Fag Discourse

Homophobic attitudes, practices, and jokes are central to the making of contemporary U.S. adolescent masculinity. Homophobic teasing and harassment often characterizes masculinity during youth and early adulthood. These anti-gay insults tend to be directed primarily at other boys. C. J. Pascoe's concept of a “fag discourse” elaborates on the gendered nature of this homophobia, illustrating that it is as much about regulating masculinity as it is about renouncing same-sex sexual desire. That is, “fag” is not only an insult directed at gay boys, but an insult that is regularly directed at heterosexual boys to discipline them into normatively masculine behaviors, dispositions, and self-presentations. The fag epithet 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 unmasculine, but not necessarily that he is gay. The nonsexual meanings do not necessarily replace sexual meanings but, rather, exist alongside them.

Using the lens of a fag discourse illustrates that framing boys' use of the word fag as basic homophobia is too facile an argument. Calling the use of the word fag homophobia—and letting the argument stop there—obscures the gendered nature of sexualized insults. In this framework, it seems incidental that girls do not harass each other and are not harassed in the same sexualized manner as boys. Framing these practices as homophobia emphasizes some sort of natural relationship between masculinity and homophobia, while obscuring the centrality of such harassment in the formation of a gendered identity for boys.

Framing boys' homophobic interactions as a “fag discourse” changes the emphasis from one of harassment of gay boys to that of a discourse that can discipline any boy, gay or straight, into more normatively masculine practices and identities. Talking about and imitating effeminate men serves as a discourse with which boys discipline themselves and each other through joking relationships. Looking at boys' interactions this way indicates that fag is not necessarily a static identity attached to a particular (homosexual) boy. Rather, any boy can temporarily be labeled as a fag in a specific interaction. This does not mean that those boys who identify as or are perceived as gay are not subject to intense harassment. Many are. But being labeled 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. The vulnerability of all boys to be subject to the label of fag is what makes the specter of the fag such a [Page 873]powerful disciplinary mechanism. At any time, a boy could be publicly humiliated for unmasculine behaviors through being subjected to the fag discourse. Looking at when, where, and with what meaning “the fag” is deployed provides insight into the processes through in which masculinity is defined, contested, and invested among teenage boys and young men.