Sticks and Stones and Derogatory Labels
In my previous post, I discussed Ann Coulter's recent comments about 2008 presidential candidate, John Edwards, in which she implicates that Edwards is a 'faggot'. Some people have dismissed the controversy saying her comments were meant as a joke. Here's Tom Cloud from Time Magazine:
She didn't say "John Edwards is a faggot." She would never say that — not because she respects the rights of gays to full equality before the law (she doesn't) — but because it wouldn't be funny. Coulter wants to make people laugh more than anything; she is, as I have argued here, a right-wing ironist and comedienne as much as she is a political commentator. [full text here]
Even Coulter herself seems to be claiming it was a joke … sort of. According to CNN.com,
CNN has reached out to Coulter's representative, and received no response.
But the New York Times reported that she responded, in an e-mail, "C'mon, it was a joke. I would never insult gays by suggesting that they are like John Edwards. That would be mean." [full text here ]
I don't deny that she meant it as a joke and that it was even successful as a joke: Reports say there was "more than a smattering of laughter" after she said it. What seems to be lost in this view though is the harm that is done by the use of the word 'faggot'. Some will probably close their minds here convinced that I'm one of those bleeding-heart liberals. But this has nothing to do with politics at all but rather good science.
Everyone is probably familiar with the old saying "sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me." As children, this was how we were taught to respond when the neighborhood bully started calling us names [because bullies are known to cease their taunts in the face of such profound wisdom...]. And this saying remains with us throughout our lives as a sort of axiom. However, a couple of decades ago, a pair of psychologists decided to put this idea to the test. In particular, they wanted to see what kind of influence the use of derogatory ethnic labels might have on the attitudes of third-party observers towards the targets of those labels.
Greenberg and Pyszczynski (1985) did an experiment in which participants watched a debate between a black man and a white man and then afterward discussed which of the two won the debate. Unknown to the participants, one of the discussants was actually a confidant in the experiment. At some point during the post-debate discussion, the confidant would make the strong assertion, "There's no way that <x> won that debate!" In the experimental control condition, the <x> would be a unbiased referring expression such as guy. However, in the test condition, the <x> would be a derogatory ethnic label (i.e., nigger). The results were quite interesting. In the test condition, two observations were made. First, participants uniformly condemned the confidant for the racist remark. But in spite of that, they were still more likely than those in the control condition to negatively evaluate the black debater.
Greenberg and Pyszczynski conclude that derogatory ethnic labels activate stereotypes associated with the groups these labels target and these stereotypes influence our judgments of people in those groups. This occurs even if we do not actually believe the stereotypes. In this respect, just using derogatory ethnic labels in everyday speech may actually have harmful effects on ourselves, on others, and most of all on those who the labels target as well as their associates (Kirkland, et al., 1987). Their experiment focuses on ethnic labels, but I assume that the results would extend to other kinds of labels (sexuality, gender, etc.) [If any one has any evidence to suggest otherwise, I urge you to share it in the comments.]
Thus, Coulter's comment about Edwards is offensive because it targets homosexuals and does them harm. By using the term, the stereotypes about homosexuals are activated in the minds of the audience members which then affect their judgments about these people later on.
I'm sure many of us do not want to believe that we would be so easily influenced, but the facts are what they are. So while Coulter's comments may accurately be portrayed as a joke, one cannot therefore conclude that they are harmless.