Studies in Gender and Sexuality

2(1):3–28, 2001

Faggot = Loser

Ken Corbett, Ph.D.


This essay investigates the projectile force and projective work of
the designation faggot by examining a clinical moment during
which a child patient called me a “faggot.” Particular attention is
paid to the defensive function that “faggot” played in this boy’s
effort to disavow smallness and losing. I use his specific dilemma
to consider the more general boyhood quest to be big and
winning. Focusing on the ways in which boys defend against the
anxiety generated by the big–small divide, I argue for the clinical
engagement of these defenses, including aggressive protest,
bravado, and phallic narcissistic preoccupation. I propose
engaging boys in the difficult process of thirdness as a psychic
venue that offers a context of growth within which to cathect
boys’ anxiety and aggression. Such cathexis stands in contrast to
the manner in which boys’ narcissistic preoccupations and
aggression are simultaneously prized and neglected through the
“boys will be boys” approach to masculinity. Boys’ aggression,
which so often conceals their anxiety about losing, is neither
adequately contained nor engaged. They are left to adopt a brittle
bravado and to relate through control and domination. One
routine form of bravado and domination is the contemptuous
use of the word faggot. I conclude with some speculative thoughts
about how the anxiety of loss that is initially managed through
the diffuse projection of “faggot” might develop into a more
specific form of hatred: homophobia.



Ken Corbett, Ph. D. is Coeditor of Studies in Gender and Sexuality. He is a
member of the New York University Psychoanalytic Society of the Postdoctoral
Program.
3 © 2001 The Analytic Press
4 Ken Corbett
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“W here I grew up, it was faggot this, faggot that, faggot any-
where, faggot everywhere” (Wolf, 1999). The failures and
the losses that “faggot” pronounces are multiple: losing hold of
one’s proper gender; failing to perform one’s fitting sexuality;
failing to be the right race (either majority or minority); failing
to display the proper amount of intelligence (either too much
or too little); failing to be the proper age (either too young or
too old); failing to present popular or idealized social codes,
including markers of class and class distinction; failing by virtue
of physical injury or loss; failing to embody physical strength;
failing to be the appropriate physical size or to exemplify
acknowledged beauty; failing to win; failing because of seemingly
random slippages or losses.1
The ubiquity of the word faggot speaks to the reach of its
discrediting capacity. “Faggot” has become the all-purpose put
down. You can be a faggot because you are homosexual. You
can be a faggot because you drop your keys.
“Faggot” can be a momentary appellation; it can mark how
one is perceived as failing at normative expectations (based on
hierarchies of excellence and value) at play in any given moment.
In Oliver Stone’s 1999 film Any Given Sunday, a third-string
quarterback is called into a football game. He vomits as he steps
onto the field. Customarily, quarterbacks are expected to create
anxiety, not give evidence of feeling it. The coach of the
opposing team yells across the field to his competitor, “Hey,
Joe, where’d you get the faggot?”
“Faggot” can also be a more lasting designation for those
who are perceived to consistently fail normative expectations.


1
The ironic use of the word faggot serves to redouble its (already) multiple
uses. “Faggot” can be turned on its head and used as the precise opposite
of the uses indicated here. For example, “faggot” can be directed at the
winner of a competition. “Faggot” also has been rebelliously reappropriated
by those for whom the term was intended. They then repeatedly and
def iantly invoke its linkage with failure, indictment, and scorn. It can be
employed with either defiance or affectionate good humor to celebrate
the very losses and failures that are supposed to provoke shame and disgrace.
While duly noting these ironic turns, and the manner in which a scorned
group may ironically appropriate the very name that is used to humiliate
them, I focus within this essay on the nonironic uses of “faggot.”
 Faggot = Loser 5
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Following the shootings at Columbine High School in Littleton,

Colorado, a New York Times reporter interviewed a group of
eight students. At one point in the interview, the students talked
about how the gunmen, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, were
taunted by others:
Meg: They’d call them freaks, weirdos, faggots. It was just
stupid name calling, acting like little children. It’s like
my cousins come home, they’re only two and three,
and they come home and start calling me names,
calling each other names like butt-head and all these
things. They [Harris and Klebold] probably couldn’t
handle it.
Devon: People called them fags. People thought they were gay.
And that’s not right. I mean, even if they were—and
which, they’re not—it’s not right to say that.
Dustin: When they call them fag, I think it’s a slang term for,
like, loser. I don’t think they really meant that. They
were like nerds [New York Times, 1999, p. A27].

