Agency in Borderland Discourses

Abstract

It was not unusual for me, a white woman in my thirties, to walk up to the red brick row home in the middle of a block on a two-lane, one-way street in Center City, Philadelphia and see a group of young people hanging out on the four cement steps with wrought-iron railings on both sides and, while walking up the steps, hear one of them say to another, “‘Sup cunt?” Typically, although not always, it was a Black young man performing femininity (Butler 1989) or a male-to-female transgendered person offering such a greeting. The first few times I heard this I probably did not understand what was being said, but once I understood, I bristled at the use of the word “cunt.” Immediately I wanted to tell youth not to use that word because it insulted women. Over time, through many conversations with the youth, I came to understand the complicated ways in which these youth used this and many other words—words and ways of using them that together we came to call “Gaybonics.”