Syd, please don't give the homophobes a damn excuse.

So, lesbian hip-hop artist Syd is having a fun time excusing slurs and homophobia

Well Syd, I actually kind of hope your support and promotion of homophobia and excusing of homophobic bullshit from straight people actually does get you greater success in your chosen field. Partially because I think the world sorely needs more out lesbian musicians and hip-hop could certainly use a few. And also because, I think, if you’re going to shit on the rest us so completely I dearly hope it’s worth a decent amount of money to you. I’d hate for you to encourage homophobia and excuse homophobes to this degree and NOT get a decent amount of payment for it – I’d hate for it to be a whim or cheap.

If someone uses a gay slur as an insult then they are a homophobe. They are making it abundantly clear that they think of us as less, as something hateful, as something vile. And while you try to excuse slurs against gay men (was that a conscious choice? Excuse a slur that’s unlikely to be used against you to limit splash back?) they are still slurs with all the power and the meaning of those slurs. And when a straight person says them, then yes, it has all that impact and attack when in a straight person’s mouth. And I don’t believe for a second Syd is that utterly clueless about reclaiming that she’s even connect GBLT people using slurs against us with straight people using them.

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On Girlf@g by Janet W Hardy

So Janet W. Hardy is writing a book that she has a kickstarter page to announce. And the book is called Girlf@g. (I am not linking to it, the last thing I won’t is for even one link from me to add so much as a penny into having this homophobic book put on the shelves)

Yes Girlf@g. Though Hardy, of course, doesn’t remotely have the respect to disemvowel the slur –if she did she wouldn’t have used the slur in the first place. And this book is about? Women who are sexually attracted to gay men. No, let's not even be that respectful. A book for women who fetishise f@gs, since that's the term this woman uses. Oh yay there’s a book about the fetishists now.

How to count the many things wrong with this?

Let’s begin with the slur shall we? Even if you wanted to write a book about women who were creepily obsessed in gay men, the very least you could so is not slap a gay slur on the freaking cover. I suppose I should be happy for honesty in advertising since it very clearly says "this woman doesn't give a fuck about you as people." A slur is utterly disrespectful and dehumanising. Using this slur already shows the extreme contempt Ms Hardy has for gay men. There are no doubt a dozen ways she could have titled this book

Her excuses so far are that she didn’t coin the phrase – what, so a slur is only offensive now if you invent it? Most slurs out there are older than I am, the fact I didn’t invent them doesn’t make them not offensive if I use them. That it isn’t meant to be hurtful (yay magical intent, that many gay fetishists absolutely love that word (got that, it may offend us, but the people doing the offending love it, so what’s the problem? Ye gods what is with that logic?!) and that it’s a reclaimed word.

Do we have to revisit reclaiming again? This is getting tiresome. You cannot reclaim a word that cannot be used against you. F@g is a word used against gay men. Ms. Hardy is not a gay man, she cannot reclaim this word. Ye gods can we stop having this conversation already?!

It is not ok to use a slur. Slurs are violence in spoken form. Slurs dehumanise, reduce us to things, reviled things at that. A slur carries the full history of violence and oppression and persecution. Slurs carry the full weight of societal prejudice and loathing. Slurs are so often trigger words that cause so much harm to so many trauma victims. Slurs are not acceptable and not excusable.

Now let's tackle the idea of women being sexually attracted to gay men. Note only gay men. Not men. Because we’re different from other men, apparently. We’re weird, odd non-men and a totally different being from straight men. That’s right, we’re so different from straight men that there’s a whole new attraction just to us that in no way encompasses the straight men. Let me reiterate – it’s not attraction to men or men of a certain body type, hobbies, interest or whatever – not, it’s gay men who are so very different from straight men. As is further revealed when I tried to email her to explain how offensive she was being (it didn’t work, she doesn’t care) she described her partner as “gay-seeming”. Yes, gay seeming. Whatever the hell that means. Born with a rainbow tattoo on his forehead?

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