This group of students point out how “faggot” has become

unhinged from its customary meaning–a derogatory term for
homosexual. Harris and Klebold, as these students understood
them, were not homosexuals; they were alienated losers. Their
alienation was perceived, at least in part, as a consequence of
their manifest rejection of popular codes/ideals and the manner
in which they repeatedly failed to adopt cultural standards of
distinction and value. Harris and Klebold’s difference was
persistently viewed as evidence of what they never had/lacked/
lost.
Whether momentary or lasting, whether diffuse or specifically
linked with homosexuality, faggot = loser. Faggot expels the
anxiety of loss; the loss is projected into another and thereby
kept from consciousness. Faggot operates as a projectile. Faggot
is something to be caught, absorbed, or def lected. One of the
Columbine students articulated the projectile force of faggot
when he said, “I can see how these guys [Harris and Klebold]
could have easily caught a lot of, not always physical abuse, but
just verbal” (New York Times, 1999, p. A27).
In this essay I examine a clinical moment during which a child
patient called me a faggot. I situate this clinical moment within
6 Ken Corbett
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the broader frame of my work with this boy and his family.
Central to this boy’s treatment was his experience of himself as
small and losing, not big and winning. Particular attention is
given to the defensive function that “faggot” played in relation
to this boy’s effort to disavow smallness/losing as he sought the
agency of bigness/winning. I use his specific dilemma and the
manner in which it was refracted in his particular family in order
to consider the more general boyhood quest to be big and
winning, not small and losing.
I use the terms small and losing as v irtually equivalent.
Concrete thinking would lead us to treat them as distinct; my
work with young boys, however, has led me to consider these
states as symbolically linked, indeed conf lated within the psychic
reality of boyhood. My work with young boys also leads me to
posit the wish and effort to be a big winner, not a small loser as
a central boyhood trope.
Many boys and men respond to the threat of smallness/losing
with bravado and aggressive protest, which is often embodied
through a kind of phallic intrusion/illusion: an insistent, illusory
display of bigness and agency that is coupled with an equally
unrestrained contempt for smallness and lack. In the spirit of
“boys will be boys,” bravado, aggressive protest, and illusory
phallic narcissism have become defining, normative attributes
of masculinity.
I argue for the active clinical engagement of boys’ phallic
narcissistic preoccupation and the anxiety and splitting that
shadow this preoccupation. I argue also for the active cathexis
of the muscular aggression (both the dogged mental muscularity
of narcissism and the persistent physical pitch and push of
childhood) that often propels such preoccupation and anxiety.
Following Fonagy and Target (1996a, b), I propose engaging
boys in the difficult process of thirdness as a psychic venue that
offers a context of growth within which to actively cathect their
anxiety and aggression. I am using “thirdness” here to capture
the lively three-way connection that binds a child and the
parental couple, and the manner in which that triangular bond
allows all three members to simultaneously be participants and
observers (Fonagy and Target, 1996a, b). I pay particular heed
to the combustion and cathexis that arises through this unique
process of attachment and observation. Such active engagement
 Faggot = Loser 7


and cathexis stands in contrast to the manner in which boys’

narcissistic preoccupations and aggression are simultaneously
prized and neglected through the “boys will be boys” approach
to masculinity. Consequent to this cultura l trope, boys’
aggression, which so often conceals their anxiety about losing,
is neither adequately contained nor engaged. Their aggression
and anxiety are not balanced through object cathexis or through
the equilibrative experience of pleasure and loss that is
characteristic of triangular opportunities. The equilibration to
which I refer is configured on the balance and negotiation
internal to object relations, including the vicissitudes of loss
and recovery, the interpersonal push and pull of will, and the
intricate mechanics of mutuality. Boys are left to run amok, left
to adopt a brittle defensive bravado, left to relate through control
and domination.2
One routine form of br avado and domination is the
contemptuous use of the word faggot. While noting how faggot


2
Gender is, among its many facets, an organizing concept. As such, it func-
tions to classify and generalize. Patterns are noted. Patterns are perpetuated.
Yet patterns can exist only with variance. Therefore, the conditions and
pathologies of boyhood and masculinity that I describe in this essay must be
offset by an equal and opposing appreciation for the possibility of variance.
Boyhoods are as various as boys.
I am attempting here to speak about a particular pattern of gender
pathology—one that can be observed culturally as well as clinically, one that
I have observed in a variety of ways in my clinical work with young boys.
While there is, I believe, value in this effort, there is also the folly of genera-
lization, a frequent folly where the subject of gender is concerned and one
that I am loathe to perpetuate.
In the course of this essay, I am attempting to combat generalization by
focusing on one boy and the individual particularity of his family, as well as
the individual particularity of the transference–countertransference of our
clinical work. Yet, I present this boy as an exaggerated version of a cultural
norm. I use his “story” to exemplify the cultural trope of “boys will be boys.”
I also move from his story to speculate on the psychic consequences of the
typical neglect I suggest follows on the “boys will be boys” trope. In moving
from this one boy’s story (ref lected and refracted through my work with other
young boys) to speculations regarding cultural conditions, I can only lay claim
to the veracity of deduction—a f lawed route to “truth,” at best.
8 Ken Corbett


has become unhinged from its customary meaning, I consider

how it continues to carry the anxiety of loss that is attached to
the homosexual. I conclude with some speculative thoughts
about how the anxiety of loss that is initially managed through
the diffuse projection of faggot may develop into a more specific
form of hatred: homophobia.

PROJECTING “FAGGOT”

The “boys will be boys” approach to male development ref lects

a per vasive reluctance to examine certain forms of male
aggression. It also ref lects the way in which masculinity has
been undertheorized and insuff iciently problematized. In
particular, the “boys will be boys” approach masks the masculine
dilemma regarding the threat of losing.
Consider the dilemma of losing illustrated in the following
clinical material taken from a play therapy session with a six-
year-old boy. Josh was referred for treatment following repeated
outbursts of disruptive and aggressive behavior at school. These
disruptive outbursts were often followed by equally intense
periods of sullen withdrawal and apparent sadness. His parents
described similar behaviors at home and in particular noted
how these behaviors were more pronounced in relation to his
much older brother.
In many ways, Josh’s family was a house divided. His parents
brought him for treatment at the suggestion of their couples
therapist. In our initial consultation, both parents spoke of their
fear regarding the “breakdown” of their marriage as well as of
their family. For the past two years, the father had been traveling
a great deal; he was generally away from home at least two weeks
of every month. The mother felt angry and overwhelmed by
having to bear the lion’s share of parenting responsibilities.
She was equally dispirited by her efforts to balance her own
work with the demands of family life. She became especially
anxious when the two boys fought. In her eyes, these fights
represented the breakdown of their family life. The father, for
his part, expressed a mix of guilt and divided loyalty. He was
grappling with having “abandoned” his family while wrestling
with his “selfish” desire for the worldly pleasure provided by
his work.
 Faggot = Loser 9
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Importantly, both parents recalled greater harmony in the

