Scribbling in the Margins

Yes, this. And I do think it's much heavier in anime/manga because those fandoms are so young, and none of the people using the words really know what they mean. Not what they /mean/. Not to mention, anime and manga have that whole sick happy-rape subculture going, and even if we stay the hell away from it, a lot of them don't and it spreads.

I do think you should post this publicly, because goodness knows it needs to be said.

(Here via metafandom's del.icio.us links)

Do you mind if I post a link to this at the empty_closets community over on LJ? This is exactly the kind of thing the comm was set up for.

Hmm, I'm almost exclusively in Western fandoms with a large number of post-college-age fans and I never see "faggotry" or "rape" used like that, and "gay" only used occasionally and in a way that doesn't tend to bother me. I think there's a definite element of youth to that kind of language, and also I'm in a fairly queer section of fandom, so there's a lot more awareness of that sort of thing, perhaps.

It just kicks me in the chest every time I see someone use those words.

Yeah, me too.

-carmarthen on LJ

I completely agree with your assessment that this is a trait found more commonly in the anime/manga fan group than in the Western media fan group. I'm a member of a forum devoted to the yaoi genre, and I find myself more often than not attempting to get the point across to many of the members that yaoi is not real life, that these are not real gay people, that gay sex is not rape, and rape, in real life, is NOT sexy, but I often feel a bit like I'm trying to make my way through a hurricane on a skateboard. :\

While I admit to doing the "so gay!" thing myself sometimes (though I try to be aware of my context and my audience -- saying things like that in a group of fannish friends who know the context is very different than... well, most other things), I do dislike how prevalent it is. ESPECIALLY the rape thing; I don't know why it's a button-pusher for me, as I have very little personal experience with rape/rape victims (only in a third-hand and very removed sort of way), but it really makes me want to smack people sometimes. Not a very dignified response, but I hardly think dignity can be expected.

I'm not sure whether to be worried or cautiously optimistic about the trait of using "faggotry" to describe internet idiocy. Obviously, as you point out, the word has very hurtful connotations currently, and can still cause deep wounds, but I'm not sure whether it's a good thing or not that the way many younger people are conceptualizing it has very little, anymore, to do with homosexuality. That is, I feel like the colloquial definition of the word is shifting, sort of the way "gay" did, though in a different direction. *ponders* I could be wrong about that, though. I guess I try to be optimistic simply because I feel like there's no way to stop its usage at this point -- it's too widespread. :\

via metafandom.

At the risk of sounding like I'm older than the stars (close enough), I wonder if it's a generational thing. I work with various young whippersnappers, and I hear 'gay' bandied around as a synonym for 'stupid', 'impossible' and 'broken' ("this computer is so gay"--oh, rly?). I don't understand when or how this became acceptable, and honestly, it feels like a slap in the face any time I hear it.

infinitlight@livejournal

I agree very much. For the record, I use words such as fag as part of the whole reclamation of language deal, but I never use those words when people will hear/read it who don't know me. I'm comfortable using them in the safe and understanding context of time with my friends, but it seems so...disrespectful, to go about saying something which I *know* has a high possibility of offending people when it will be heard by people who I'm not going to be able to have a long conversation with about it. I use words which are insults in a positive sense, as a fuck you to everyone who uses them as an insult.

Even if these people are not homophobic, it seems so bloody *rude*. It's like when people in general use "gay" to mean "stupid". Alright, in your vocab you honestly do not connect it to homosexual. But other people do and it's hurtful - can you really not adjust your language use for the sake of manners?

Heh, this is my very long winded way of saying that I agree, and I wish people would give a second of thought to others before they spoke. Being in slash fandom isn't an automatic get out. (Just like I'm gay but I don't have an excuse to say faggot in public). I'm glad you posted this, because seeing things that seem offensive in a slash fandom is often hard to call out, and I think this post really needed to be made.

I'd just like to note that the fans you're discussing are probably even younger than you're thinking, with a median age in their mid-teens. Or at least, that's been my experience with the ickier bits of anime-based fandom. Actually, a lot of this is making me really glad I mostly left anime fandoms after my mid teens. The culture then wasn't exactly pretty (Relena bashing for the loss) but it doesn't sound like it had quite the same ... crazed squickiness it's developed. Or I was just missing it by sticking to fic archives and I have no idea what I'm talking about.

Amen.

Armchair linguist, not weighing in on the merit of using these words (I think it's rather awful, for the record), but interested in shedding whatever dim light I can on where it came from:

As far as I can tell, "[schoolname]faggotry" is a direct linguistic descendant of the 4chan (mostly /b/) tendency to use "fag" as a suffix for nouns ("newfag," "oldfag," etc.). I doubt that the people who use the terms currently are frequenters of /b/ and the like, but it is feasible that they picked it up there, and are spreading it; this language isn't new, it's just becoming more widespread.

