Why Coulter's word matters

Coulter's "faggot" comment at this year's CPAC ignited a media firestorm. She immediately began capitalizing on it. Three days after her comment, Coulter canceled her scheduled appearance on the possibly-critical CNN, but did appear on FOX News's Hannity & Colmes. The next day she also appeared on Sean Hannity's radio show, where she said this:

I don't think there's anything offensive about any variation of faggy, faggotry, faggot, fag. It's a schoolyard taunt. It means — it means wussy. It means, you know, Hillary giving a speech in a fake Southern drawl — that's faggy. A trial lawyer who weeps before juries is faggy. Lifetime-type TV, faggy.

Of course, what Coulter means by "wussy" is that it suggests the accused "fag" is feminine. In our culture, gays are constantly stereotyped as being un-manly and feminine, so accusing a man of being gay necessarily implies that he is, also, feminine. It's a standard tactic of the right-wing shock jocks, and Coulter is not new to it. She has previously accused Bill Clinton and Al Gore of being gay and Hillary Clinton of being a lesbian. This isn't so much an accusation about their sexual orientation as it is an attack on their fulfillment of traditional gender roles.

It is a sad irony that, the very day Coulter called John Edwards a "faggot," police released a sketch of a suspect wanted in a February gay-bashing and homicide. From the Advocate:

[Andrew] Anthos died February 23, 10 days after a fellow bus rider, spouting antigay slurs, paralyzed him with a blow from behind with a metal pipe.

It should not come as any surprise if the slurs that the assailant shouted while beating Anthos to death were very similar to Coulter's slur against Edwards.

Similarly, less than a week after CPAC, the Soulforce Equality Ride bus was vandalized.

Other vandalism of the bus included obscene drawings and "God does not love feary [sic] fucks." (At least Coulter can spell.) This continues a trend of vandalism of the Equality Ride. Last year, the bus was spray-painted with "Fags Mobile." There's that "unoffensive" word again.

Actions like this and the attitude behind them show why Coulter's choice of words matters. It was not just an attack on Edwards that Coulter made. She included him in one of the groups the right-wing despises the most. It was an attack on his dignity and his masculinity, all rolled up into one. It was an attempt to dehumanize him and rob him of the very thing that makes every person a person of value.

March 14th, 2007 Posted by Eric | no comments
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