More recently, in 2014, queer writer Casey Legler outlined her own definition of the word in the Guardian: “Faggots are beautiful, magical, brave humans who have overcome the loss of an entire generation of their elders to HIV and Aids and who have, despite this, approached life with resilience, grace and class,” she wrote. Gay author, playwright and activist Larry Kramer certainly owned it in his 1978 novel Faggots, which chronicled gay life in pre- Aids New York. Can the same be done with “faggot”įor some, “faggot” is a badge of honour.
Elsewhere, in Latin American lesbian culture, masculine-of-centre women are retaking ownership of “camiona”, a derogatory term once used against them, derived from the Spanish for a female lorry driver. It has since been reclaimed by the community as a celebration of our differences, carving out a whole area of academic study and providing a handy, single-syllable catch-all descriptor for anyone who lands somewhere on the LGBTQIA+ continuum.
“ Queer” was once a term used as a means of othering sexual minorities, to categorise us as social aberrations. There’s precedent in reclamation of language, of course.
