Faggot=Loser

One quotation from the beginning of the excerpt stuck out to me because it describes a familiar concept. When Eminem is describing how he grew up in relation to the word faggot, he says that calling someone a fag is not the same as calling him gay. Rather, the word meant “being an asshole or whatever.” He then says that he defines the word that way because “that’s the way the word was always taught to [him]. That’s how [he] learned the word.” I think his reasoning is really interesting because it points out the idea that our perceptions (of words, concepts, or ideas...) are shaped by the way the culture in which we grow up defines them. Eminem had to get the idea of faggot meaning asshole from somewhere. Sometimes, I think it is easy to overlook or forget how big of an influence our cultural upbringing has on our ideas and perceptions. Most derogatory words have some sort of similar manner in the way which the connotation to them was created. For example, the word “gay” means a lot more in our culture than just “homosexual”. An interesting website to look at that displays many of these words that have a different meaning in our culture is: urbandictionary.com

It is interesting that Josh, the boy from the clinical play session, used the word “faggot” as a defense mechanism when he felt like he was being belittled. He said he wanted “to be the biggest” of his family. He was often put down by his older brother and he did not have a full-time father figure to look up to. The dynamics of the order of children is really interesting. The older brother often made fun of Josh and teased him, and, therefore, Josh had an inferiority complex when in comparison to his brother. It is also interesting that Josh’s method of “fighting back” was to use the word “faggot.” I wonder if he felt like it gave him power to be able to use a demeaning word that had been used on him on someone else.