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One of the consequences of insult is to shape the relation one has to others and to the world and thereby to shape the personality, the subjectivity, the very being of the individual in question.
-Didier Éribon, Insult and the Making of the Gay Self, 2004: 15.
I have always been immensely interested in the role language plays in community formation, and the plurality of meanings that exist, differing among cultures, ethnicities and, most importantly, communities of like-minded people. In my academic research, I am concerned with the relationship between language and sexual orientation. In my fieldwork with people identifying as LGBTIQ, I am more interested in how everyday language becomes a tool for empowerment, subversion and even survival. Hence, this short piece, inspired by May 17th – International Day against Homophobia and Transphobia – focuses on damaging language.
With reactions ranging from open hatred to poorly nuanced suspicion, my country, Mauritius, is no stranger to homophobia. People living with HIV/AIDS are the first to experience the homophobic logic and language: classified as people that slow down the country’s progress, labelled as perverse, and identified as threats to the general “morality” of society are only a few examples of the damaging language through which HIV positive people come into social beings.
Homophobic language is dis-enabling: it is a language that assimilates people in a specific, fixed category. Also, more often than not, homophobic discourse specifically focuses on the supposed abhorrence of the sex act between people belonging to the same sex. The communities towards which insults are directed, however, employ a language that goes beyond this. After all, why should the key to one’s identity be a sex act, or a serostatus? Of course, damaging language vis-à-vis the LGBTIQ and people living with HIV/AIDS communities is not limited to references to sex acts.
The organisation Stonewall conducted research that focused on school experiences of gay and lesbian youth in Britain and significantly found that: “Almost two thirds (65 per cent) of young lesbian, gay and bisexual pupils have experienced direct bullying. Seventy five per cent of young gay people attending faith schools have experienced homophobic bullying” (2007). Bullying can almost "innocuous" forms. And indeed, the clichéd joke, “that is so gay!” is commonly employed as humour but do they not wound and disrespect people that identify as non-heterosexual and reduce individuals to attributes that are supposedly “gay”? Communities that come together because of their interest in participating in the initiative against HIV/AIDS or, to defend human rights regardless of sexual orientation, render homophobic language (while recognising its powerful effects) meaningless. I say this in the sense that communities prove that they are so much more than the language thrust upon them by hatred. They demonstrate their courage and determination to not be reduced to an utterance evoking distrust.
Positioning myself as part of this community, because, like so many young people around the world, I am involved in the initiative against HIV/AIDS, I would like to note that while language can be dis-enabling, damaging, and hurtful, it is in spite of this language that our community takes shape. In spite of the popular language of fear, suspicion and repulsion that structures the overlapping LGBTIQ and HIV positive communities, we come forward with a language of inclusion and understanding. The 2011 theme for the International Day against Homophobia and Transphobia expresses and celebrates love in all its shapes, forms and sizes under the theme ‘Same Sex Couple: A Story of Love.’ I find the resilience of these communities in the face of homophobic language completely remarkable; it a language of hope, a language that seeks to unite and encourage pride. It is all the more significant that the theme for the Candlelight memorial 2011 is ‘Touching Lives’ – an expression that evokes a human reality beyond differences and artificial labels. This reappropriates the language of death used to refer to HIV positive people, and transforms it in a language of survival, remembrance, and most importantly, fortitude. We are remembering more than deaths, we are celebrating survival, and pledging to defend a right to life and to live.
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