Let’s Talk About the Name “Fag Rag”
A Bold Reclamation of Language and Identity
I would like to share with you a message that was posted on Facebook recently:
I am a LGBTQ+ member who has lived on Fire Island for a majority of my life. I am an outspoken liberal voice. I am an outspoken community member both locally and in Fire Island. I am an avid supporter of the BLM movement both in financial contributions but also participation in protests and amplifying BIPOC voices.
I write today with my head hanging in shame at the title of this self described "magazine" titled 'Fag Rag.'
To see the word "fag" on the cover of any publication would be dangerous and salacious in any setting - to see this promoted by a member of the LGBTQ+ community is a disgrace. The 'magazine' is filled with profiles of queer artists, the BLM movement, interviews with transgender women. All incredibly powerful.
But to diminish the power of those words and images by titling the vehicle of those words a "fag rag" is disgusting and embarrassing. Tomik Dash should be ridiculed in any public setting for printing materials with a slanderous, dangerous word.
I leave you with this. Each time a member of the LGBTQ+ community reads that 'magazine' I want the editor to remember... the likely last words heard by Matthew Shepard on a frigid Wyoming night - while being beaten to death - was the word 'fag."
To use those words to amplify a magazine is shameful.
The reaction that people, especially those of us in the LGBTQIA+ community, can have when reading or hearing the word “fag” has never been lost on me. I was called a fag for years before I knew what gay was. After discovering what it was, I was still called it before actually accepting it. And after I accepted it, nothing changed. Growing up, I was an easy target. I had such a soft voice that well into my high school years I was still being addressed as “ma’am” anytime I was on the phone with a company’s customer service hotline. Fast forward to my years as an adult living in NYC and working in a cool East Village salon, every year I would brace myself for the Saturday that I had to work which coincided with every frat boys favorite holiday, Santa Con. Because more often than not, some brave asshole would be speeding by in a yellow cab and yell out of the back window, “Faggoooot!,” as I sashayed my way into work. At a certain point I started to get offended when it didn’t happen. Was my outfit not cute that day?
People who have been on this magazine’s journey with me know it’s story from previous letters that I’ve written. I started dreaming this up last summer. I racked my brain about what I wanted to name it. I kept asking myself, “What am I going to call my little fag rag?” Until one day I was like, “That’s it! Fag Rag.” It’s not a term that I pulled out of thin air. It’s a colloquial term that our community has used to refer to regional gay publications for decades. When I looked it up to see if it was available, I found that it had been the name of a Boston newspaper that launched almost 50 years ago. And as I read it into their history, I found it fascinating. They were the radical left well before that term was getting thrown around by demagogues in the White House who seek to destroy us. “Fag Rag defended its provocative title and consistent use of the words ‘fag’ and ‘faggot,’ highlighting that the “proud” editors “don’t want to fit Straight Amerika’s definition of manhood”. Fag Rag flagrantly rejected heterosexual superiority, reveling in the insults such as ‘fag’ that straight society traditionally hurled at gay men.”
I loved that. Taking the power back. I applaud my queer forefathers for paving the way for little homos like myself to come along and keep the momentum going. As someone in the Facebook thread that ensued from the above post pointed out, the word “queer” was once a term that was used to berate us also. Yet today, we include it in our expansive LGBTQIA+ acronym. We took the power back. We reclaimed it. When considering the title of the magazine, I thought, what better place to reclaim the word than in one of the gayest communities in the country?
I don’t discount anyone’s experience of any word that is used to diminish us, including the person who posted about it on Facebook. I do ask that you recognize that people within our community have evolved on its perception and to be okay with that. What I do have a problem with is the way the original poster (OP) frames himself as “an avid supporter of the BLM movement” and then proceeds to issue a public call to action to incite what could easily escalate into physical harm against a black body in a very white neighborhood. Your performative allyship is now null and void. You see yourself as an avid supporter of the BLM movement, yet when you try to elicit a response from people, you name a caucasian martyr and victim of a brutal hate crime that occurred 20 years ago, instead of one of the 100+ black trans women who have been senselessly murdered within the past 5 years. Judging from your post, you have the July issue. I dedicated a spread in it that named and commemorated each one of those women. You could have just picked one.
Your post could have been a DM. The magazine's e-mail is listed in every issue several times. But you never wanted this to be a conversation. You wanted to make me the Hester Pryne of Fire Island. You tried to make your point in multiple FB groups, but they rejected it and contacted me instead to let me know what you were doing. You, an avid supporter of the BLM movement, wanted to lead the charge to see Fire Island’s second black business owner go under.
A couple of weeks ago I saw a tweet that really resonated with me. “When they go low. I’ma go medium. Cuz God is still working on me.” This is “medium” for me. And I had to put off writing this for a week just to get here. I have been coming out to Fire Island for 6 years and as long as I have been coming out here and kept my mouth shut, things haven’t been great, but they’ve been fine. Instead of asking people to make room for me, I made my own lane. & with that I’ve never felt so unwelcome as I have in the year that I decided to speak up. The goal of this magazine was never to be a divisive tool in the community. It has always been to ENRICH the community. Connect it. And I have had so many people reach out via email or stop me on the beach or boardwalk and let me know that it has done just that.
If you don’t like it, burn it with your old Dixie Chicks albums for all I care. I know I can’t please everyone. I can only continue to be authentic to myself. And who am I? I am a self-professed, full fledged, card carrying, dick loving, PROUD FAGGOT! And I’m not going anywhere. And neither is Fag Rag Fire Island. Peace and blessings to you all. :)
