Chris Billig is the founder of gay4soccer.com. Prost Amerika reached out to him to offer a rebuttal to an article ran last week on the use by Mexican fans of a homophobic chant. Here is his response.
The “Puto” chant is unacceptable
by Chris Billig
Recently, this website featured a piece from one of their regular writers offering a defense of a homophobic goal kick chant on their site. When Prost contacted us to offer a right of reply and voice our perspective, I was torn.
I’ve spent years presenting reasonable arguments on the matter, and I wasn’t sure I was up for writing yet another. And furthermore, I am getting quite a bit tired of being polite about the matter. I’m tired of being polite when people are presented with the opinions of linguistic experts and government agencies and they make tired excuses. I’m tired of being polite when people are simply asked to stop doing something that causes hurt to others and they just don’t care. It feels like a slap in the face every time and there are only so many times one can be slapped in the face without swinging back.
But ultimately Prost Amerika gave pixels on the site to a defense of homophobia, and it can’t go unanswered.
Let’s start with the linguistic side, because one of the arguments that is often presented is, “That word isn’t homophobic.” There are plenty of opinions to the contrary and few scholarly ones that back it up.
Vice Sports spoke to several experts after FIFA handed down fines to several national soccer federations last month and Mexico appealed soon after. Juan Jacobo Hernández, president of LGBT rights group Colectivo Sol, told Vice it’s “cultural discrimination, cultural homophobia. Calling football players ‘puto’ is not just about making them miss their kick, it’s a way of degrading their masculine abilities and saying they’re not real men.”
“Offensive and homophobic” were the words used by Dr. Rainer Enrique Hamel, professor of linguistics at the Autonomous Metropolitan University in Mexico City, when speaking with Vice Sports. “The word puto refers to a gay man, with the implication that he’s a prostitute, and that all gays are prostitutes, so it’s an insult.”
CONAPRED, the anti-discrimination agency of the Mexican government, agrees on the homophobic connotations of the chant. After fans got a pass from FIFA during the 2014 World Cup, they released a statement titled, “CONAPRED Rejects Normalization of Homophobic Rage in Football.*” It goes into great detail about the chant: “The shout of ‘puto’ is an expression of scorn, of rejection. It is neither a neutral description nor expression; it’s negative qualification, it’s stigma, it’s underestimation.
It equates the homosexual condition with cowardice, with ambiguity, it is a way to equate rivals with women, a form of ridicule in a sports space that has always been conceived as almost exclusively male. The sense in which this collective shout is given in stadiums is not innocuous; it reflects homophobia, sexism, and misogyny that still prevail in our society.*”
To repeat: the chant puto “reflects homophobia, sexism, and misogyny.*” This is a statement from an agency of the Mexican Government. But setting the aside the opinions of experts, what about common decency? What about humanity? What about compassion?
Maybe it was was the way my mom raised me, but I do my best to comport myself in a way that doesn’t cause hurt to others, and if I offend someone in some way my response is generally, “I’m sorry. I didn’t know that would cause offense. I will consider your feelings in the future.”
That’s the approach Major League Soccer took with a new team in Houston. Some were offended by the proposed “Houston 1836” name, and it was changed.
That’s the approach my hometown baseball team took with a mascot naming competition. Some were offended by the proposed “PorkChop” name, and that too was changed.
What is presented above represents just two examples of times segments of the Latin American community were offended by something that seemed innocuous in the sports world, but the sports world made adjustments. Now we’re simply asking that the sports world make an adjustment over an offensive and hurtful chant. “Houston 1836” and “PorkChop” underwent near-immediate changes. Ours is a now years-long request that has been made since before awareness of the chant gained prominence during the 2014 FIFA World Cup.
Please don’t make the change for me, though. I have the thick skin some suggest I should have when I bring up this issue. Do it for the transgender woman in Queens who was beaten with a belt buckle while being taunted with that word. Do it for the New York man who was kicked from behind and punched on the subway while attackers hurled that word. Do it for the young transgender woman in Los Angeles who was called that word, punched in the face, and sodomized with a beer bottle.
This word isn’t just a chant. It has been the opening declaration so many victims have heard before they have been subjected to harassment, beatings, and death.
It’s time for us to stand together as a soccer community and do the right thing by each other. It’s time for this so-called cultural tradition to stop. It’s time for its defense to end.
Related:
Napoli stay top of Serie A as racism and homophobia rear their ugly heads