early years of raising their first son. In effect, they described a
first- versus second-family divide. The two boys were separated
by eight years. T he parent s desc r ibed how t he added
responsibility of a second child, coupled with the ways in which
their careers had become more demanding, overwhelmed their
efforts toward harmony. While they enjoyed a greater degree
of economic freedom (and in the father’s case a greater sense
of accomplishment), they nevertheless felt less involved with
both of their children and with one another. They described
having less energy and “mental space” for the children. They
felt that this lack of mental space was especially true for Josh,
who, as the younger child, made different demands on their
attention. This lack of energy seemed especially apparent in
response to Josh’s aggression: the mother described herself as
implosively turning in and away, while the father reacted with a
kind of overbearing silence.
The household was further divided along the axis of physical
size. Bigness and activity were prized in contrast to smallness
and passivity. The older brother was linked with the father, who
was a large and imposing man. Josh was linked with his mother,
who was small in stature (a fact made all the more apparent in
contrast to her husband’s physicality). The brother had just
entered a prestigious and very competitive high school when
Josh entered first grade. He bore a striking resemblance to the
father. They shared many common interests and, like the father,
the older brother was involved in numerous after-school
activities that kept him away from home. Josh, on the other
hand, was struggling in school and was linked with his mother’s
younger brother, a young man of small stature, who was seen as
“hot-headed” and who had a history of “casting about.” Josh,
his uncle, and his mother were further linked through their
“habit of frustration.” Their blend of irritation and persistence
was described with a mix of admiration (for their determination)
and sadness (for their lack of satisfaction) and was contrasted
with the ease attributed to the father and brother.
The hour I describe here began in the waiting room, with
Josh’s mother instructing him to return a toy that he had
apparently taken from my office. Josh sheepishly produced from
his front pocket a blue plastic knife that did in fact belong to
10 Ken Corbett


my toy kitchen set. I nodded and said that we could talk about
his having taken it when we got into the office. Once inside, I
suggested that he must have really wanted to have the knife for
his very own. He concurred with a nod of his head. I asked if
maybe he was embarrassed, to which he also concurred with a
nod. He then suggested that we play a game with which he had
been preoccupied for many sessions.
The game comprised the following roles: Josh was a spy, who
always had the plastic knife in his rear pocket, partially visible.
I was given the role of the spy’s younger brother, whose primary
motivation was to get the knife. Josh would direct us through
this drama in a variety of ways. Today the plot centered on the
younger brother’s efforts to trick and distract the older spy
brother, so that the younger brother could make off with the
knife. Importantly, though, the younger brother was never to
succeed; he was consistently foiled and was left empty handed.
As I inquired about the younger brother’s feelings and
motivations, so that I would know how to play his part, I became
aware that Josh was more interested in embodying the role and
motivations of the prepossessing older brother. He was not
interested in talking about the younger brother’s experience. I
was, at this point in our work together, quite familiar with the
role of younger brother and gave voice to “my” experience of
frustration at not having and not being able to get what the
older brother had. I sputtered angrily, I pouted, and I bitterly
complained about the state of being small.
I a lso suggested that the younger brother might feel
embarrassed to be seen as so angry and upset–that he was mad
about wanting so much, upset to be seen as wanting, and possibly
embarrassed to be caught trying to take what he wanted. I knew
that these more abstract comments would not have the same
effect as those which could be expressed within the play. But I
wanted at least to hint at a move from the play to Josh’s
experience of having taken the knife from my playroom.
At this point in the hour, Josh turned from the knife drama
and suggested that we play a board game that is intended for
older children. I explained that the game might be difficult,
but Josh was insistent. So we set about playing. He quickly grew
frustrated and voiced his fear that he was going to lose. At one
point, as I moved a game piece toward the finish line and it
seemed that I was going to win, Josh muttered, “Faggot.”
 Faggot = Loser 11
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There was a pause. Eventually, I said, “I guess you really

wanted to win.”3
Josh tersely replied, “It’s just a word.”
There was another pause, and then he added, “My brother
calls me that.”
I said, “I see.” Then I asked, “Why does he say that?”
Josh responded, “I don’t know.”
I said, “You don’t know. But how do you feel when Jed calls
you that?”
“Mad,” Josh answered.


3
My thoughts and feelings reeled in several directions at this point. I
experienced the stunned blankness of injury, while simultaneously attempting
to regain my footing in order to ref lect on what had occurred. As is so often
the case through the force of projection, I found myself weighing the
correctness of the accusation/attribution: Had he perceived that I was gay?
Had I somehow been a “faggot” in winning an unfair competition? Was I a
“faggot” for trying to empathize with his experience?
In yet another, neighboring region of my mind, I came up against my anxiety
over being a man who works with children, and an openly gay one at that.
Recently, a father of another child, in a moment of intense feeling, expressed
his concern that I was a pedophile. Stunned and stung, I once again felt the
force of hate. And, once again, I weighed the hateful perception: Did he
understand that I was gay, and did he therefore make the unfounded and
irrational link with pedophilia? Had I expressed some inappropriate degree
of affection for his child? (I recalled touching his son’s head in the waiting
room as I said goodbye). We came to understand that this “moment of hate”
(the father’s phrase) was born of the father’s env y of my apparent ease with
children and my willingness to engage them at their level. We came also to
understand that he did suspect that I was gay (a fact that was then confirmed
when aspects of my private life were made public in a newspaper article). In
the spirit of our psychotherapeutic endeavor, we worked with his projections
and perceptions to understand better his relationship with his son, and in
this respect our work was not extraordinary.
There is, however, an extraordinary vulnerability for men working with
children, which is even greater for gay men working with children. This
vulnerability is overdetermined and highly idiosyncratic, and this is not the
juncture at which to address this phenomenon in detail. I will simply note
that my experience has led me to ref lect on how this vulnerability, built as it
has been on my own experience of being hated, requires a particular kind of
countertransference forebearance—a particular capacity to sustain multiple
states of mind that allows me to experience the shame of being hated while
simultaneously (or most likely retrospectively) thinking through the shame of
being hated.
12 Ken Corbett


