It was a moment I could see coming as soon as the piano started and is a situation many queer people have to navigate each year.
‘It was Christmas Eve babe’
I attempted to dismiss my worries.
‘In the drunk tank’
After all, I was sat in my student house, and my university is a member of Stonewall’s Diversity Champions program.
‘An old man said to me’
It won’t be an issue, it won’t be an issue, I’m sure it won’t be an issue.
‘Won’t see another one’
Please don’t let it be an issue.
As a lover of Christmas, the music somewhat overtook me and I continued to sing along. But it wasn’t long before that all too familiar point in the music came along and I was unable to pretend any more that it was going to be fine.
‘Lying there almost dead on a drip in a bed’
‘You scumbag’
‘You maggot’
‘You cheap’
‘Lousy’
She said it.
‘It’s in the song!’ she responded after I called her out, saying it wasn’t a word that was appropriate to use, especially as a straight person, and she didn’t even face me as I did so.
A few days later when I explained why I was upset to a mutual friend, she said she understood where I was coming from and that I had every right to be upset, but that words have power when we allow them to. Normally this is something I believe in too and here is no exception. But crucially, it wasn’t me, or any other queer person, who gave the word its power meaning it is difficult to make positive a word that has always been negative. It represents a long history of discrimination and hatred and, for many, it may represent a specific trauma or environment they may have struggled to leave. There is an argument to be made for reclaiming words, as has been done within the LGBTQ+ community by terms such as queer and gay. The problem here, however, is that many of the slurs that have been reclaimed were used by the community before they were used against them in a derogative way.
Remaining a popular Christmas song since its 1987 release, Fairytale of New York was written across a 2 year period during which AIDS was a highly prolific disease with a very high death rate. F****t was a slur at this point, and AIDS hit the LGBTQ+ community it targeted especially hard, with 10% of gay identifying men aged 25-44 having died as a result of the disease by 1995 and the effects of this are still a part of homophobia today. This makes it difficult to argue that the lyrics are simply a product of their time as many have claimed it to be; it is certainly easier to simply not say the word.
There have also been attempts to undermine the perception of homophobia in the song directly. In 2010, Mitch Benn claimed that the slur is a word used in many UK dialects, including Ireland where Shane MacGowan one of the two credited writers was raised, to mean a lazy person and was, therefore, unrelated to gay people. Although this may be true it is far more commonly used as a homophobic slur and there are many derivatives of this that are unambiguously bigoted. This is reflected by the fact that as early as 1992 Kirsty McColl herself, and various other people who covered the song, were changing the lyrics i.e. to ‘you’re cheap and you’re haggard’ and there are ongoing calls, including in Ireland, for the song lyrics to be altered.
Being gay can seem like it’s about gay bars, pride parades and loving people of the same gender. However, just as often, it can be about having to be face to face with homophobia. Slurs may not be the worst thing to happen comparatively but they often represent the same emotion behind it. So when its usage is justified because ‘it’s in a song’ it can undermine your trust in someone you think of as an ally and can feel like a punch in the gut. So if this happens to you, please remember, you are valid. We all are.
Sources
https://www.avert.org/ – An international charity that provides information and advice about HIV/AIDS
https://www.cdc.gov/hiv/group/msm/index.html – Centres for Disease Control and Protection
https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/blog/aids-epidemic-lasting-impact-gay-men – Blog post by Dr Dana Rosenfeld
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