Gulf Coast Transmission Line
Gulf Coast Transgender Community
Newsletter Sept 95

WHAT THEY CALL ME
by Vivian McKenzie

My friends call me Vivian . My family calls me "Andy". My girl friend calls me "Baby". My work mates call me "Bud". When I go out crossdressed I am called one of two things. Either I am called "Ma'am" or I am called "FAGGOT!". I like being called "Ma'am". It shows respect for me plus it lets me know I'm doing a pretty decent job of projecting a feminine image. I do not like being called "FAGGOT!" at all. It's just plain mean and it hurts my feelings. After hearing this epithet hurled at me for the hundredth time I decided to look it up in my 2000 page Webster's Unabridged Dictionary to find out just what this volatile word means. I encountered the following: faggot n. tHE. fagott; OFr. fagot, a bundle of sticks, prob. from L. fax, facis , a torch.

  1. A bundle of sticks. twigs, or small branches of trees, used for fuel or for raising batteries, filling ditches and other purposes in fortification; a fasc~ne.

  2. A bundle of pieces of iron for remanufacture, or of steel in bars.

  3. A person formerly hired to take the place of another at the muster of a military company or to hide deficiency in its number when it is not full. [Eng.

  4. A term of contempt for a dry. shrivelled old woman. [Eng. slang.

  5. The punishment of burning at the stake, as for heresy.

  6. A badge representing a fagot, worn on the sleeve in the middle ages by those who had recanted heresy, to show the punishment they had so narrowly escaped.

I appreciate the first two definitions describing "fortification". I get a kick out of number 3 and am puzzled by number 4. But it is definitions 5 and 6 that I seem to relate to. It also coincides with the belief among the gay community that the insult "FAGGOT!" came from the word describing a bundle of sticks that were placed at the feet of a person who was about to be burned at the stake. Now when yet another white middle-class kid throws that word at me, I conjure up a vision of Saint Joan of Arc being burned alive because she refused to stop dressing as a man. And I realize MY little episode of hurt feelings is nothing compared to the price SHE paid for cross dressing. I have learned to take this insult with a degree of pride, a badge of honor if you will... but it doesn't hurt any less... it only hurts differently.

Alpha Bits Alpha Chapter of Tri-Ess Sept 95 Page 4


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