[0xcde4c3db]

For those who aren't familiar, Smear the Queer is a playground game in which one person has to keep a ball away from the rest of the group, who tries to tackle them. It's sort of like a cross between "reverse tag" and gridiron/rugby football.

(The gay-bashing element is just a metaphor, you see.)

[JohnBooty]

This game has many, many regional names. I heard it called "smear the queer" but we usually called it other names.

It's semi-interesting, though, that the "queer" was the one with the ball.

It took serious guts to be the "queer" for any length of time - after all, it was you vs. everybody else trying to tackle you. The kids who spent the most time with the ball were the fastest, toughest kids. So "queer" was a slur but also, the "queer" was the fast/strong/brave one.

Of course, there are many regional variations. It sounds like in some places, there was no ball involved, and "smear the queer" was just a name for an ass-beating.

I detest this slur now, and I hate that I used to use words like that as jokes/insults. Today I would be fighting alongside my gay friends against folks using those words.

[Pfhreak]

Queer, in particular, is a tough one. Obviously, smear the queer is an awful name for a game. And while queer has a century of being use pejoratively, it's also been adopted as a label by some lgbtq+ folks like myself (often as a way to be more politically forward than using the safer "LGBT" label).

You'll find that there really isn't consensus around the use of queer as an identity -- some in the community hate it, others love it. There's a lot to unpack in its history, and it's continuing to evolve every year.

[JohnBooty]

Yeah. That term that should... probably not be used by folks outside the community, for the reasons you say. LGBT* is probably a safer and more inclusive alternative, so I don't see any real reason for folks outside the community to throw "queer" around. (Aside from perhaps discussions about the term itself, like this one)

That aside, the near-total reclamation of that slur by the LGBT community is such an interesting topic. I can't think of any other slurs that have been quite so fully reclaimed.

I would probably say that positive/neutral use of the term outweighs negative use like 10 to 1 at this point. Maybe 50 to 1.

[acomjean]

In middlesex county massachusetts in the late 70s, early 80s we called it "kill the carrier". Rough game, I dislocated my elbow playing it. It was a wonder anyone picked up that ball.

[hnick]

"Kill the dill with the pill" in my school in Australia.

[JohnBooty]

Ah! I think we knew it by that name as well. Also: "kill the guy with the ball"... I think... "every man for himself football", the aforementioned regrettable "smear the queer" and "roughie-up" was apparently a very local name for it. Everybody had so many different names for it, I think everybody knew at least a handful of them!

It was sort of unique that way. I didn't know any other game that had dozens of totally unconnected names.

[parsimo2010]

The "queer" in the game's name probably means odd, not homosexual. As in the person holding the ball is the odd one, and everyone should try to hit them. That doesn't stop people from misinterpreting it, since queer mostly means homosexual or some other sexual minority. It's slightly more pessimistic to think that the game is teaching our kids to kill homosexuals vs. some undefined oddness.

[Barrin92]

> It's slightly more pessimistic to think that the game is teaching our kids to kill homosexuals vs. some undefined oddness.

not by much, because even taken literally creating a game around the fact of beating up the odd member of a group isn't exactly what I'd consider a great pedagogical concept

[bhfasdhjgdgsuyv]

Lol so when I was getting my ass beat in middle school for sounding a bit effeminate during a game of "smear the queer" it was just because I was "odd". That must be why the called me a faggot too.

[klyrs]

Same. In my experience, this "game" was only "played" targeting femme boys (or in my case, "boys"), and never with their consent. But if we'd hide behind a teacher the mob would be all "oh it's just a game" and more often than not the teacher would try to goad the victim into playing. Fuck that

[bhfasdhjgdgsuyv]

Yup. I learned pretty early on that telling the teacher would only make the beatings worse.

For all of those reading that think this is ancient history; I'm 27 and went to school in a city more progressive and accepting than any in America.

[ed25519FUUU]

Yep and not just gay. The nerds, fat, awkward, people who spoke with a lisp. Basically a way to identify anyone not in the “in group” and punish them.

[imesh]

In my experience the game was played by someone punting the ball in the air and the person chose to become the target by grabbing the ball. We used to rush to grab the ball, it was a way to prove your toughness, by how long you could last as the target.

I do not discount your experiences at all, homophobia was still prevalent in my elementary and middle school and I also graduated in a liberal state in 2008.

[bhfasdhjgdgsuyv]

Oh for sure, but at the same time queer in the context of the game didn't mean a generic 'odd', divorced from homophobia. At least by middle school, the kids knew that it meant gay and that gay was bad. Hell, we snickered at the world gay singing Christmas carols in 3rd grade. Using it as an excuse to beat my queer ass was a consequence of that, but I'm sure they would have invented another if the game didn't exist.