Here via metafandom. I have a personal response to this, and a bit of meta about British comedy which you might think relevant (my humblest apologies if not, it is rather long :o/)

I'm mainly in non-US, non-anime/manga fandoms, and I would hazard that most of the people who actively participate in those fandoms with me are straight women in their later teens and twenties (although I'd happily bet that lots of the lurkers are older). I don't see the word rape bandied around much in the way you describe, but there are certainly throwaway comments like 'that was so gay' or 'make way for the ghey' made with relative frequency.

In certain contexts they do jar on me, and there are particular phrases that I find really thoughtlessly insulting. The dehumanising usage is the kind that really gets me: "He is clearly a gay!" for example. No, we are gay people. Because who genuinely says "I'm a gay" instead of "I'm gay"? I identify describing someone as 'a gay' as deliberately using the words in such a way as to create a dehumanising insult, just like 'a faggot' or 'a rug muncher' or whatever.

You mention there being a "post-queer" context now, and it's a trend, certainly in the UK, for young people to claim that they're using particular phrases ironically, and to highlight their stupidity as insults, etc... Setting aside their shaky grasp on the concept of irony, there, their excuse still doesn't wash. They seem to have no idea of this, though; I've genuinely flabbergasted whole groups of young people by mentioning that I found their casual use of "that's so gay" insulting!

It's very tricky, though. I'm in comedy fandom, and I can often see and appreciate decent satire on queer culture in stand-up and other comedy media. How I perceive it, and how it might influence the way that I reference that culture myself, however, is undoubtedly very different to how the next (maybe younger, maybe straight) person would see it and perhaps reproduce it. Take Scott Capurro for example; if you watched him without a full understanding of where he was coming from and the underlying points his humour was bringing up, you could end up with a massively skewed idea of what is supposedly appropriate or inappropriate to say in reference to being gay...

You're about to get the US version of the series 'Little Britain' with comedians Matt Lucas and David Walliams, coming on-screen. There's an excellent example of this kind of humour being spectacularly misjudged! Over here, they had a character called Daffyd who proclaimed himself 'the only gay in the village'. Played by Lucas, he dresses in tight PVC and complains loudly and often about the homophobia and ignorance he faces daily in his small Welsh village. The joke is that he is overly sensitive, perceiving homophobia where there is none and failing to notice the progressive and tolerant stance of all his neighbours (a large number of whom, he also fails to notice, are gay too, and feel no need to even mention it in public). This character became hugely popular and the catchphrase 'you're the only gay in the village' was adopted by school-age bullies with glee. Half the media applauded Lucas for creating a character that confronted the fact that modern homophobia is a myth perpetrated by gay people, and the other half was horrified - something that Lucas and Walliams appeared genuinely shocked about, hiding behind the excuse that it was okay because Lucas is gay. The programme is multi-award-winning and likely the best known and most popular comedy series of the last ten years, here. Perhaps things like that go some way to explaining where younger fandom members pick up particular language-usage cues?

Anyway, sorry to reply to you with such a long and meandering tirade, there :oO

I'm guessing I can't be the only queer-identified member of fandom out there who's hurt by this. You're not.

Wait, people DO that? I mean, people who are over 12? And they are not thrown out of fandom with extreme prejudice, after shame and dogpiling? DUDE.

I've been in online slash fandom since 2001, and I've NEVER seen that. Okay, I've seen the word "gay" used a great deal, but usually literally. Hell, my main fandom EXPLODED into rage at the writers when a character on the show used "gay" as a pejorative.

*boggles*

Come to Western Media fandom- we have our problems, no doubt at all, but...

And stop talking about one character going to sex another up as "rape"

Thank you. This bewilders me and makes my stomach hurt, and the few times I've brought it up no one seemed to agree. But horny does not equal rapist!

I understand that for some people, rape fantasies are hot, so maybe the word works for these specific readers - but it's not a word that works for everyone and, as an example, it actively repulses me.

But that's visceral. I have rational WTF reactions, too: (a) as an analogy for describing how badly one person wants another, rape simply doesn't work - it only describes unwillingness, and either a temperament that gets off on that unwillingness, or a frightening level of objectification that doesn't (or can't) even notice it; and (b) being intensely, desperately, painfully turned on - which I think the analogy is supposed to describe - does not make one the sort of person who doesn't care about the other person(s) - ie, does not make a rapist.

So, yeah. The analogy hurts my soul and doesn't even work, for me at least.