I said, “It’s a word that makes you mad. It sort of stings, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Josh replied.
“When Jed calls you that, do you also feel bad–sort of small
and bad?” I asked.
Josh nodded.
I added, “Sort of like me in the blue knife game.”
Josh nodded again.
I ventured that he might feel hurt and mad when he was put
down.
He concurred, saying, “I hate him. He thinks he’s the boss of
everything.”
I replied, “Your brother sure does make you mad,” and then
I added, “But do you think you also might want to be like him–
big like him? And be close to him? Like in the blue knife game?”
Josh allowed that he was mad but was insistent that he did
not like his brother nor did he wish to be like him.
I asserted here that it was hard to figure out how to be big,
especially if you have a big brother and an even bigger father.
At this point, Josh asked to play a game that had become a
mainstay of his repertoire. We called this game “Block Tower
Baseball.” Josh was the batter. I was alternately the fielder and
the sports announcer, who would interv iew Josh about his
accomplishments at bat. The interviews would focus on his
prowess and his strength. He would swagger over to the mike
and grant terse recognition of my laudatory comments.
Today, as usual, Josh built a block tower and then toppled it
with a large, long block. The number of runs scored was equal
to the number of blocks that fell. Grand slams were especially
sought after and would necessitate an “instant interview.” Early
into today’s game, Josh scored a grand slam. During the instant
interview, I suggested that he wanted to show those blocks “who
was big–the big boss.” He puffed up his chest and said, “Yep.”
During this phase of the treatment, I made only occasional
links between Josh’s experience in the play and his own family
experience. I felt it best to wait for him to provide such linking.
It was some time before these links were made. When he did
make these links, I believe they followed, in large measure, on
work I did with his parents (which I describe later). Poignantly,
when Josh did begin to speak more directly about his father
and brother, he exclaimed at one point, “They don’t understand.
I wanted to be the biggest.”
 Faggot = Loser 13
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I have purposely chosen an hour from the beginning of Josh’s

treatment to illustrate how the dilemma of bigness was expressed
and solved through splitting: one was either big or small, strong
or weak, a winner or a loser. Firm lines were drawn. Josh spent
much of his time during this period of his treatment struggling
either to represent bigness and strength or to win bigness and
strength–even if it had to be stolen. Loss was strictly managed.
Play was rigidly scripted, so that loss was always on the other
side. Such scripting required a loser, the role to which I was
consistently assigned (as in the blue knife drama). When loss
did occur (as in the board game), it was shed and turned outward
– projected into the other. In the course of this hour, loss was
expelled by the projectile, “Faggot.” Josh was not the loser. I
was the faggot.
The displacement of the painful anxiety and loss was aided
by a “simultaneous strategy of (dis)identificatory aversion and
buttressing identification” (Moss, 1992, p. 286). Loss was lodged
in another, as Josh moved toward a valued (though clearly
conf licted) identification with his brother. He stole “faggot”
from his brother, just as he strove to steal what he saw as his
brother’s strength. A similar identificatory move can be noted
in his apparent wish to appropriate what he saw as my strength
(or to take a valued part of me) in his act of taking the play
knife. This dynamic is then repeated in the blue knife drama
wherein I, as younger brother, was instructed to try to steal the
older brother’s knife. Such identificatory maneuvers allowed
Josh to locate smallness and loss on the other side, while he
positioned himself on the side of victory and bigness. In so
doing, he repeatedly strove to create a distinct border between
a small and defeated “you” and a big and victorious “me.”
But borders need constant patrol. As Moss aptly reminds us,
“The (dis)identificatory border is porous” (p. 285). The anxieties
that are to be averted through (dis)identification have a way
of sneaking back. “Sneaking” is operative here; the manner
in which the anxieties sneak back is in keeping with the
“sneakiness” of the act of identification. Josh sneaks toward
identification through various acts of appropriation and stealing.
Identification is never fully claimed, is even denied. If he were
to identify openly with a winner, he might risk being a loser
(risk being small and in need) or risk the possibility that winning
and losing can exist outside a dynamic of splitting.
14 Ken Corbett


Instead, Josh made repeated and consistent efforts to define

the border and to sustain the split. He was a vigilant border
guard, persistently fending off the anxiety of losing. Our roles
as winner and loser were rigidly defined and controlled. The
“play” in play was burdened by his rigid and paranoid vigilance.
I often experienced the insistent thrust and grip of domination.
At times my every move was controlled, and I was not allowed
to voice anything other than that which was scripted by Josh.
To further aid and abet his border patrol, Josh repeatedly
inf lated his bigness and strength. Consider how he moved to
Block Tower Baseball following his loss at the board game. The
goal of his performance in the baseball game was adoration.
Ross (1986) has linked such performances with machismo: “It
is a dance whose aim it is to be applauded. The exhibitor
reassures himself of the viability of his pretenses to virility while
others ref lect back to him and, in the process, magnify his
machismo” (p. 65). Josh enacted a macho victory in Block Tower
Baseball through a kind of tumescent hammering.
Not only did he seek through such acts to bolster his bigness,
but he also sought to disavow his experience of loss. He would
not allow any expression of caring or empathy in the face of
defeat; to do so, he would have to cross the win–lose divide. He
might also have to see himself as small and in need. Remember
that he moved to Block Tower Baseball after I offered my
thoughts about the difficulty he was experiencing relative to
his quest to be big. In response, he became the big, hard victor,
and not the small, soft baby.

