed this concern about dirty shoes. Looking at
the fancy red shoes he had lent to his cousin the week before, he told me
Dude, You’re a Fag / 73
he was frustrated because after his cousin used them the “shoes are hella
scuffed up.” Clothing, for these boys, did not indicate a fag position but
rather defined membership in a certain cultural and racial group (Perry
2002). Especially for poor African American boys (as most were at River
High), clean clothing was an indicator of class status. If one had enough
money to have clean shoes one was not “ghetto,” in the parlance of the
students at River.
As in many places in the United States, racial divisions in Riverton line
up relatively easily with class divisions. Darnell grabbed me at lunch one
day to point this out to me, using school geography as an example. He
sauntered up and whispered in my ear, “Notice the separation? There’s
the people who hang out in there (pointing toward the cafeteria), the
people who hang out in the quad. And then the people who leave.” He
smashed one hand against the other in frustration: “I talk to these people
in class. Outside we all separate into our groups. We don’t talk to each
other. Rich people are not here. They got cars and they go out.” He told
me that the “ball players” sat in the cafeteria. And he was right: there
were two tables at the rear of the cafeteria populated by African American boys on the basketball and football teams, the guys whom Darnell
described to me as his “friends.” He said there were “people who leave,
people who stay and the people over there [in the quad]. The people who
stay are ghetto.” He added, “Ghetto come to mean ‘niggerish.’ That reflects people who are poor or urban.”
Carl and his friend James, both African American basketball players,
were also clear about the ways race lined up with class at River: “White
people always take us to lunch cause black people don’t have cars.” Because African American boys lacked other indicators of class such as cars
and the ability to leave campus during lunch, clean expensive basketball
shoes took on added symbolic status.
Dancing was another arena that carried distinctly fag-associated
meanings for white boys but masculine meanings for African American
boys who participated in hip-hop culture. White boys often associated
dancing with fags. However, dancing did not carry this sort of sexualized
74 / Dude, You’re a Fag
gender meaning for all boys at River High. For African American boys
dancing demonstrates membership in a cultural community (Best 2000).
At River, African American boys frequently danced together in single-sex
groups, teaching each other the latest dance moves, showing off a particularly difficult move, or making each other laugh with humorous
dance moves. In fact, while in drama class Liam and Jacob hit each other
and joked through the entire dancing exercise, Darnell and Marc seemed
very comfortable touching one another. They stood close to one another,
heel to toe, as they were supposed to. Their bodies touched, and they
gently and gracefully moved the other’s arms and head in a way that was
tender, not at all like the flailing of the two white boys.
Dancing ability actually increased an African American boy’s social
status. Students recognized K. J., along with Ricky, as the most talented
dancer at the school. K. J. was a sophomore of mixed racial descent, originally from the Philippines, who participated in the hip-hop culture of
River High. He continually wore the latest hip-hop fashions. His dark
complexion and identification with hip-hop culture aligned him with
many of the African American boys at River High. Girls hollered his
name as they walked down the hall and thrust love notes folded in complicated designs into his hands as he sauntered to class. For the past two
years K. J. had won first place in the talent show for dancing. When he
danced at assemblies the auditorium reverberated with screamed chants
of “Go K. J.! Go K. J! Go K. J.!” Because dancing for boys of color, especially African American boys, placed them within a tradition of masculinity, they were not at risk of being labeled a fag for engaging in this
particular gendered practice. Nobody called K. J. a fag. In fact, in several
of my interviews boys of multiple racial/ethnic backgrounds spoke admiringly of K. J.’s dancing abilities. Marco, a troublemaking white senior, said of K. J., “Did you know he invented the Harlem Shake?” referring to a popular and difficult dance move. Like Ricky, K. J. often
choreographed assembly dance routines. But unlike Ricky, he frequently
starred in them at the homecoming and Mr. Cougar rallies.
None of this is to say that participation in dancing made boys less ho-
Dude, You’re a Fag / 75
mophobic. K. J. himself was deeply homophobic. But like the other boys,
it was a gendered homophobia that had to do with masculine gender
transgressions as much as sexuality. His sister, for instance, identified as
a lesbian, and he looked up to and liked her. But he loathed Ricky. Because of their involvement with dance, the two came into contact relatively frequently. Stylistically, they mirrored one another. Both sported
long hair: K. J.’s in cornrows and Ricky’s lengthened with highlighted extensions. Both wore elaborate outfits: K. J. favored oversized matching
red and white checked shorts and a button-down shirt over a white tank
top, while Ricky sported baggy black pants, combat boots, and a white
tank top. Both were thin with delicate facial features and little facial hair.
But the meanings associated with what might seem like gender transgressions by both of them were mediated by their racial and sexual identities, leading to K. J.’s popularity and Ricky’s debasement. K. J.’s appearance identified his style as hip-hop, a black, masculine cultural style,
whereas Ricky’s style identified him as gender transgressive and feminine.
Not surprisingly, K. J. and Ricky were the stars of the dance show at
River High. As the day of the show arrived, K. J. asked me for what must
have been the hundredth time if I was planning to attend. He said,
“Everyone is sayin’ that Ricky is my competition, but I don’t think so.
He’s not my competition.” K. J. continued to tell me that he was very
upset with Ricky because the night before at the dress rehearsal Ricky had
walked up to him, saying, “Hey, K. J., awesome dance.” Ricky had put his
hand on K. J.’s back when he said this. Angry and red, K. J. said to me, “I
wanted to hit him hella bad! Then he came up again. I was like ‘Oh My
God!’ Ugh!” Trying to identify exactly who Ricky was, another boy said,
“I think that’s the same guy who is in our history class. The guy who looks
like a girl?” K. J., wanting to make sure the other boys knew how repulsive Ricky was, said, “You know how you look at girls like they are hella
fine? That’s how he looks at guys, dude! He could be looking at you!” All
the boys groaned. K. J. expressed relief that he was “safe,” saying Ricky
“only checks out white guys.” K. J. took pains to differentiate himself
from Ricky by saying that Ricky wasn’t his competition and that Ricky
76 / Dude, You’re a Fag
didn’t even look at him as a sexual object because of his race. The respect
K. J. commanded at River was certainly different from the treatment
Ricky received because the meanings associated with African American
boys and dancing were not the same as the ones associated with white boys
and dancing. K. J.’s dancing ability and carefully crafted outfits bolstered
his popularity with both boys and girls, while Ricky’s similar ability and
just as carefully chosen outfits placed him, permanently, in a fag position.
None of this is to say that the sexuality of boys of color wasn’t policed.
In fact, because African American boys were regarded as so hypersexual,
in the few instances I documented in which boys were punished for engaging in the fag discourse, African American boys were policed more
stringently than white boys. It was as if when they engaged in the fag discourse the gendered insult took on actual combative overtones, unlike
the harmless sparring associated with white boys’ deployments. The intentionality attributed to African American boys in their sexual interactions with girls seemed to occur as well in their deployment of the fag discourse. One morning as I waited with the boys on the asphalt outside the
weight room for Coach Ramirez to arrive, I chatted with Kevin and Darrell. The all-male, all-white wrestling team walked by, wearing gold and
black singlets. Kevin, an African American sophomore, yelled out, “Why
are you wearing those faggot outfits? Do you wear those tights with your
balls hanging out?” The weight-lifting students stopped their fidgeting
and turned to watch the scene unfold. The eight or so members of the
wrestling team stopped at their SUV and turned to Kevin. A small redhead whipped around and yelled aggressively, “Who said that?!” Fingers
from wrestling team members quickly pointed toward Kevin. Kevin, angrily jumping around, yelled back as he thrust his chest out, “Talk about
jumping me, nigger?” He strutted over, advancing toward the small redhead. A large wrestler sporting a cowboy hat tried to block Kevin’s approach. The redhead meanwhile began to jump up and down, as if warming up for a fight. Finally the boy in the cowboy hat pushed Kevin away
from the team and they climbed in the truck, while Kevin strutted back
to his classmates, muttering, “All they know how to do is pick somebody
Dude, You’re a Fag / 77
up. Talk about jumping me . . . weak-ass wrestling team. My little bro
could wrestle better than any of those motherfuckers.”