I'm just glad this annoys someone else, too

I thought, if anything, fandom would be immune to this but sadly, it appears it's not. My understanding is that it's coming from a couple of places, but most notably 4-chan (4chan?) - the /b/ board - and their associated memes. I've only followed some weird link there once, but it seemed to be a hotbed of "look how daring I can be (look at me, look at me)". Each trying to outdo the other. And the memes are picked up, passed on, and beat into the ground by other people trying to be "oh so daring" also, until it finally starts seeping out of their little corner and into the world.

So, yes, I'd agree that it seems to be the younger crowd, and they really have no idea what they're saying as far as the hurtfulness of it. Hopefully the fad passes, and messages like yours will speed up the decline. I'm sorry to hear that this happened.

-realslimshadie on lj

Hi, here via metafandom.

I totally agree that the use of faggot/gay/ghei/rape/ is more prevalent in anime-based fandoms. Part of that has to do with the fact that they skew young, yes. A lot of it, however, I think traces back to 4chan culture. There's a lot of overlap between 4chan, livejournal-based anime fandom, blog-based anime fandom, and forum-based anime fandom. And a lot of people (especially young people) pick up 4chan memes and replicate them either without knowing about their derogatory meanings, or because they're infatuated with how edgy and rebellious using words like "faggot" makes them sound.

Just my thoughts based on what I've seen on teh internets.

I've been calling people on this usage when I see it, which gets just about the result that you might think - but almost always draws out more people agreeing with me. You are not alone! I do think it's common for Australian teenagers to use "gay" as a synonym for "stupid", so some of the usage you see is emanating from my country, sadly.

-those words still carry some heavy weight, and it's not happy-funtimes weight. It's the weight of prejudice and hate and the stomach-churning self-loathing of knowing oneself to be other, just by virtue of one's sexual preferences.
THIS. It surprises me how often I see things in fandom that take me from my own happy, safe, awesome experiences to that punched in the gut, breathless in a bad way feeling. I've seen it used in as casual a way as "Thank you for watching my faggotry" (Yes, actual direct quote, and that's from a vid for a Western fandom), and I just . . . I don't get this.

You most definitely aren't the only queer-identified fandom member who feels that way, because I most definitely agree.

These words don't mean the same thing to all people. I know that "fag" and "faggot" are very charged terms in US-english and I understand your feelings about them.

I'm British (and gay, FWIW), and those words come from a very different cultural context in the UK. For me "fag" brings up images of the whole Eton-upper-middle-class-boys-club thing. Brideshead Revisited and Merchant Ivory, you know? It's a perjorative term in Britspeak, but it's not a hateful one. I have no issues with it being used affectionatly, in context. I don't know if Harry Potter is one of the fandoms you're referring to above, but it would be an appropriate use there.

It's not the same as the use of "gay" to mean "stupid" - that's worrying in its implications as a relatively new piece of slang. And I completely agree that "rape" should never, ever be misused. But a lot can get lost in translation.

[Here via metafandom.] Hmm, I've never seen 'faggotry' used that way in fandom, and honestly I'd have less of a problem with it if that were the context - I mean, if you're using that word for positive happy sexy stuff, then isn't that sort of like reclaiming it? Not that I'd be comfortable using it myself, but then I probably wouldn't have been comfortable using "queer" back when it was more charged, either. But the way I see people use it is negatively, as a synonym for BS or whatever, along with terms like "newfags". Which I find much more offensive.

In total agreement with you on the "rape" matter, though. Ugh, I hate seeing that. And gay... well, I don't mind it so much if it's describing behaviours (as in, slashy behaviours with other characters, not individual mannerisms), but until people start saying the same thing with "straight" swapped in, it'll still make me cringe a little.

I think you're right that it's more of an anime fandom thing, though, because I'm pretty sure a lot of it comes from 4chan.

I just went around on this with a young friend who'd been called on using gay. His response: "I'm reclaiming the word."
My response: "I might believe you if you ever, even a single time, used 'gay' in a situation where it didn't have at least one negative connotation."

This isn't the first time I've run into the problem, either. So, yeah, I'm pretty burned out on reclamation. I think the idea isn't just past being diluted to ineffectualness, I think it's now actively being misused.

It's a shame a lot of people don't grow out of this behavior.

I shook off such immaturity once I left school but it's irksome how many adults still use these sort of expressions and don't seem to care how it looks, or how it might make others feel.

I think a lot of the time people think they're just being cute and mean no offense but it really...just is not cute in the least. Not from where I'm sitting anyway.

- ice_feather on Livejournal

Word.