PHALLIC NARCISSISM—
PHALLIC ILLUSION

The exhibitionistic vigor and desire for adoration that fueled

Josh’s performance is not unusual for a boy his age. Nor is it
particularly unusual for a boy this age to engage in play that is
colored by a kind of machismo or aggrandized exhibitionism
and active pleasure. Such machismo is often set in direct
opposition to smallness or babyness. As one boy put it to me
recently, “Who wants to be the stupid baby!” Along similar lines,
I am repeatedly struck by the amount of derision and abuse
 Faggot = Loser 15


that befalls the baby doll in my office as boys seek to distance

themselves from it.4
I am focusing here on the defensive aspects of boyhood
bravado. I hope at another juncture to address this phenomenon
more fully and to consider what might be called the positive
valence of such exhibitionistic vigor. Who among us has not
been charmed by the phallic posturing of young boys? These
exhibitions are, after all, often presented as acts of seduction:
“Look at me, and admire me as the bigness that you desire.”
One would be positively churlish—and would deprive oneself of
the pleasure of being the admirer/desirer—always to resist.
Moreover, as befits acts of seduction, however clumsy and
lacking in finesse, these exhibitions are shot through with the
vitality of yearning and a quest toward relating.
Josh’s desire for admiration was, however, burdened by an
unusual degree of vigor and vigilance. The seductive arc of his
play was interrupted by his persistent anxiety regarding the
possibility of loss. In this way, Josh affords us an enhanced or
exaggerated view of a set of dynamics that have been said to
characterize the psychic terrain of boyhood. Historically, these
dy namics have been t heor ized th rough t he cla ssica l
psychoanalytic vocabulary of castration and phallic narcissism.
T his vocabular y ha s been persua sively c r it iqued and
characterized as fossilized–a wooly mammoth trapped midstride
in Miocene ooze. Yet I still find particular aspects of the classical
vocabulary (despite its hardened lapses and crusty gaps) to have
a certain utility.
I find this classical vocabulary to be necessary but insufficient.
While I employ the concepts of phallic narcissism and castration,
I am mindful of their limits. To name a few: these concepts (1)
circulate in a discourse that promotes a narrowed focus on the
penis as opposed to locating the boy’s relationship to his penis
(both in pleasure and conf lict) within the broader bodily
eroticism that more aptly characterizes boyhood; (2) promote
phallic monism; (3) encourage a view that elides gender and


4
See Ross (1996), who argues that such behavior is in line with boys’ efforts
to disavow their longings to be a mother or a mother’s baby.
16 Ken Corbett


the sexed body; (4) highlight children’s experiences of difference

while virtually ignoring their experiences of similarity; (5) prize
the developmental achievements of activity while overlooking
t he development a l possibi l it ies of pa ssiv it y; and (6)
overemphasize boys’ conf licts with genital difference (penis–
vagina) while underestimating their conf licts with generational
difference (big–small).
Regarding generational difference, my experience in working
with young boys suggests that this conf lict is often far more
pronounced than the conf licts they experience around genital
difference. The issue is not so much who has a penis and who
does not, but who has a big, agentic penis and who does not.
Along these lines, I have often found the notion of penis envy
to be more useful in thinking about male development than
about female development.
Given these caveats (considerable though they be), the
concepts of phallic narcissism and castration fear can still be
utilized to understand what might be called the phallic quest
that pervaded the hour I have just reported. An especially
intriguing expression of this quest can be found in the symbolism
and function of the knife. To begin, the knife is pocketed. It is
literally and repeatedly put into a pocket: presumably, Josh
pocketed the knife when taking it from the office; he produces
the knife from his pocket in the waiting room; the older brother
in the blue knife drama offers a tempting display of the knife
in his rear pocket. Calling to mind Mae West’s famous quip,
Josh simultaneously draws our attention to the penis and
accentuates his own narcissistic interest in it. This narcissistic
interest is further expressed in the ways in which the knife is an
object of desire. It is displayed as a taunting and desired object
that is out of reach. One either has it, or tries to get it. There is
a sadistic edge to this taunting, narcissistic display. But never in
the game does the knife become a weapon, nor is it ever wielded
in a threatening manner.
The desirability of the knife contrasts with the way in which
the block-bat in the baseball game serves as an instrument of
attack. This shift, which occurs following Josh’s loss at the board
game, might be understood as a move from phallic narcissistic
interest or desire (the blue knife) to a sadistic, phallic defense
(the block-bat) in the face of loss. The projectile force of the
word faggot can be understood along similar lines: “faggot”
 Faggot = Loser 17


functions, like the block-bat, to strike at and fend off the threat
of loss.
The knife was “pocketed” in yet another manner: it was stolen,
once from my office, and again in the many attempts at stealing
that became the heart of the knife game. As such, the penis can
be taken. Here we might question whether Josh was enacting
his fear of castration or his feeling that, in order to have the
phallus, he would have to steal it from another. The need to
steal could be interpreted as generated by castration.
Along these lines, addressing his push toward appropriation
proved most helpful in addressing Josh’s anxiety. I worked to
understand how his quest for phallic agency had been curtailed
within his family: how he had not been afforded opportunities
to consolidate the bodily and erotic pleasures that characterize
phallic activity. We spoke of this dilemma as his “wish to be
big” versus his “worry that he wouldn’t have a chance to get
big.” For example, I pointed toward the way in which he so often
dominated the play as indicative of his “worry that I might take
over” or “that I won’t let you be the one who gets to lead.”
I also sought to understand how he had not been provided
with equa l ly important opportunities to metabolize his
experiences of loss, and I began to comment on his efforts to
avoid or disavow loss. We spoke mostly of these efforts as
“cheating,” but with time we were able to speak more directly
about how he tried to “act big” when he lost at something like a
game.
I sought to locate his phallic quest and his efforts to equilibrate
pleasure and loss within certain family dynamics: his father’s
frequent absences, his mother’s anger and anxiety, and his
competition with his brother. A vantage point on this dynamic
was offered through the recurrent play themes of stealing and
spying. Recall that the older brother in the knife game was a
spy and that the younger brother was attempting to steal the
older spy/brother’s knife. I understood this play to be a
portrayal of the older brother’s ability to see into another world
and, through that act of seeing, to garner power, authority, and
autonomy. The powerless younger brother, on the other hand,
could only attempt to steal the phallus, and fail.
Following Britton (1989) and Fonagy and Target (1996a, b), I
approached this theme as an expression of Josh’s experience of
oedipal triangulation. As the fourth, Josh stood outside the
18 Ken Corbett


