Preamble: The song quotes should not be taken as either approval or condemnation of the respective songs or their artists. I have different personal feelings about each, and in most cases, they’re complicated.
“He called me f4660t when I went out for cigarettes.” – Andy Prieboy, “That Was the Voice”
This week, I heard a student use a word I don’t recall hearing a student use in a long time. He wasn’t using it in my direction, so that’s good, but the fact that he felt comfortable using it at all in my presence, when he is not himself (apparently) gay, gave me some pause.
I don’t think he meant harm by it. He seemed genuinely confused when I called it a slur. And I’ve noticed a general uptick in students casually using “gay” as an insult, so I don’t think I should be surprised that this word and its one-syllable cousin might be back on the table as well.
“You scumbag, you maggot, you cheap lousy f4660t.” – The Pogues feat. Kirsty MacColl, “Fairytale of New York”
A few weeks ago, my younger brother, a cishet man, asked me, a not-cis not-het person, to weigh in on the various songs that use this word. There are quite a few, and the heyday of the casual use of the word in music is the last part of the last century.
The question of who gets to use the word is complicated for me. I’m not entirely convinced that I can use the word, since it refers to gay men. I’m not a gay man, but I’ve been on the receiving end of the word. I generally come down on the side that I’m allowed to use it if I want to. I’m certainly perceived of as being a sexually aberrant man by the people who use it as a serious insult.
“You f4660t, get away, we don’t want none.” – KoRn, “F46et”
I’m going to focus on my personal relationship with the word in question, but to briefly comment on the “who gets to use it in song lyrics?” issue, I think that’s a two-fold answer: If you’re gay or queer, go for it. If not, it’s about context: Why are you using it? If it’s to make a comment on the level of hate or to reflect on personal experiences, as in the lyrical examples above, it might be okay but should involve a period of introspection. If you’re using it to insult someone else, that’s not okay. At all.
“I’m a c*cksucking f4660t, a flaming f4660t.” – Pansy Division, “C. S. F.”
The origin of the word is the idea of being a burden. The oldest use is for a bundle of sticks, that is, something that is awkward and unpleasant to carry around. The tie to European witch burnings is tenuous; more likely, it just followed the pattern that bundles of sticks are unpleasant, cranky old women are unpleasant, and gay men are unpleasant. Undoubtedly, the feminization of gay men as an insult played a role in the jump from the word meaning “old woman” to the current sense.
Also, the one-syllable word appears to be related through confluence of sound similarity, i.e., that it started out as “flag” and dropped the “l” in possible comparison to the “heavy bundle of sticks” meaning. There is also a Yiddish word that means “little bird” with the same first syllable and a similar meaning as a slur.
So it comes to us with a rather circuitous history. But in the modern era, with a few exceptions that hang on, it has a clear meaning.
“The little f4660t got his own jet airplane, that little f4660t, he’s a millionaire.” – Dire Straits, “Money for Nothing”
Semantically, the word has come to mean “a gay man”.
Pragmatically, it’s much more than that. Its origin is not irrelevant: It ties to a long cultural history tying misogyny to homophobia, of ranking straight men above gay men above women. It’s part of an entire lexicon of words that reinforce the inferiority of women and of femininity.
It is a two-syllable nuclear bomb of toxic masculinity.
Some of that lexicon refers to gay men, but not all of it does. “Tr4nny” is part of the same lexicon, and most often refers to perceived men who would dare to give up their association to that gender. The mirror to that are insulting word for women who act assertively; it is not a cultural accident that “b*tch” refers both to women who are perceived of as being too aggressive and to men who are perceived of as being too submissive.
It’s been commented that “cis” is offensive to some people because it sounds too much like “sissy”, which is also part of that lexicon, being short for “sister”. The Toxic Masculinity Lexicon is full of words to call men who are acting unacceptably feminine, and many of them are derived from words for women.
“Don’t call me a f4660t, not unless you are a friend.” – Joe Jackson, “Real Men”
The word in question is one of the words my Inner Bully shouts at me when I’m feeling bad about my identity. I have spent most of my life, half a century, being treated as a man, being seen as a man, being considered a man. I was raised to believe in a strong gender binary, codified through actions and appearance. I struggled much of that time to play by the rules.
My struggles go far beyond a single word, of course. But there’s a visceral fear when I hear it: What else is hiding behind it?
