Language has the ability to persuade, compliment, and even abuse. Words themselves provide the ammunition for such acts. Focusing on the terms of abuse used when referring to homosexual men demonstrates how the power of language excludes these individuals from the privileges afforded to their heterosexual male counterparts. The dichotomy of masculinity and femininity has an interesting relationship to the power of language. Michele Foucault highlights that "discursive formations are defined as much by what lies outside them as what lies within".2 By definition, the feminine falls outside of masculinity. One can see that what is important is not where the feminine is located, but where it is not located.

The qualifier "gay" used before "man" proves problematic because it is not a visible category with which to segregate individuals. The gay man can be of any skin color and belong to any religious affiliations or class. His identification as gay transcends other boundaries that have been used to classify men. From this ambiguity of not being immediately able to identify a gay men as other is where language intervenes to strictly delineate and enforce heteronormative views of masculinity and femininity.

Sociologist R. W. Connell states that masculinity "in its modern usage assumes that one's behaviour results from the type of person one is. An unmasculine person would behave differently: being peaceable rather than violent, conciliatory rather than dominating."3 The expected behavior of gay men is not a socially acceptable display of masculinity. Gay men are expected to be unmasculine and different from heterosexual men, not because of their skin color or class standing, but because of their (homo)sexuality.

Their (homo)sexuality proves pivotal in assigning a specific subaltern location in society. Referring to the socially constructed placement of homosexuals, Connell states, "[W]ithin that overall framework there are specific gender relations of dominance and subordination between groups of men. Oppression positions homosexual masculinities at the bottom of the gender hierarchy among men."4 This positioning happens because the gay man proves troublesome to heterosexist ideals of masculinity. On the one hand he is seen as a man because he has the anatomical structures of a man; judging him solely on his biological sex, he is a man. On the other hand, he is not a "real" man because his object of sexual desire is another man.

These social interpretations and assumptions of gay male behavior cause conflicts. "Gayness, in patriarchal ideology," argues Connell, "is the repository of whatever is symbolically expelled from hegemonic masculinity [...] gayness is easily assimilated to femininity."5 The underlying idea that is thus being rejected is not just woman, but "woman-like". Femininity or "woman-like" is what is being positioned at the bottom because, as Connell further writes, "[P]atriarchal culture has a simple interpretation of gay men: they lack masculinity."6 And since "masculinity does not exist except in contrast with femininity,"7 if gay men are not categorized as masculine, then the only other placement they can have in hegemonic masculinity is to be positioned with the feminine.

Connections between the words being used to categorize homosexual men were investigated. A clear distinction was being made that established heterosexual men as normative while characteristics that deviated from this norm were attributed to homosexual men. Philosopher Judith Butler points out those identity categories such as "gay" or "straight" "tend to be instruments of regulatory regimes."8 This distinction placed the heterosexual men in a higher position of authority and power than that of their homosexual male counterparts. Several categories emerged when viewing the words used to label homosexual men: words originally intended for women (names such as “Mary,” “Milly,” “Biddy,” and “Nancy,” etc.) words that have the effect of reducing gay men in size (for example, using a hyphen to create a compound words such as “Nancy-boy,” “Pretty-boy,” and “Mama’s-boy,” etc.), words that label gay men as soft or weak (i.e. “milksop,” “mollycoddle,” “limp wrist,” “sissy pants,” and “faggy,” etc.), and words that highlight gay men's "deviant" behavior ( such as “bent,” “bugger,” “swishy,” “sod(omite),” “queer,” and  “flamer,” etc.) are the major categories.

The underlying theme that connects all of these various categorizations is power through superior and inferior positions. These homosexual men are being initially compared to "real", heterosexual men and then, since homosexuals contrast "standard" or "normal" manhood, they are marked as inferior. This distinction is made through the comparisons and contrasts of words originally intended for women, words that have the effect of reducing gay men in size, words that label gay men as soft or weak, and words that highlight gay men's "deviant" behavior. The heterosexual man is seen as the standard, the norm, the correct way to be. The homosexual deviates from this and is thus emasculated and feminized. Claiming that being a heterosexual male is the norm, by definition privileges this position. Conversely, homosexuals are handicapped. They are excluded because they do not conform to the heterosexist and heteronormative ideals of affect, behavior, or character.

Interestingly, what is also highlighted is how women yet again are debased by society. There is a duality found in these terms. The way in which gay men are subordinated is by comparing them to women. Thus, language proves that being "like a woman" is a way to be demoted in society. In Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick argues

[I]t has been clear that women had a kind of ultimate importance in the schema of men's gender constitution-representing an absolute exchange value, of representation itself, and also being the ultimate victims of the painful contradictions in the gender system that regulates men.9

Femininity is what is being rejected and regulated in men's gender constitution. Anything that can be linked to a woman or anything that is woman-like is excluded from the heteronormative definition of masculinity. This idea, coupled with the notion that man embodies "the very power that oppresses him: he is in the ridiculous position of being guarantor and victim of the system,"10 highlights the point that since the gay man is believed to possess femininity, he too is rejected from masculinity. Thus he, like women, is placed in a lower position than that of heterosexual men and also becomes another victim of the pervasive heterosexist / heteronormative / heteropatriarchal system. 

Abstracted from the IASS journal 2003, Volume VII 

Works Cited:

1. Josiah Blackmore and G. S. Hutcheson, Queer Iberia (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999), 199.

2. Geoffrey Danaher, Understanding Foucault (Thousand Oaks: SAGE, 2000), 35.

3. R. W. Connell, Masculinities (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 67.

4. Ibid., 78.

5. Ibid.

6. Ibid., 143.

7. Ibid. 68.

8. Peter Barry, Beginning Theory (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), 144.

9. Eve K. Sedgwick, Between Men (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985) 134.

10. Sten Eirik, “Battered Men,” Journal of Gender Studies 7 (1988): 82.