triangle of his mother-father-brother–outside the triangle of the

first family. He was having great difficulty creating his own
useable oedipal triangle. From the sidelines, he repeatedly
enacted a dynamic of thwarted rivalry, which usually consisted
of efforts to steal power through a kind of intrusive, illusory
agenc y. He had l imited exper ience wit h tr iang ular
opportunities, either as a participant in a relationship being
observed by another or as an observer of a relationship between
two others. Consequently, his world was made secure, not
through the creation of a benign space wherein one could be
observed or thought about, but through relations that were
rigidly controlled and dominated. He attempted to engage
others through a kind of physicality and aggression as opposed
to the possibilities of mentalization and observation (cf. Fonagy,
Moran, and Target, 1993). His aggression and quest for phallic
strength were not balanced through object cathexis or through
the equilibrative experience of pleasure and loss that is
characteristic of triangular opportunities. Instead, his aggression
ran amok.
To a large extent, when he entered treatment, Josh felt his
brother to be his only usable object–an object, however, who
could neither promote nor tolerate such object use, especially
given its destructive and libidinal reach. Josh’s relationship with
his brother, both as enacted in the play and as it was lived in
daily life, provided me with something of a bridge to engage
Josh’s parents in a therapeutic dialogue about his experience
of neglect. To a considerable extent, the therapeutic action that
developed in working with Josh occurred within this parental
dialogue.
In particular, I set out to understand the effects of his father’s
absence and his mother’s anxiety. In conjunction with work
undertaken in the course of their couples treatment, the parents
began to grasp how the father’s absence made manifest a
growing alienation within the couple. That insight led to the
further understanding that, as they turned away from each other,
they also turned away from their children. Left with two parents,
each absent in his or her way, Josh was without parental objects
that he could actively use. As I indicated earlier, this parental
absence was further manifested in the overburdened and
explosive sibling relationship.
 Faggot = Loser 19


Additionally, once again, through work done principally in

couples treatment, the mother began to question whether she
was depressed. We were able to see how she had moved into an
avoidant position whence she felt great injustice and limited
capacity to change. She could feel especially “helpless” and “in
the dark” with the children and spoke of her guilt over leaving
Josh to the care of his older brother. Both parents felt it likely
that her depression predated the father’s acceptance of his
current job and that they had most likely concurred in his taking
the job as a way to avoid facing her depression. The mother
entered her own psychotherapy and sought psychopharmaco-
logical treatment as well.
The parents’ increased understanding along these lines led
the father to curtail his travel schedule in order to be at home
more, a move that appeared motivated by his wish to recoup his
marriage and be more available to his children. In addition,
both parents arranged to spend more time with Josh on their
own. I persisted, though, with both parents to draw them into
an understanding of Josh’s needs on the plane of psychic action.
We worked in a manner that was sometimes psychoeducational
and at other times more dynamic.
Underscoring my efforts was my conviction that Josh needed
parents he could actively use. I explained that I thought it likely
that his aggression and anxiety stemmed, at least in part, from
neglect. I encouraged the parents to more directly contain and
redress Josh’s anxiety and aggression. We worked toward their
being able to speak with Josh about his behavior and help him
give voice to his fears so that he could see himself as well. For
example, as opposed to simply intervening in order to stop the
boys from fighting, I worked with the parents to help them “scan”
the situation: What was it about the circumstances that provoked
the fight? What was it about the arc of the day? What might
have provoked or upset Josh? In particular, had something
happened that might lead to his feeling diminished or
humiliated? If so, might there be a way to recover?
By helping the parents to focus on Josh’s experience, I sought
to invite them into considering his mind: What did they think
was on his mind? How did his mind look–was it crowded by
anxiety, was it open? What were the contents of his mind? How
might his generally aggressive outwardness cloud his capacity
20 Ken Corbett


to look inward? Through such questioning, I was attempting to

illustrate how children come into their minds through processes
of mutuality and intersubjective recognition. Guided here by
Benjamin’s (1988) documentation of the ways in which the
breakdown of mother–son mutuality can lead to sadism and
violence, I was especially keen to promote greater mutuality
between Josh and his mother. Key to our work in this regard
were discussions about how the mother’s fear of loss (the fear
that she had lost hold of herself and her family) had interfered
with her ability to “tune into” Josh’s experience; instead of
engaging his anxiety, talking about his fears, and helping him
to mentalize his mind, she had defensively drawn into herself
and away from his mind.
Along similar lines, I posed Josh’s need to observe others in
order to be able to see himself. I suggested that in so seeing he
would come to appreciate the potential for relationships as well
as the optimistic possibility of growth. We worked together to
understand how his aggression often masked his anxiety about
losing. I ventured that Josh needed help with being able to lose
and that thirdness offered such an opportunity. (I posed
thirdness as a triangle, and we used this image to visualize
looking from one point toward the others.) Through thirdness,
loss can simultaneously be experienced (observing others from
outside, not inside; observing big others from the position of
smallness) and recovered (being observed by others who are
optimistic about one’s growth). Josh was small in relation to his
parents and brother, and there was real loss in such recognition.
He stood outside the exclusivity of his parents’ relationship.
Yet his smallness included the promise of growth and could be
obser ved wit h opt imism. Such obser vat ion, and t he
mentalization it affords, is also colored by the optimism of
parent–child mutuality.
In the course of my work with Josh’s parents, a theme evolved
regarding their diff iculty in sustaining such parent–child
optimism. This theme had a familiar ring; I had encountered it
with other parents of young boys. Both parents pointed to their
difficulty in remaining open and optimistic to the possibilities
of knowing Josh’s mind (and promoting mentalization) in the
face of his persistent activity and aggression. Parental fatigue is
a commonplace. Nonetheless, my work with the parents of young
boys suggests that there may be a particular brand of fatigue
 Faggot = Loser 21