[parsimo2010]

If you were getting beat up for the way you sound, that was regular homophobia, not the game. In smear the queer, you only get chased and tackled if you have the ball; if you get tackled you throw the ball away and someone else gets it and everyone chases the new person. What you described does not sound like a game of smear the queer.

[klyrs]

Kids games have a lot of regional differences. I don't deny the existence of the game you describe, but I and others were beaten up by crowds of bullies yelling "smear the queer" with no ball to be seen.

[bhfasdhjgdgsuyv]

So when the other kids got chased and everyone called them faggots and queers it wasn't the game either? Or it was the game and 'faggot' isn't homophobic?

No, the game itself it homophobic, and everyone who played it knew or was learning exactly what everyone meant by queer, and it certainly wasn't 'odd'.

[JohnBooty]

Anecdotal, but even as kids in the early 80s we understood "queer" was "gay" and therefore "bad."

(I absolutely hate that this was ever the case! Wish I had a clue back then)

There was no literal gay element to the game (in our town) but it was still a very hateful name for the game. The message was clear: when you had the ball, you were "queer" and therefore the bad guy and so therefore everybody chased you.

That said, we typically called the game by other names. It had a different name in every town and neighborhood, it seemed. I think we only called it "smear the queer" when we were trying to explain it to kids from elsewhere... it was called "roughie-up" where we lived, but that was apparently hyperlocal, so if the kid was from out of town he might have known it as "smear the queer."

[textfiles]

Here is a citation in 1981 describing the game and absolutely not related to the term "odd".

https://archive.org/details/BAR_19810115?q=%22Smear+the+Quee...

[dragonwriter]

That is, obviously, a homophobic “game”; I suspect it is newer than the ball game of the same name, and probably the result of homophobes applying the name of the ballgame.

That article claims the homophobic, ball-free game was new in 1981, the ball game seems to be well established in 1969: https://www.postandcourier.com/free-times/archives/smear-the....

I don't see any reason to believe that “queer” in the ballgame has any connection to homosexuality.

[Pfhreak]

Queer was used to denote (pejoratively) a gay person starting in the late 19th century, and increasingly was used that way into the fifties and sixties. The term was later reclaimed by the queer community in the 80s, 90s, and aughts.

The term, particularly in the mood century, was absolutely used to describe gay people.

[dragonwriter]

I didn't say that I doubted that the use of the term to refer to gay people was current when the ball game was created. I said that I doubted that that’s the sense that was referenced in the name of the ball game.

The pejorative use to refer to gay people wasn't the dominant use of the term until, well, quite late in the 20th Century, and the structure of the game makes it a whole lot less likely that the reference was a pejorative reference to a sexual minority rather than simply the odd man out.

It's kind of like if you someone argued that the “ball” in the name of association football was a reference to testicles and not the main piece of equipment in the game. Sure, the word also was used that way at the time, but it doesn't make as much sense in context as the alternative, and without some evidence beyond the mere existence of the sense of the word it's not a particularly compelling explanation.

[huffmsa]

> Casually strolls up to a group and throws the designated victim to the ground and screams fag and runs away.

That's not the game were talking about.

[monadic2]

I don't think it much matters how the term originated based on my memories as a child—it was certainly internalized as homophobia and caused me a lot of pain growing up.

[geofft]

What does "probably" mean here? Does it mean "Here is the evidence-based argument why this is more plausible than that," or does it mean "I would be happier believing this than that"?

[bhfasdhjgdgsuyv]

It's part of HN's tradition of gaslighting victims of demographically-targeted violence by ignoring any kind of context and pedantically claiming "it couldn't possibly have been $bad_thing". Of course, because being contrarian is more important than learning about the history of LGBT abuse.

[foldr]

Very much this. Do you have an ubsubstantiated conspiracy theory about the evil machinations of bigcorp? Congratulations - upvotes for your wisdom. An actual report of your lived experience of homophobia/racism/sexism/whatever? Hmm, are you sure it's not just in your imagination?

[bhfasdhjgdgsuyv]

It's nice to not know it's not _actually_ just my imagination haha.

[Pfhreak]

Thank you for this. I expect you'll get down voted or flagged, but my experience as a queer person on hn had absolutely been full of exactly what you describe.

[bhfasdhjgdgsuyv]

It started out that way (you might have noticed this is a throwaway), but it seems this resonated with people.

[textfiles]

Seconded.