It would seem, based on the fag discourse scenarios I’ve described
thus far, that this was, in a sense, a fairly routine deployment of the sexualized and gendered epithet. However, at no other time did I see this
insult almost cause a fight. Members of the white wrestling team presumably took it so seriously that they reported the incident to school authorities. This in itself is stunning. Boys called each other fag so frequently in everyday discussion that if it were always reported most boys
in the school would be suspended or at least in detention on a regular
basis. This was the only time I saw school authorities take action based
on what they saw as a sexualized insult. As a result Mr. J. explained that
somebody from the wrestling team told him that Kevin was “harassing”
them. Mr. J. pulled Kevin out of weight-lifting class to discuss the incident. According to him, Kevin “kept mouthing off” and it wasn’t the first
time he had been in trouble, so they decided to expel him and send him
to Hillside.
While Kevin apparently had multiple disciplinary problems and this
interaction was part of a larger picture, it is important that this was the
only time that I heard any boy (apart from Ricky) tattle on another boy
for calling him gay or fag. Similarly it was the only time I saw punishment
meted out by the administration. So it seems that, much as in the instance
of the Bomb Squad at the Dance Show, intentionality was more frequently attributed to African American boys. They weren’t just engaging in the homophobic bantering to which teachers like Mr. Kellogg
turned a blind eye or in which Mr. McNally participated. Rather, they
were seen as engaging in actual struggles for dominance by attacking
others. Because they were in a precarious economic and social position,
the ramifications for African American boys for engaging in the fag discourse were more serious. Precisely because some of them were supposed to be attending, not River High, but the “bad” school, Chicago, in
the neighboring school district, when they did encounter trouble their
punishment was more severe.
78 / Dude, You’re a Fag
WHERE THE FAG DISAPPEARS:
DR AMA PERFORMANCES
While, for the most part, a boy’s day at River entailed running a gauntlet of competitive and ritualized sexual insults, there were two spaces of
escape—the Gay/Straight Alliance and drama performances. Theater
productions were not the same as the drama classroom, where I have already indicated that Mr. McNally sometimes drew upon the fag discourse for laughs and to forge rapport with male students. Drama performances typically didn’t involve all of the students in drama classes.
Rather, students who were involved were ones who identified as drama
students and cared about the theater; some of them envisioned trying to
make a career out of it. Drama is notoriously a fag space in high schools.
The ironic result of this connection is that the insult disappears. Not only
does the insult disappear, but drama becomes a space where male students can enact a variety of gender practices.
The opening night of the yearly spring musical illustrates how the fag
insult disappeared and male students enacted a variety of gender practices without negative ramifications. Drama students ran around in various stages of costuming and undress in the backstage area of the River
High auditorium as they prepared for the opening night of the spring
musical, Carousel. As the balmy spring air blew through the stage door, I
smiled as I thought back to my high school days and felt that same nervous energy as we prepped for choir concerts and musicals like Fiddler on
the Roof. Squealing, giggling, and singing, students frantically searched
for spare props, costume parts, and makeup. Students flew past me in
clouds of hairspray, carrying parasols or sailor paraphernalia as they readied themselves to perform this relatively dark musical about romantic betrayal, domestic violence, and murder.
I leaned against the wall outside the dressing rooms as students costumed themselves and each other. Girls quickly and carefully applied
makeup under the bright yellow bulbs. Boys lined up waiting for an available girl to apply makeup. I waited for the inevitable fag comment as the
Dude, You’re a Fag / 79
girls plastered rouge, lip gloss, and eye shadow on the boys’ faces. Surprisingly, even though all but one of the boys (Brady) participating in this
musical were straight, I heard not a one. Instead Trevor, the handsome
blond lead, and the other boys checked out the girls’ handiwork in the
surrounding mirrors, suggesting slight changes or thanking them for
their help. Squealing with delight at their new look, the boys ran back
into the beehive of noise and activity that constituted the backstage area
outside the dressing rooms. That reaction and their impromptu singing
surprised me as much their pride in sporting makeup. The normally
tough and competitive exterior that they displayed in the rest of the
school disappeared, and the boys showed as much excitement as the girls
did, smiling and giggling as they anticipated their performance.