that Josh’s mother summarized rather well, “Sometimes I want

to either smack him or collapse. Given the choice, I collapse.”
In a similar vein, many parents of young boys speak about their
diff iculty maintaining their own psychic equilibrium and
parental containing capacity in the face of their sons’ aggression.
Indeed, the phrase, “boys will be boys” intones a degree of
resignation in the face of boys’ aggression. Might this be one of
the reasons that young boys are neglected (or, alternatively,
abused)? Do we tire as a consequence of the diligence required
to pursue and cathect boys’ aggression and activity? Does this
dynamic of aggression and fatigue then reinforce boys’ moves
toward a less ref lective and more physical mode of relating?
Along these lines, consider Fonagy et al.’s (1993) hypothesis
that, if a child’s expression is consistently experienced as aggres-
sion (provoking either an aggressive or a def lective response),
a psychological self cannot develop. Aggression then becomes
fused with self-expression, and mental contents (thoughts,
desires) are expressed and managed physically, not psychically.
The parents’ struggle with optimism notwithstanding, they
did become more active and usable. This development allowed
me greater f lexibility in what I could draw on in the transference
and, in turn, the extent to which Josh would allow me to enter
into a therapeutic relationship beyond domination. For example,
I was better able to speak about his anxiety regarding his own
agency and opportunities to grow: Would there be room for
him to get big? Could there be room for me to be big? Could he
leave room for me to play? Could he be a winner sometimes
and a loser at other times?
But perhaps most important of all, I could begin to take up
his anxiety about losing/smallness and the ways in which he
defended against it. First, it was important to understand Josh’s
experience of humiliation and loss at being small (the baby)
and the ways in which he was so often forced to recognize that
he would never be the biggest (the oldest). Daily occurrences
brought this reality home: differing bed times, differing
allowances, differing kinds of permission relative to activities
outside the home (the fact that his brother could ride the subway
alone was an especially bitter pill). In this vein, we worked toward
understanding that Josh could not change the reality of his
family; he would always be the youngest. He could, however,
have an independent mind and body of his own that would be
22 Ken Corbett


recognized and prized. The ways in which he was unique could

be seen and appreciated (for example, he began to practice golf
with his father and bake with his mother, and his special abilities
in these areas were noted within the family).
As Josh’s predominating quest toward bigness and victory
lessened, so did his defensive machismo. Fears of smallness and
inadequacy emerged, as did anxiety about separation. Loss could
be recognized and felt. Less driven in his efforts to fortify his
phallic narcissism and to subjugate his own passive longings,
he could both allow for and extend empathy. A loss at a game
might occasion a request for a “do over” or an inquiry that would
lead to a better understanding of the directions. As Phillips
(1995) reminds us, Oedipus was ingenious enough to turn his
losses into gains, whereas Narcissus was not (p. 79). Losses were
also sometimes followed, at this point, by a shift in activity
requiring that I be the one in the lead, such as reading a book.
In this (nonverbal) regard we were able to address his defense
against the pleasures of smallness–the pleasure of surrender to
the care and ministrations of a big other (Ghent, 1990).

BOYS WILL BE BOYS

Josh’s experience highlights how many boys default to the

narcissistic cathexis of their penis (however illusory or inf lated)
over the libidinal cathexis of their parents. Such defensive
cathexis is aided by the aggressive protest and bravado that is
characteristic of machismo. As Person (1986) indicates, “the
fundamental sexual problem for boys is the struggle to achieve
phallic strength and power vis-à-vis other men” (p. 72). In a
discussion of masculinity and violence, Chodorow (1998) makes
a similar point when she suggests that “[f]or some men, and in
some cultures, masculinity is cast as an adult-child dichotomy:
being an adult man versus being a little boy; being humiliated
by other men” (p. 35). The struggle is to be big, not small. The
preser vation of bigness (qua phallic strength) is posed as
virtually equivalent to masculinity. To be a man is to be big. To
be big is to have more power than other men. To keep that
power (to stay big) requires the denial of smallness and the
pleasures of smallness–this too is understood as equivalent to
masculinity.
 Faggot = Loser 23


This picture of masculinity was given its inaugural and

perhaps best expression in Freud’s (1937) ref lections on the
“psychological strata” of masculinity:
We often have the impression that with the . . . masculine
protest [against passive desire toward another man] we have
penetrated through all the psychological strata and have
reached bedrock, and that thus our activities are at an end.
This is probably true, since, for the psychical f ield, the
biological field does in fact play the part of the underlying
bedrock [p. 252].
Masculinity, as Freud would have it, ends or concludes with
protest. And, while he took note of the defensive character of
this protest, which he described as the repudiation of femininity
and a manifestation of castration anxiety, he nevertheless
concluded that efforts to analyze this protest were in vain. Such
fear composes masculinity. It is bedrock. It is beyond reach.
“Bedrock” seems appropriate to machismo–a rigid solution
that will brook no penetr ation; anxiety that cannot be
questioned. But is it bedrock, or did Freud accede to the limits
of a phallic narcissistic solution and thereby mistake this illusory
solution for the foundation of masculinity? As opposed to
recognizing that this is but one course that masculinity could
take, Freud cast this as the masculine course.
Freud too quickly foreclosed the question of masculine strata.
In a way, he gave up on men. He encased them in bedrock.
Fossilized, men were cast as lacking the empathy, capacity for
surrender, and nurturant ability that are needed to relate to
others outside a dynamic of domination. According to this
model, men’s narcissistic cathexis of their penises and their quest
for phallic agency/strength trumps their relational needs.
Along with placing a limit on how we might entertain the
psychic terrain of masculinity, this model also does not leave us
in a position to understand and redress certain socia l
consequences that follow on this male struggle to achieve power
vis-à-vis other men. For example, if we accept this masculine
limitation, must we also accept the sadistic and narcissistic
consequences of masculine protest? As is well known, perhaps
more in life than in theory, men and boys are often easily
provoked into defending the honor of their masculinity through
24 Ken Corbett


violent means. Yesterday’s duels bleed into today’s drive-by

shootings. The ravages of such sadistic master y have an
ignominious history. Included in this history is the hate and
v iolence employed by men to defend the honor of their
masculinity from the perceived threat of loss that is associated
with homosexuality. Such hate and violence have often been
considered as constitutive of masculinity; they are among the
ways in which boys will be boys.

