Content Warning: f-word — not “fuck”, the other one.
Apparently, here in the year 2021, in the United States of America, a 50-year-old man needs his daughter to write him a beautifully-worded essay in order to get him to stop using the f-word. Just when I think we’ve made the tiniest bit of progress in this country, I hear about some shit like this. You’d think a man who identifies as a Democrat here in the year 2021 would know not to use the word faggot without his loved one having to write a “beautiful treatise” about it.
Did I mention that this is the year 2021 and we are still dealing with this shit?
Related: Matt Damon says daughter told him not to use ‘f-slur for a homosexual’ after joke
Here’s a short, ugly treatise. The reason “faggot” is a slur for some people is because European Christians used to burn them to death. The literally meaning of “faggot” is a bit of wood used to start a fire. That’s how horrifying this shit is, and somehow Matt Damon missed this and his daughter had to explain it to him. When someone uses the word faggot, the implication is that some people are so disgusting that their best purpose is as fuel for a fire. And to be clear, I said “some people” because basically anyone who these conservatives of long ago thought was odd could end up getting burned to death; you didn’t have to literally be lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans or really anything. You just had to be peculiar from their limited and sad perspective for them to decide you should be executed by being burned at the stake.
Did I mention that this is a self-described Democrat doing this shit?
In the year 2021?
In the United States of America?
Well, thank God his daughter is patient.
Note: I’m going to pre-emptively defend my etymology of the word “faggot” since I know someone will get very excited about how I have described it. There are two primary etymologies of “faggot”. The first (chronologically) is in reference to burning heretics. The second is in reference to difficult women, and an offshoot of that appears to be a reference to men doing women’s work. So, we could dismiss the first etymology and pretend that faggot is “only” another way of calling a man effeminate (functionally similar to “cuck”). However, please recall that uppity women were also heretics. We’re talking about a word that started out referring to all heretics, moved on to being primarily about uppity women, and then became about gay men. The constant theme of the word’s slang use is heresy (violation of traditional culture), and so I propose to you that taking it as a word that implies that a person should be burned (for heresy) is appropriate. If someone is insisting that it is “only” meant to say a man is effeminate, I’d question their motives at trying to make the history of Christian Europe less horrifying than it really was. Let’s be clear: There’s absolutely no interpretation of this word’s meaning that should make it OK for anyone to use under any circumstances.