Jay Smooth on reclaiming terms that aren’t directed toward you

UPDATED with a transcript after the jump.

They thought they could use “no homo” without it being anti-gay.
One of my favorite things about hip-hop is our everlasting love of language. One of my least favorite things about hip-hop is our everlasting fear of being gay. So I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that one of our favorite slang terms combines our tremendous passion for wordplay with our tremendous insecurity about sexuality.
The “no homo” phenomenon is an old thing. A sad, old thing. But it’s still a new thing to a lot of people. So as a public service, I will now present a brief history of “no homo.”
The phrase “no homo” is a defense mechanism used by young men who are not only afraid of being gay or looking gay, they are actually afraid that the words they speak might sound linguistically gay. “No homo” was first popularized by New York’s Dipset crew, led by the rapper Cam’ron, who was known for being clever with words and also for wearing a lot of pink, who wanted to be absolutely certain that nobody inferred anything from that. Since Dipset’s fan base is largely made up of hip-hop bloggers like myself, who also tend to love playing with words while feeling insecure about our geekiness, the blog world quickly fell in love with “no homo,” and got into a neverending contest to see who could use it the most often and in the most outlandish ways.
At this point a lot of people who didn’t intend it to be homophobic were still attracted to the comedic device and the absurdity of it, and they felt like they could use “no homo” without being anti-gay. Some people argue that when they take it to such a silly extreme, they are really critiquing and satirizing homophobia, instead of promoting it.
So the question is how do you decide when, if ever, to play the “no homo” game? Me personally, I’ve always been in the anti-“no homo” camp. I felt like it was offensive no matter how you said it. But I have to admit that whenever I have a conversation about it, I always get tempted to start playing the game, even when I’m in the middle of rejecting and denouncing it. And I can tell myself that I’m only saying it to make fun of people who really say it, and I’m with my friends, and I know that they know that I don’t mean it like that. So it’s just harmless fun.
But then once you start it gets really hard to stop. You find yourself saying it every 10 seconds for the rest of the night, and you don’t really remember why you started saying it. You tell yourself you can stop any time, but the truth is, you are now a “no homo” addict! Don’t let this happen to you.
I’m not gonna say that nobody should ever say it. It’s just like every word, you gotta judge on a case by case basis. But as a general rule, if you’re not the original target of an insult, you can’t be the one to reclaim it. And nine times out of ten, if you’re not sure you should use it, you probably shouldn’t. Plus, it’s like five years old and it’s kinda played out.
So if you’ve never heard of “no homo” before you saw this video, just forget I brought it up. Forget it ever came out of my mouth… I’m not gonna say it.