FROM DIFFUSE DEFENSE TO SPECIFIC HATRED

I have been concerned within this essay with the diffuse use of
“faggot” to mean loser. I turn now to consider how this diffuse
use of the word faggot may develop toward a more specific form
of hatred: homophobia. Historically, the subjectivity of male
homosexuals has been theorized around the trope of loss: the
losses both of masculinity and of power (mirroring the central
tropes of the psychoanalytic theorization of masculinity). The
loss of ma sculinit y is conf ig ured on the homosexua l’s
experience of passivity in relation to other men: passivity =
femininity = loss. The loss of power is configured according to
the homosexual’s assumed relinquishing of power to another
man: passivity = smallness = loss.
The pleasures of gay male passive oral and anal sex have
historically been represented with a kind of fantastic intensity
as feminine, impotent, grotesque, unnatural, pathological, even
sinful (Boswell, 1980; Foucault, 1985; Bersani, 1989; Halperin,
1989; Corbett, 1993). A penetrated man is looked upon as
powerless, sullied, unmanly, and immoral. As Foucault (1985)
and Halperin (1989) have pointed out, the only “honorable”
male sexual behav ior (and I would add fantasy) is active
penetration. Activity, and the assumed underlying fantasy of
domination, is held to be equivalent to authority.
Prostrate and prone, the homosexual has become a cultural
site of loss (Bersani, 1989; Crimp, 1989)—a cultural condition
or position that has been fortified and sanctioned, as well as
obscured, by the cultural ego ideal of macho sexuality. Despite
the great variety of cultural idioms through which male
homosexuality is expressed, including the dominant role of the
macho clone in contemporar y gay culture, homosexuals
continue to be v iewed as feminine and sma l l. As such,
 Faggot = Loser 25


homosexuals are both feared objects of loss (pitiful) and

repositories for the fear of loss (condemned): bogeyman losers.
While anxiety about loss (like all anxiety) always begins at
home (like all bogeymen), it eventually moves into the outside
world. Consider how boys use “faggot” in a manner that is
diffuse, and naïve about its customary meaning. In time,
however, they learn the customary meaning of “faggot” and more
knowingly understand its power to threaten. The threat of
“faggot” becomes a way to extol and inf late their own masculinity
as they (dis)identify from those boys they believe to be losers,
including those they believe to be homosexual.
We could further speculate that depending on the anxiety
aroused by their own internal homosexual desire, or the
heterosexual desires that they associate with homosexuality
(surrender and passivity), boys may learn to respond to such
anxiety through what Moss (1992) has identified as a “phobic
solution.” The offensive wish is projected into another. The
marked other is then hated.
We might chart the multiple consequences to these combined
narcissistic and phobic solutions as follows (while this list reads
as linear, these consequences do not unfold in a linear fashion):

1. Rigid distinctions between masculinity and femininity and

heterosexuality and homosexuality are constructed. A
hierarchy of value is placed on these distinctions.
2. Phallic monism rests on the hierarchical positioning of
masculinity as superior to femininity.
3. Phallic narcissistic solutions follow on the false demand of
phallic monism. Men and boys repeatedly enact a kind of
illusory/inf lated virility in order to sustain the hierarchical
rule of masculinity.
4. Gender seg regation (often fueled by sadistic phallic
defenses) follows on the hierarchical rule of masculinity.
5. Brittle narcissistic solutions must lean on and incorporate
other solutions , including phobic solutions, to further their
course.
6. By creating a homosexual “them” and a heterosexual “us,”
offensive homosexual wishes are displaced onto another.
7. Desires that infuse heterosexual relations, but are linked
with homosexuality (e.g., surrender and passivity), are
disavowed.
26 Ken Corbett


8. The other, the disavowed is hated.

9. Armed with hate, young men seek to reassure themselves
of the viability of their active heterosexual virility.
10. This virility is often amplified and distorted into an erotics
of mastery and subordination.
11. The pleasure of passivity and surrender is denied as activity
and power are aggrandized.
12. Pleasure is gained from triumphing over those who are
seen as passive and weak.

These solutions–both narcissistic and phobic–are held in place

by a number of cultural standard bearers, including the
insufficient psychoanalytic theorization of masculinity. Analysts
have mostly been content to let stand a theory of masculinity
that rests largely on narcissistic and phobic defenses. In making
this assertion I am not unmindful of significant reassessments
of the psychoanalytic theory of masculinity that have appeared
in the last two decades. For example, vital retheorization has
been undertaken within the feminist analysis of gender; of
particular note here are Benjamin (1988) and Chodorow’s (1989)
efforts to retheorize masculine subjectiv ity through their
examination of boys’ relationships with their mothers. In a
different register, Ross (1994) has reread and refashioned the
classical psychoanalytic theory of boyhood. By my assertion I
do mean to point toward the fact that these revisionist efforts
have had a limited clinical and cultural reach. This limitation
stands in marked contrast to the impact that the feminist
retheorization of female subjectivity has had, not only clinically
but also culturally.
Perhaps it has served us (clinically and culturally) to fossilize
men in a bedrock of protest and aggression. At the very least, it
serves men, who, after all, have largely been the ones who
theorize masculinity, to the extent that they do not have to take
responsibility for their hate and anxiety. Boys will be boys.
But perhaps such fatalism serves us all to the extent that we
do not have to participate in the difficult task of engaging boys
in a process of thirdness. If we abandon boys to biological
bedrock, we do not have to see ourselves simultaneously in
interaction with them while entertaining their points of view,
including their aggressive reach for agency and their anxious
turns from loss. We can funnel aggression and hate into boys
 Faggot = Loser 27


and men. We do not have to locate their hate and anxiety within
ourselves in order to ref lect on ourselves as we ref lect on them.
Instead, we make them brittle winners who are left to defend
against inevitable loss. Left to thrust and parry through the
aggressive protest of machismo. Left to make losers of us all.

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