Soon the backstage area quieted down as students took their marks
and the orchestra, really a group of four musicians, played the opening
bars. Students danced around the stage, depicting a picnic, a fair, and
other tableaus of small-town American life in the 1900s. Remarkably, all
the students watched or sang a musical number entitled “You’re a Queer
One, Julie Jordan” without cracking a single joke about fags or homosexuality. This refusal to engage in insults, homophobic comments, or
sexist joking continued throughout the evening. Conditioned as I was at
this point to hearing the fag discourse, I was stunned at the myriad opportunities to levy the epithet and the seeming refusal by all of these
boys, gay and straight, to invoke it.
The most striking example of this refusal occurred midway through
the play as eight boys dressed as sailors tumbled over each other as they
prepared to go on stage. They joked about their lack of “sailorness” as
they waited excitedly in the wings. Brady, surveying his fellow soldiers,
admonished the boys laughingly to “act like sailors, men!” Jake laughed
back in a loud whisper, “Oh yeah, right!” Randy sarcastically said, “We
look sooo much like sailors,” puffing out his chest and mock-strutting
across the stage. The boys all giggled at this performance. They soon
gathered around Brady, who, as part of his effort to appear like a tough
sailor, had had his friend draw a temporary tattoo on his hairy bicep. It
80 / Dude, You’re a Fag
was a truly sailorlike tattoo, a mermaid. But this mermaid was more a visual pun than anything else because she was not a sultry, buxom siren but
Ariel from the Disney movie The Little Mermaid. Brady beamed as he
showed it off to everyone. The other boys admired the artwork and remarked, with a tinge of jealousy, that it was a great tattoo. They heard
their cue and strutted on stage, eventually forming a semicircle and
singing: “Blow high, blow low / Away then we will go / We’ll go away in
the sailin’ away / Away we’ll go / Blow me high an’ low.” During the song,
boys took their turns performing a short solo dance. Some performed
typically masculine moves such as flips or swaggers, while others performed pirouettes or delicate twirls.
Sailors, in the contemporary United States, are already laden with all
sorts of gay innuendo. From the sailor member of the famous gay disco
group the Village People to actual sailors stuck on ships with all-male
crews, to jokes about “sea men,” sailors represent a subtext of same-sex
desire. So a bunch of sailors jumping around singing a song that relies
upon the repeated lyrics “blow me” is pretty funny. However, the boys
took an approach to this that was, more than anything, simply playful.
Watching this scene unfold, I was surprised that given all of the fag
iconography in this moment—sailors, dancing, Disney cartoons, and the
repeated singing of the word blow (which by itself can get boys joking for
hours)—I didn’t hear a single invocation of the fag discourse. At the end
of the night I turned to David and asked why no one uttered the word
fag the entire night. He explained, “That’s cause we’re drama freaks.” In
a sense, because these boys were near the bottom of the social hierarchy
at River High, they were, by default, fags. But I think the lack of the fag
discourse during that evening was a more complicated story.
The boys had fun with the double entendres and played with masculinity. Brady’s tattoo functioned as a sort of queering of masculinity in
which he visually punned by drawing a mermaid who was not so much
sexy as a singing heroine for little girls. The theater is a place for all sorts
of experimentation, so why not a metaphorical and physical space for
Dude, You’re a Fag / 81
gender and sexual experimentation? After watching what boys endured
daily at River High, I found this dramatic performance a space of liberation and relaxation. The boys were able to try on gender identities, integrating masculine and feminine gender practices, without fear of being
teased. Instead of constantly policing their own and others’ gender displays, they were able to be playful, emotional, and creative. It was as if,
because they were in a space where they were all coded as fags anyway
and couldn’t be any lower socially, it didn’t matter what they did. Such is
the liberatory potential of the theater. These boys had nothing left to
lose socially, which meant that, ironically, they were free from the pressures of adolescent masculinity, at least temporarily (though it should be
noted here that the boys involved in drama productions weren’t among
the most ardent users of the fag discourse, even outside dramatic performances). What they weren’t able to do, however, was to engage in
these sorts of playful practices around gender outside the drama performance space.