My son, at nine or ten years old, had some friends who used "gay" to mean stupid, and I told them that I would not allow it at my house. I tried to explain the problem in words they could understand, and I pretty much assumed that one of the boys, at least, was being raised by a homophobic father-- but in fact, my son told me that the kids I had talked to were now forbidding their friends to misuse the word as well.

I wonder if it lasted...
I wonder if we put together a couple of copy-paste sentences that people could haul out for these speshel occasions-- that sound reasonable when we can't be?

I agree with this so very, very much. It does happen in Western fandom too, but not as much. The raep/rape one in particular makes me physically ill. The gay/ghei and faggotry 'just' piss me off tremendously.

Here from metafandom, and THANK YOU. Oh my God, I am so tired of seeing that shit on fandomsecrets, and on the Phoenix Wright Kink Meme. Again, I know most people hanging out there are young, but seriously: "furfag," "faggotry," "LOL DO IT FAGGOTS," "rape/raep" -- it's gross and when you do it, you sound like an asshole.

-wemblee on LJ

This is probably one of my great foot-to-mouth moments but I've already written this out and I'm responding because, uh, I'm a part of that fandom you're probably alluding to. I took the cues from the discussions in the comments. I'm even wondering if it's my words that have made you feel this way. If it was, I apologize sincerely. If not, well, I know which school you have been referring to at the very least, and I'm owning it*. Sorry if this rambles.

In this part: And I'm guessing that you probably identify as straight, because I gotta tell you--those words still carry some heavy weight, and it's not happy-funtimes weight. It's the weight of prejudice and hate and the stomach-churning self-loathing of knowing oneself to be other, just by virtue of one's sexual preferences.

I'm pretty sure you're calling out the rest of the anime fandom on their straight privilege (blinders, what have you) and okay, I accept the sheer emotional weight of it and I hope what I'm going to say next wouldn't cheapen my empathy. But then you dovetail into a bit of theorizing whether it's the misguided use of "queer positive" and "gender positive" terms and how it's the relative age/immaturity of animanga fandom at large that's to blame for this.

I have to admit feeling a crushing level of condescension in how you were saying it. And to borrow from a person I've talked to about this in a private conversation, it has the presumption of 'you're all straight anyway and you can't understand my pain.' And I don't know how to get over that. Because I'm in my early twenties, probably straight, most definitely a propagator of memes. Oh, except I'm not from the US. So I hope you understand that I feel like I'm threading the line between, "sounding defensive" and "sounding like a callous bigot" without any third option. I guess I'll go for the "defensive" part.

I don't even know what I'm trying to achieve here. Like, I seriously want to have a dialogue with you. For example, I really want to discuss how much of raep_time's inception really DID erupt at 4chan (the scanlations were coming way too slowly at that time and a bunch of 4chaners took it upon themselves to make their own scanlating team, at least from what I've heard from friends who are part of the comm) which may explain why the name has a, "we're doing this for the lulz," quality to it that has remained unchecked when it went mainstream. Or how much of this fandom heavily overlaps with the Japanese part of fandom where many (not all, but many) of the memes are coming from ("kimoi", characters drawn with cat's ears, crossdressing, bondage; I'm guessing the linguistic memes still came from 4chan, though). Or about how it's really small fandom so much so that comms really become an extension of one's friendslist (I view comms and flists in a differently but it blurs when it comes to Oofuri.)

And probably (depending on uh, my amount of free time), if you've brought up this issue/meta over at the comm, I would have participated in it, too.

But here, you've couched it in terms from Western academia which I can parse, but quite frankly, I'm doing so with some disdain. I already feel heavily looked down upon. And the culturally tone-deaf animu weeaboo in me (whom you have surmised, "never even heard someone called a faggot, outside of what [I]'ve seen on the television or at the movies"--uh, I'm guessing you haven't been in an all-girls/boys Catholic school in the Philippines either) wants to stick out my tongue and go, "Neener, neener," at you. :( Doesn't help my case at all.

In summary: I agree with your point ("watch what you say in a public forum, it can be offensive and hurtful"). The tone, however, leaves a lot to be desired. I couldn't tell if you were expressing indignation or trying to formulate a theory for animanga social patterns. But in the end, I'll most likely be more cognizant of my words in that comm from now on, so I guess you did achieve some of this essay's goals.

Also, the use of gay (ghei, even) cannot possibly come from the anime fandom. (The earliest recollection of myself reading "ghei" would have to be at thebookyoucrew, circa 2005?)

*Just a note: I'm owning this call-out by virtue of my actual usage and my own complicity, so yeah. See, animu fans can be self-aware and self-reflexive once in a while. :)

lonelybusiness @ lj