Those of you who read my personal blog play rey play know that I'm a big fan of Pansy Division, a band of fabulous punks that were a major part of the Queercore movement. When most rockers were afraid to be openly gay and most gays weren't interested in music that didn't have an electronic thump-thump that encouraged the good ol' hump-hump, Pansy Division along with God Is My Co-Pilot and Riot Grrrl were bringing guitar-humming messages of homo liberation, politics, and pride to rock venues across America.

After a few years of only performing for special occassions and causes, Pansy Division announced that they'll be touring this fall!

Recently in a CNN interview with a hilariously uncomfortable straight, white guy, out rapper Deadlee talked about reclaiming the F-word. Not the F-word most rappers have already so easily claimed (minus the re-), but the other F-word. Our F-word, so to speak. Check out the original piece here:

Regardless of his attempt (and the attempts of Queer Nation and other gay and lesbian activists before him), we've been hearing the word faggot come out of a lot of straight mouths these days in a lot of uncomfortable ways.

As he says in the interview, Deadlee uses the word and it's variants a lot in his own work. Check out these lyrics from his song No Fags Allowed:

They say a fag is a feminine acting guy,
But to me it's anybody got something to hide...

Those words don't exactly take power away from the word or reclaim and make it powerless. It seems to be associating a new negative connotation to the word - giving it more power and evil power at that.

So I wonder, when is it okay to say faggot or fag or faggy or faggotty or faggotry? And who is it okay for and why?