REFR AMING HOMOPHOBIA
Homophobia is central to contemporary definitions of adolescent
masculinity. Unpacking multilayered meanings that boys deploy
through their uses of homophobic language and joking rituals makes
clear that it is not just homophobia but a gendered and racialized homophobia. By attending to these meanings, I reframe the discussion as
a fag discourse rather than simply labeling it as homophobia. The fag
is an “abject” (Butler 1993) position, a position outside masculinity
that actually constitutes masculinity. Thus masculinity, in part, becomes the daily interactional work of repudiating the threatening
specter of the fag.
The fag extends beyond a static sexual identity attached to a gay boy.
Few boys are permanently identified as fags; most move in and out of fag
positions. Looking at fag as a discourse in addition to a static identity re-
82 / Dude, You’re a Fag
veals that the term can be invested with different meanings in different
social spaces. Fag may be used as a weapon with which to temporarily assert one’s masculinity by denying it to others. Thus the fag becomes a
symbol around which contests of masculinity take place.
Researchers who look at the intersection of sexuality and masculinity
need to attend to how racialized identities may affect how fag is deployed
and what it means in various social situations. While researchers have addressed the ways in which masculine identities are racialized (Bucholtz
1999; Connell 1995; J. Davis 1999; Ferguson 2000; Majors 2001; Price
1999; Ross 1998), they have not paid equal attention to the ways fag
might be a racialized epithet. Looking at when, where, and with what
meaning fag is deployed provides insight into the processes through
which masculinity is defined, contested, and invested in among adolescent boys.
Ricky demonstrates that the fag identity can, but doesn’t have to, inhere in a single body. But it seems that he needed to meet two criteria—
breaking both gendered and sexual norms—to be constituted as a fag. He
was simultaneously the penetrated fag who threatened psychic chaos
(Bersani 1987) and the man who couldn’t “throw a football around.” Not
only could he not “throw a football,” but he actively flaunted his unmasculine gender identification by dancing provocatively at school events
and wearing cross-gendered clothing. Through his gender practices
Ricky embodied the threatening specter of the fag. He bore the weight
of the fears and anxieties of the boys in the school who frantically lobbed
the fag epithet at one another.
The fag epithet, when hurled at other boys, may or may not have explicit sexual meanings, but it always has gendered meanings. When a boy
calls another boy a fag, it means he is not a man but not necessarily that
he is a homosexual. The boys at River High knew that they were not supposed to call homosexual boys fags because that was mean. This, then,
has been the limited success of the mainstream gay rights movement.
The message absorbed by some of these teenage boys was that “gay men
can be masculine, just like you.” Instead of challenging gender inequal-
Dude, You’re a Fag / 83
ity, this particular discourse of gay rights has reinscribed it. Thus we need
to begin to think about how gay men may be in a unique position to challenge gendered as well as sexual norms. The boys in the drama performances show an alternative way to be teenage boys, which is about
playing with gender, not just enforcing gender duality based on sexual
meanings.
chapter four
Compulsive Heterosexuality
Masculinity and Dominance
The weight room, a freestanding module by the football field, stank with
a familiar musty smell of old sweat, metal, and rubber. Colorful diagrams
of deltoids, biceps, quads, and other muscle groups adorned the walls.
Each day Coach Ramirez, a gentle, soft-spoken man, called roll and told
the (mostly male) students to run a lap or two as he entered the module
to place his folders in his office and turn on the stereo. After running
their laps, the sweaty boys filed in as loud hip-hop music blared from the
stereo. Dressed in regulation black gym shorts and T-shirts, boys milled
about, picking up weights, completing a few sets, and then moving on to
other machines. Some of the African American boys danced to the
music, while, inevitably, Josh and his white friends asked for country
music.
One fall morning, as some of the boys grew tired of lifting, they gathered around a set of benches in the front of the weight room. Reggie, a
white rugby-playing junior, asked the gathering group, “Did you hear
about the three ‘B’s?’ ” Before anyone had a chance to respond, Reggie
announced triumphantly, “Blow job, back massage, and breakfast in
bed!” Rich asked skeptically, “Shouldn’t the back massage come first?”
The conversation soon turned to the upcoming Winter Ball and their
prospects for sex with their dates. Jerome complained that he was not
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