No "Homo"

When the movie "Crash" was released, Don Cheadle raised the eyebrows and voices of many, including Oprah, when he suggested that African American people should still be allowed to use the term "nigger" or "nigga" as he pronounced it because it was a term that belonged to them, therefore they could use it as they pleased. Cheadle went on to suggest that people outside the African American community didn't have the rights to the word because they don't have a direct relation to slavery and the associations that come with it. Jay-Z uses the word in the hopes of mainstreaming it, or taking the shock out of it, thereby reducing it's power, which is still questioned by many.

I started thinking about this because the term "homo" is thrown around quite a bit at work by many of my gay co workers. They refer to themselves as homos, call each other homos, call straight people homos, and don't seem offended by the term at all. I personally have never used the term with my gay friends, and always found that it still carried a negative connotation, it was never a word I was comfortable using. Yet when I started working at Starbucks, and the word was thrown around on a daily basis, I will admit that I found myself using it. Saying "hey homo" or "you are a homo" with my friends who introduced me to the more "free spirited" use of the word suddenly became the norm until my friend Vash stepped up at work and said he didn't like it. Vash is gay and one of my other co workers Michel questioned his distaste for the word...."What? I'm a homo, you're a homo....we're both homos, accept it". Michel associated Vash's dislike of the word with a dislike or shame around his own sexuality, and saw his own use of the word as a proclamation of sorts of his individual gay pride.

While I know that Vash is proud of his own sexuality, it made me wonder what words exist in the straight community that are considered taboo. The first one I could think of was "cunt". I can't think of a women who appreciates it, understands the use of it, or in fact uses it herself. The word is barely used as a metaphor for a vagina anymore, it's basically morphed into the worst insult you can sling at a girl. Women have started calling their friends their "bitches" but if you call a girl a cunt, it usually signifies a hatred beyond all recognition, and even then still gets alot of eyebrow raises.

So what do we do with these words? Do we use and abuse them as a means of devaluing them? Do we throw them away and not acknowledge their existence? Or do we find a way to integrate them into our vocabulary in a way that makes everyone happy. Well the last one we know isn't possible because just like the "n" word, not everyone will agree. But I don't think erasing these words is a positive thing. I personally like the evolution of bitch....it's gone from something derogatory to something almost empowering. One of my favorite songs, a song that some of my friends have dubbed my "theme song" is David Guetta's "Sexy Bitch". Our girlfriends (and some of our guy friends) are our bitches....I referred to my good friend Meesa today as "my bitch" because she's that girl I know will always have my back. Meesa told me tonight to go out there and be "the pretty bitch you are" giving bitch a sense of strength and power. So can what's been done for bitch be done for homo? I think that's a question only the gay community can answer, and not every homosexual will feel the same way, but not everyone will ever feel the same way.

However, I think to say that these words have no place at all in society is naive, because whether they exist to show us how far we've come as an accepting society, or as a word that only gay people feel they can use, the words have a place and putting them in the a bottle and tossing them out the perverbial isn't going to make them wash up on a shore of acceptance and tolerance on day, in fact, I think erasing them may do just the opposite. We can only see how far we've come if we have the ability to look back at where we started. And maybe, the fact that we still debate these words shows us that we might not have all come as far as we would like to think.