The word "fag" when used by Bill Weintraub of The Man2Man Alliance is meant to describe a gay-identified or other man who has sex with men and whose behavior is self-loathing and self-defeating.
Once again: A fag is a gay-identified or other man who has sex with men whose behavior is self-loathing and self-defeating.
It should be noted that there's a long history among men who have sex with men of the use of fag in just that way.
For example, in 1979, Gay and AIDS Activist Larry Kramer published a novel titled Faggots, which was about self-loathing and self-defeating behavior among gay-identified males.
And a decade earlier, just after Stonewall, when gay-identified males fought back against police oppression, "openly gay" poet Allen Ginsberg remarked that "The fags have lost that haggard look."
So, and again, there's a long history of the use of the word fag among MSM and with just that meaning.
Nevertheless, gay advocacy groups, including in the US, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), and other groups abroad, are attempting to de facto ban the use of the words faggot and fag.
Is GLAAD right to do that?
Only in the sense that GLAAD, like The Man2Man Alliance and PETA and the NRA, is an advocacy group, and in a free society, it has the right to advocate for its point of view and that of its membership.
However, in this instance, as in others, in its advocacy, GLAAD is actually pushing society in the direction of censorship, and a sort of censorship in which no behavior within the so-called gay community could ever be criticized.
Indeed, in the UK, an LGBT group called Stonewall has attempted to push through legislation banning any speech which could be construed to attack "gays."
The legislation passed the House of Commons, but was then stripped of its penalty -- prison -- by the House of Lords, which was concerned about -- censorship.
According to 365Gay.com,
Stonewall director Ben Summerskill dismissed the criticism of the legislation saying people could still criticize homosexuality as long as they were "temperate and polite".
You see the problem.
Who determines whether speech is "temperate and polite?"
I suspect it would be the aptly named Mr Summerskill.
Yet I knew two of the founders, in the US, of GLAAD -- film critic Vito Russo and author Darryl Yates Rist.
Both men were writers, both often used the word "fag," and both, I have no doubt, would be very critical of attempts by groups like GLAAD to censor.
Of course both Rist and Russo lived in an era when debate within the so-called gay community was far more open and vigorous than it is today.
And then both died of AIDS.
It's part of the purpose of my work to end epidemics of anally-vectored disease like HIV / AIDS.
But I doubt that would sway people like Mr Summerskill.
I have no question that he would find me both intemperate and immoderate -- and send me directly to jail -- if he could.
Nevertheless, I intend to go on using the word fag -- when I think it's appropriate to do so.
See also dominant culture, dominant culture of anal penetration, anal penetration, analist;
and Heroic Homosex and The Man2Man Alliance.
And our Man2Man Alliance Policy Paper Sex Between Men: An Activity, Not A Condition.