Fag-Hag dialectics
an interrogation of the complex relationship between the Faggot and the Hag
There is no union more sacred than that which exists between the Faggot and the Hag. It is a spiritual matrimony that endures the test of time: just as the court eunuch once connived with the Queen consort to assassinate rightful heirs, so now does the Theatre Gay ally himself with the Leading Lady to unite against incompetent understudies. In many ways, even Jesus and Magdalene tell the story of so many tweaker twinks and glamourous sex workers who find companionship in the basement rave. No matter the context or circumstance, the souls of Fags and Hags reincarnate in perpetuity, and are bound to find each other in every lifetime. All roads lead us home to one another.
Within the broader cultural narrative, both the archetypes of ‘faghag’ and ‘gay best friend’ have been unjustly perverted. They have been stripped of nuance, dehumanised into eccentric clichés which efface the very real love between us. This is not the story that should be told. I am not concerned with the drunk girl who complains about her homophobic boyfriend and laments about how she needs a gay best friend, nor am I concerned with the gay man who thinks women should not be in the gay club and treats his female best friends as formalities. I am concerned with real Faggots and Hags. Those who are unified by an undying devotion to one another, those who are equally enamoured as they are resentful of another, those whose relationships are as storied and intricate as any great romance—those are the Fag-Hag relationships I know. They are the ones who deserve to be interrogated for meaning.
My first interaction with the Fag-Hag dynamic came in the form of a girl named Kitty. We were five years old and barely existent, but upon reflection, many foundational elements of the classical Fag-Hag relationship were present even then. I was inexplicably drawn to Kitty because of her name, perhaps because it insinuated a sense of glamour and whimsy that captured my fascination with womanhood. Kitty took to me because I was strange. Even in this pre-conscious stage of development, Kitty seemed to recognise that I was something anomalous, that I did not quite behave the way I was supposed to, and she was as fascinated by me as I was her.
This tenet of mutual admiration is crucial to the Fag-Hag balance. Kitty was confident and self-possessing, improperly feminine, and I was sensitive and delicate, improperly masculine, and we recognised these aberrations in each other as something to be cherished. Kitty led me through the uncharted waters of the Playground and defended me against the kids who did not quite ‘get’ me, and in turn, I fostered her sensitivity. I lent her my ear when she was sad and brought her into my world of play-pretend fantasies. We were two creatures in a perfect symbiosis. From that point on, I was committed to the Fag-Hag cycle until death do us part. No other relationship made me feel quite so alive.
I have often argued that the making of a Fully-Actualised Hag is her conscious performance of her own womanhood. I have facetiously referred to this as a ‘cis woman of trans experience’, which is a loaded phrase in itself—of course, Hags may be cis or trans, but it follows that there is a certain awareness a cis Hag requires to embody her Hagdom. That is to say, a Hag often recognises the ridiculous expectations of femininity she has been born into, and responds by ‘leaning in’. She performs her identity with a knowing campness, wields her sexuality with an unladylike self-assurance, and enjoys delivering the fantasy of glamour and beauty. She is in on the joke, but she also loves the joke. She loves to be a woman and to celebrate her femininity in all of its richness.
This shared veneration for femininity is a fundamental building block of Fag-Hag relations, because of course, Faggots are religious in their diva worship. The core theme of Faggothood is an ostracisation from traditional society and its expectations of masculinity, and it consequently produces this fascination with feminine power—how can one reclaim agency in a world that rewards the masculine? The diva weaponises her beauty and mystique, and carves out her own space through her feminine wiles. The Faggot obsesses over her because they aspire to be like her, and settles for the vicarious experience instead.
Watch carefully when a Hag enters a room of Fags, and hear how earnestly the chorus yells ‘you look fucking cunt!’ This is the pure joy and adoration a Fag-Hag dynamic can produce; there is no reason for inhibition or formality, because neither person is concerned with the other’s sexual desire. This desire runs far deeper. It is the desire of pure adulation, of deep idolisation of the Hag, almost bordering on the desire to become her. Nobody appreciates beauty like a faggot.
The Hag possesses a range of skills which make her so masterful in her craft. She is, first and foremost, a social polyglot—she is able to communicate in multiple codes. More often than not, she was raised in the traditional cis-heterosexual world, and even if she does not feel particularly connected to it, she is able to understand its expectations and nuances. She understands how to speak to heterosexual men and women, and is able to chameleon herself into their social structures. Simultaneously, she is able to converse with the underworld of the Faggot, the quirks of queer language and its nightlife and its artistic conceits. She is the bridge through limbo. When a Hag endorses you to her straight friends, she gives you access to a world that is otherwise scary and unfamiliar; heterosexual men will at least tolerate you because you are branded with a Girl’s Approval, and she will defend you against potential bigotry. Throughout many queer adolescences, the Hag has been something of a lifeline. She will weaponise her intuitive knowledge to defend her Fag.
The Hag is also a glutton for tragedy, and the melodrama she attracts into her life is the fertile ground on which Fag-Hag relations flourish. Faggots are gluttons for tragedy as well, after all. There is a perpetual melancholy that comes with Faggothood, and it is that isolation and displacement we face when we live abnormally. We rationalise this suffering through its romanticisation, by unearthing the art in our hardships and living through pain beautifully. The Hag implicitly understands this. I have very rarely met a Hag who did not struggle with romantic relationships or some debilitating mental illness or something else equivalently isolating, and there is something about this experience that compels her to find companionship with Fags. Perhaps this, too, is a type of non-normative living, one that is filled with its own sense of melancholy, and we form bonds on our shared sorrow. We like a woman who feels like she is doomed, because we feel like we are also doomed. We find each other like flies to carcass. We become the protagonists in our tragedies and audience to each other’s, and we try to make some beautiful sense of the violences we endure.
This latter process of romanticisation is the gift of Faggothood. When we talk about what the Fag gives to the Hag, I propose that it is this insight: the desire to see the world beyond what it is. Fags like to fantasise because they must. A life on the margins necessitates building a world beyond the scope of reality, and our spaces of nightlife and art and social structure are precisely this. We are driven by whimsy and fun, and we conceptualise it beyond what traditional society is capable of providing. Fags and Hags are human, certainly, but we are also person-spaces. We become worlds of exploration to our counterpart, and through interaction with this person-space, we deepen our understanding of self. In befriending the Fag, the Hag is able to access a sort of inner child that can make joy out of the mundane, and regularly engage in innovative forms of social play. In turn, the Hag is a person-space of feminine fantasy, where the Fag can experience a vicarious cuntressry. We make each other smarter, funnier, more interesting, more discerning, more cultured. We leave each other profoundly changed.
The love between the Fag and the Hag is ardent, and necessarily, it is as compassionate as it is cruel. There is a rawness to this relationship, primarily because Hags and Fags are neither sexual competitors nor sexually compatible. As such, I would argue that the versions of ourselves we present to each other are more honest and visceral. We do not need to impress one another, and are perhaps more comfortable showing our ugliness. We are unafraid to be ugly to each other, too. We are mirrors to each other’s worst qualities, and we can cut to the jugular when we need to. We know what makes each other tick and it follows that we know how to destroy. