The FaggotCuntBitchSlutDyke Next Door.

"Actions speak louder than words."

Today, my little snarklings, I'd like to talk a little bit about the phenomenon of re-claiming words.

The above adage is something I've thought a lot about. For years, even. And I've come to realize that I completely disagree with it. I will agree that it can be applied to some situations, sometimes, but I could never, ever use it as personal motto, or something.

As a writer, I believe words can do anything. Words have immeasurable power. Words can part lakes, words can put knob-dial TVs on the trunks of elephants, they can enable humans to eat Fritos with their nostrils and time-travel and communicate fluidly with sea monkeys and drive a car with their frickin' feet, words can move mountains, and words can lasso the moon for love. They can conjure up images on the backs of your eyelids, like your own personal movie theater. They can harm you, cut you to your core, they can make you laugh, they can make you feel loved and hated, they can make you hot with anger, they can make you smile, they can excite you and crush your dreams and invoke fear, they can move you to tears, they can sadden you to the point of tears, they can even make you go completely numb and silent, among a multitude of other emotions and other whatnots.

Why do I see the word "faggot" constantly being used so maliciously, and with such alarming frequency, on the Internet? And in everday life, too, you could say. Someone just called me a faggot on a music forum (of all places) for seemingly no reason at all. I bristled. It brought me here. Along with that, I often see "that's gay" used very frequently and casually, as well. And if there's anything I hate as much as casual sexism, it's casual homophobia. Along with casual racism, ableism, cisgenderism, classism, and, well... all manner of ilk and "-isms."

Over the years, I've had a lot of people accuse me of being a hypocrite, because I often identify as a dyke, but I don't like seeing/hearing people calling other people faggots with palpable malicious intent. I have no problem being called a lesbian, either (even though I'm a pansexual-identified lesbian, and I'm cool with being called "queer," too), but I like saying the word "dyke," and it's always felt very empowering to me to identify as such. The only thing I don't think these people understand is that the fashion in which I'm using the word "dyke" is not derogatory, but celebratory, and I would never, ever, ever call someone a dyke who didn't like being called a dyke, or found it offensive, or what have you. I refer to myself as a dyke because I don't believe it's a bad thing to be a dyke.

And that's the difference, darlings. That's the big, big difference.

A few years ago, young and aggressive and full of feminist bravado, I used to identify as a cunt, almost exclusively. I knew no one could ever touch me if I referred to myself as one of the most derogatory terms for women known to humankind, and if I stripped away its negative connotations and re-defined it, for myself, as something positive - a woman who is strong and healthy and confident and unbreakable, instead of a woman who is horrible and naggy and needlessly argumentative and just an overall unsavory character - naturally, I couldn't be offended ever again by anything anyone would ever call me, with intent to harm. I now realize the error of my ways, and I no longer refer to myself as a cunt, but I do still use the word positively, even now, and I will admit that I have fun educating others about its history, and its true meaning.

According to Wikipedia, the phrase "that's gay" has officially come to mean that something is lame, or stupid. Sometimes I just have to sit back and wonder how it came to this. People have said to me, "But lots of words evolve to mean things other than their original meaning. Wicked means 'cool,' whereas it used to mean 'horrible.'"

Yes. However, saying something is "wicked" doesn't isolate a group composed of people who are already oppressed in society, and impede on the universal acceptance of said people. Especially when taking under consideration the fact that, that's what they think of us; to be gay is to be lame and stupid, or just something that you just generally have a distaste for. Not to mention that you have forcibly evolved the phrase to take on such a meaning. Same as faggot, right? It used to mean a bundle of sticks, and is now a derogatory phrase for a gay man. Worse than that, it is a phrase that is used in an attempt to feminize a straight man. And, thus, we come back to the beginning - that the worst insult of all for (cisgendered, straight) men is to be feminized. Called a faggot or a girl.

When I was a little girl, and I heard boys telling other boys to "stop being such a girl," I remember, even then, feeling the sting. Maybe not knowing exactly why, but knowing this: To a boy, being told he's acting like a girl is being told he needs to try harder.

To a girl, hearing a boy telling another boy not to be a girl is hearing that you will never be good enough.

As I said, I don't mind being called, or identifying as, a dyke. Would I be pissed off if a straight person called me a dyke with baleful intentions attached to it? You can bet your sweet, deep-fried ass I would. Because it's not up to the kyriarchy to decide, anymore. It's not up to them to perpetuate the negativity associated with those words. It's not up to them to call someone a bitch, cunt, faggot, slut, dyke, fatass, whore, nigger, et cetera, et cetera, with full intentions of keeping them firmly in the "oppressed" zone.

My reaction to the word "faggot" is wretched and all-too-visceral. If a gay/bisexual/pansexual/queer man wants to re-claim the word faggot and use it to describe himself in a beneficial way, stripping it of its negative connotations, that's his choice, and I have absolutely no problem with that. But for straight (probably closeted) people to have the astonishing, unfathomable gall to use it, not only to offend gay people, but to feminize other straight men in the attempt to insult them to the fullest degree BY using feminization as their method, it just... gets my hackles up. No matter what. Sorry if not everyone thinks you're as HIGH-larious as you do.

It's occurred to me several times in recent days that I am a minority in a variety of ways. Some of them are by choice, some of them are not. I'm a woman, I'm a dyke, I'm a vegan, I'm a witch/Wiccan, I'm an Atheist. I'm also hyper-aware of my privileges, almost to a fault. My white privilege, my able-bodied privilege, my neurotypical privilege, my cisgendered privilege, my working/middle-class privilege... probably others I'm not even remembering, on both ends. I have the tendency to make myself feel guilty about the amount of privilege in my life, because why do I get to be lucky in these ways? I often get angry, and wonder who decides these things. In reality, though, I also realize this - I'm lucky. I was born into this luck, just because of the way things are in our culture. I don't like it this way. But these things are beyond my control. Unlike some of my oppressions, I have no say in any of this, because if I did, I wouldn't have to write blogs like this one.

Furthermore, I don't need to be insulted by the privilege-blind shitheads of the Internet. Neither does anyone else.

All I can ask for is this: Think about what you say before you say it. Think about why you're using these words. Is it to seem cool? Charming? Funny? Unnecessarily mean? Or are you celebrating the individual about whom you speak? Think about who you might be offending and/or oppressing when you do this. Think about your addition to the perpetuation of negative energy in our world, and if that's really the message you want to get across.

Personally, I can take comfort in the fact that love is worlds more powerful than hate.