Inherent in your petty attempts at emasculation are much harsher, subtler truths: that you consider faggots to be below you. That femininity is something to be ashamed of while masculinity is a point of pride. That, even in jest, reducing your fellow privileged person to the status of the underprivileged is how you get your rocks off. That you have no problem perpetuating the perceived inferiority of an entire minority group of people since you’re not one of them and you don’t have to deal with the detrimental effects such actions perpetuate. Effects like a stab in the face for committing the crime of being alive.
And if you think for one second that Robert Hillsborough’s case doesn’t hold weight because it happened a long time ago, and that in today’s day and age of nationwide marriage equality the faggots have it easier, I invite you to spend five seconds on Google. There were 1,402 hate crimes committed based on sexual orientation in 2013 alone, accounting for over 20 percent of all hate crimes nationwide. More than half of states do not have statewide legislation protecting LGTBQ individuals from employment, housing, and public discrimination. 2015 is on track to break a record for the most LGTBQ homicides in a single year.
These are not problems of the past, but glaring issues facing the faggot community in the present and immediate future, and your poor choice of words affirms this. Our problems cannot be solved in a day. You or I cannot solve them alone. They may even taper asymptotically such that they’re never fully resolved.
But progress begins with small steps. Steps like creating a safer, less aggressive, less hateful environment on Harvard’s campus.
I am a student in good standing at this school, just like you. We both have a right to sit in Leverett dining hall and eat our penne, live our lives, feel like we have a home here without experiencing the burn of a fresh, hot slur on our backs—shrapnel from an explosion you didn't even know you were making, or worse, knew you were making and didn’t care.
There is weight in the words you let loose into the air. There is power in the connections they have to the past. There is pain in the damage you do when you choose to be ignorant and uncaring. I invite you, and anyone like you who uses the word "faggot" despite their heterosexual privilege, to take a long, hard look at why you feel the need to sink so low. And then I invite you to grow up and be better. Because there is an entire community of people, both dead and still surviving, that deserves that from you.
Most sincerely,
A hot and bothered faggot
Kyle R. Whelihan ’17, is a psychology concentrator living in Mather House. His column appears on alternate Wednesdays.