When I consider being more public about either my gender or my sexual orientation, I feel unsafe. I feel dirty. I feel ashamed. Life would be so much simpler if I were a cisgender, heterosexual man. I am not, but why can’t I just go back to pretending that I am?
I grew up in an era when sexual orientation was still a largely mocked concept. When Ellen DeGeneres publicly disclosed her orientation in 1997, I was 29 years old. I don’t think people who are 29 years old today can fully grasp what a scandal, what a cultural tipping point, that was.
“If two people, two people do it in harmony, they may think they’re both f4660ts.” – Arlo Guthrie, “Alice’s Restaurant Masacree”
I grew up in an era when gender was not even discussed openly. It was a given. Transgender people were, in the public perception, almost exclusively men who dressed up as women as a sexual fetish or as a sign of mental illness.
Sure, “The Love Boat” had an episode in 1982 (“Gopher’s Roommate”) that was astoundingly sensitive, and “The Jeffersons” featured a transgender woman in 1977 (“Once a Friend”). But even the portrayal of “All in the Family”‘s Beverly Lasalle (1975-1977, three episodes) is ambiguous: Drag queen? Trans woman? Gender nonconforming?
And each of these stories ultimately center a cisgender person reflecting on their feelings about transness, not on the transgender person trying to lead their life. (I do not fault any of these shows: The story lines were stunningly progressive in their cultural context.) Also, note that even in these stories, the narrative is always about trans women or drag.
During this same era, meanwhile, there was Klinger on “M*A*S*H”, wearing a variety of dresses as an attempt to show his mental instability. While that wasn’t the best depiction, it was still better than depictions in “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective” (1994), “The Silence of the Lambs” (1991), “Bachelor Party” (1984), “Dressed to Kill” (1980), and on and on. And almost all of these depictions (“Victor/Victoria” [1982] is a rare exception) involve cis men dressing up or trans women. (For more excellent discussion of transgender and gender nonconforming depictions in the media, see the documentary “Disclosure” on Netflix.)
“Do I have to lead him into it? Is he a f4660t or an id*ot?” – Marry Me Jane, “Tommy G.”
The song “Tommy G.” by Marry Me Jane is particularly meaningful to me, because if Tommy G. is a real person, lead singer Amanda Kravat’s description of him sounds an awful lot like Autism: He doesn’t understand that she’s flirting (“I wore my new sweater ’cause I got my new breasts… what’s the matter with him anyway?”). She calls him stupid, neurotic, and ret*rded. She wonders why her science teacher gives him funny looks. But she says, “I don’t know what he’s got, but I know he’s got it.” and has romantic dreams about him.
Problematic lyrics aside, the song is a decent story about a girl who can’t understand why the probably Autistic boy she’s got a crush on won’t even notice her. Tommy G., at the same time, was me for much of my childhood, and the words the narrator tosses out in casual frustration were weaponized in much more threatening ways by childhood bullies.
“Haters call me b*tch, call me f4660t, call me whitey.” – Marilyn Manson, “Better of Two Evils”
It’s too facile to say it’s just a word.
It’s also too facile for me to say that this word alone has been constraining me.
For me, the reality is, this word is a symbol of a half-century of personal experience with manhood, of trying to function in a neurotypical, hypermasculine culture, of trying to prove my masculinity in an effort to just get all of the cruelty against me to stop.
bell hooks writes: “The first act of violence that patriarchy demands of males is not violence toward women. Instead patriarchy demands of all males that they engage in acts of psychic self-mutilation, that they kill off the emotional parts of themselves.”
The word in question is hardly central to me for my reflection, my ongoing deprogramming, my acceptance of myself of who I am.
At the same time, though, it’s there. It’s in the viewport. It’s part of who I am, and how people who use that word in a serious way as an insult tells me something about how they see me as a person.
Or don’t see me as a person at all.
“Well, maybe I’m the f4660t, America” – Green Day, “American Id*ot”
(All quoted material, including song lyrics, is being used for academic commentary under fair use law. Copyrights belong to their holders.)
Postscript: Some other songs that use the word, but which are not included above, are “Nazi Halo” by Jack Off Jill, “Vaseline” by Ice Cube, “Rap God” by Eminem, “One in a Million” by Guns ‘n Roses, “F4660t” by Mindless Self Indulgence, and “I Wanna Be a Homosexual” by Screeching Weasel. In the first four cases, it’s used as a flat-out homophobic slur; in the last two, it’s … more complicated.