You Anti-Gay, Homophobic Faggot: The Left's Continuing Nuance As Regards Homophobic Slurs

The left is gnashing its teeth about my noting that it was strange for Glenn Greenwald to be calling his ideological opponents sissies and fairies.

First of all, the entire left seems to miss the point that Greenwald was doing precisely what he decries -- accusing his political opponents of being unmanly, effenimate, sissy, queer. He doesn't say "queer," but he certainly implies it -- certainly he would infer such an implication were right wingers similarly impugning the masculinity of liberal men.

How do I know? Well, for starters, he already has claimed that knocking someone's masculinity as being the equivalent of calling them gay. Attacking the media for even noting that John Edwards sure seems to primp and fuss with his hair a lot, Greenwald wrote:

It is striking how they all use the word "pretty" to describe how John Edwards wants to look. She then links to the three-year-old You Tube clip of Edwards brushing his hair. Is any of this, at its core, any different than the oh-so-aberrational-and-universally-condemned Ann Coulter remark about Edwards?

And the Coultler remark he refers to was her CPAC "joke" about Edwards being a "faggot."

Ergo, according to Greenwald: Suggesting someone is less than entirely masculine is ""at its core, [no] different than" calling someone a "faggot."

So what precisely was Greenwald's intent in deriding so many right-leaning writers as effeminate? We can infer his intent from his own words. After all, Greenwald's words surely mean something, right? (Well, he writes so many that relatively few of them mean anything; but certainly when he gives us, mercifully, a relatively short declarative sentence, that must mean something.)

And his ideological wingman Andrew Sullivan, of course, is in full agreement, objecting to the term "wussy:"

The misogyny behind it - as behind so much homophobia - is pretty clear.

The left has long had a... nuanced attitude towards anti-gay slurs. (Sullivan himself, of course, after shrieking that term "wusses" was homophobic, called opponents "wusses" within a fortnight. But that's too easy-- it's Sullivan, after all! Not exactly a model of constancy!)

Calling someone gay is actually quite a popular past-time on the left -- certainly I've been called gay hundreds of times, both explicitly and by implication, by no lesser lights than John Edwards' former official campaign blogger and her merry band of imbeclies. It doesn't particuarly bother me, but I do seem to notice that, when lefties decide to insult a political opponent, the "fag" slur is always on the list of go-to put-downs.

See, when they say it they're just calling attention to our "psychosexual issues," as Marcotte says, but when we say it we're engaging in the most vile of homophobic speech...

Gay writer Bruce Baugh, definitely in the it's-just-so-horrible-to-call-someone-gay camp, of course finds it convenient to suspend his well-nigh absolute rule if he can attack someone on the right:

I would place a small bet on Ace of Spades being caught in teh gay act one of these days. That combination of obsession and need to denounce is familiar.

Caught? No way. That's why I'm anonymous! No one asks what blog you write when the lights are down, savvy?

That's from Matthew Yglesias' comment section -- a comment section demonstrating the typical nuance we've come to expect from lefties, and gays, and gay lefties especially, on this issue. As of last count...

Total number of comments in Yglesias' post knocking my purported anti-gay bigotry: 24.

Total number of commenters calling me a queer: 12.

...and the night is yet young.

50%. Not too shabby, Lefties! I'm pretty sure that 50% mark would pretty much beat any thread on the wildly homophobic Ace of Spades HQ!

Look -- once and for all. Is calling someone "wussy" or "queer" or "homo" forbidden or not? You can't employ one rule for yourselves -- "It's okay if they really deserve it!'' -- and another for your ideological opponents.

Greenwald descended into the sissymary/nancyboy name-calling he himself excortiates when it comes from people he disagrees with. I called him on it. At least I was more honest than to hide my statements in tediously verbose obscurantist language.

Deal with it, get hip to the idea that there's one rule for all, not one rule for you and another for everyone else, and finally, please, do try to make some progress towards getting the fuck over yourselves.

Yawn: Firedoglake, which knows the right circumstances under which to call someone a faggot:

Eureka! I think maybe something snapped into place for me today, though I’m not sure. I’ll let you decide.

Here’s the question: why does the Republican Party recruit and promote so many closeted gay men?

Closeted gay Republicans serve a very important function in the GOP ecosystem. The GOP likes to put them in key positions where they can be trusted to hold the party together among warring factions, putting a face on the party to promote the party without promoting themselves at anyone else’s expense. If they ever fail to perform the assigned function, well, secrets have a way of finding daylight when the people who keep them need to keep a man in line.

So, whaddya think of my theory? Am I on to something?

Digby at Hullaballoo, who would of course say that, while it's wrong to call political opponents queers, "If this is wrong, baby, I don't want to be right:"

I honestly don't know what to make of all these men in the political establishment who insist on using their mancrushes as some sort of guideline for who is and is not "presidential." Honestly, even Kathryn Jean Lopez's famous drooling over Mitt Romney isn't as embarrassing. Other than her predictable true confessions I've not seen a lot of females (except Margaret Carlson) going on about the candidates as if they are romance novel heroes. No, this particular form of dreamy prose is oddly confined to ostensibly straight, middle aged men who are so taken with certain alpha leaders that turgid descriptives just come pouring out of them.

...

There's something wrong with them and it has nothing to do with being gay or straight. This is way deeper than that --- so deep, in fact, that someone should do their psychology thesis on the subject. Why do so many male Washington courtiers have giggling mancrushes on phony Republican politicians? A question for the ages if there ever was one.

Note the attempt at covering his tracks -- "this has nothing to do with being gay or straight" -- while writing of "ostensibly heterosexual" men with "giggling mancrushes" on other men.

No, nothing to do with being gay or straight. It just so happens that every crush here mentioned is man-on-man. Just sort of worked out that way.

I'm going to not h/t in order to not draw attention to the h/t'ers. But really, it doesn't take much to find this shit on the left.

So what's the objection, fellers? That I was funnier about it? That I actually built jokes around it rather than just calling someone a queer?

My personal favorite comes from this site -- from the lefty trolls in the comments section, I mean. Dozens of times lefty trolls have called me a queer. Once in a while I ask them to square this name-calling with their self-righteous stance against homophobia of any sort. My favorite reply: "It's your own homophobia causing you to assume I meant calling you queer as an insult!"

Heh. Right. I guess I missed the intended compliment.

posted by Ace at 09:15 PM

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