On Masculinity: In defense of the phrase “No Homo”

Go ahead and say it if you want to. You’re not going to hear any protest or complaints from me.

As the phrase “no homo” has moved from comedic novelty to quotidian vernacular, it has come under fire from the gay rights movement, which denounces it as an essentially homophobic statement. And yet, to my knowledge, no one has attempted to analyze, linguistically, what this phrase actually means or how it works. It’s supposed homophobia just seems “obvious” to gay rights advocates, and so they adopt their conventional, knee jerk stance towards it: “don’t say that.”

Left-wing criticism of no homo is, in this way, pretty much what you would expect. Andrew Matson wrote in the Seattle Times that the phrase “fosters an unhealthy relationship with homosexuality, a relationship based on fear” and New York magazine writer Nick Cantucci went to far as to describe it as a form of gay bashing. In this view, no homo is at the very least a sort of bad PSA spinoff (“Just say ‘no’ to homo”) and, at worst, a genocidal call for homosexuality’s total obliteration.

It seems that the negative grammatical structure of no homo (it’s “denial”) is what these writers are responding to, with a gut reaction instead of thoughtful consideration, more as a feeling than as language. But such flat-footed denunciations therefore ignore no homo’s authentic subtlety and nuance. Forsaking language for emotion, the real obliteration that is at stake in the censure of homo is then not of same-sex desire, but of forms of expression and even meaning itself.

I think the use of no homo is generally good-natured, jocular, and humorous, but that is not enough to support it. We need to look more closely at how the phrase works to genuinely understand it.

In particular, moratoria on no homo fail to account for what might be called the “time” of the phrase. No homo operates according to a very specific movement of words in time: it is most often tacked onto the end of a sentence, and is done so with enough regularity that we can describe this as the structure of the phrase, the conventional or standard way in which it is used.

“You look good in those jeans. No homo.”

“Get off my nuts. No homo.”

“Can you pass the nuts? No homo.”

Probably, prefacing a statement with no homo instead of saying it at the end like this doesn’t work simply because it’s not as funny. The humor of the phrase comes partly through its ability to surprise, upon the realization that you have said something “gay” that might not have registered before, the spontaneous construction of an otherwise benign and innocuous phrase as meaning “something else.”

By arriving at the end of the statement rather than at the beginning, no homo does not and cannot completely quash or eradicate the homosexual meaning, since it’s timing also allows (and requires) that meaning to be expressed in the first place. No homo’s negation or its “denial” can never, by definition, be total or absolute because the phrase works only by expressing both homosexuality and anxiety about homosexuality at the same time.

Instead of a complete covering up or erasure, no homo enables, facilitates, and speaks homosexuality as much as it denies it. The way the term can be used with complete irony expresses this fact, for example, when it is used to qualify something that is an utterly and unequivocally gay statement. “I want to suck your dick. No homo.” Clearly, no homo cannot be understood as a convincing or effective alibi. The fact that this statement can still “work” demonstrates no homo as something more than a simple denial, something that therefore leaves the possibility of homosexuality an open question.

Indeed, the retroactive revision of no homo can even locate, designate, and invent gay meanings where they otherwise would not have been before.

“It’s a nice day out. No homo.”

“My favorite color is red. No homo.”

“I’m going to buy some milk. No homo.”

No homo can actually be put in the service of creatively imagining knowledge and language about homosexuality. Far from “a relationship based on fear,” no homo confronts and faces homosexuality directly; far from a form of “gay bashing,” no homo admits of homosexuality’s possibility.

It might be objected that users of no homo are not consciously aware when they say it, but regardless, it still has this actual and real effect in usage. It might be objected that this kind of proliferation of homosexual meaning is not “authentic” and is trivializing, but what is the true meaning of homosexuality? In effect, there is no one true meaning, and no homo’s power lies in its capacity to identify, speak, and elaborate (new) gay meanings where they otherwise did not exist. It is this fundamentally productive, rather than negative, capacity of no homo that needs to be recognized and that is its value.

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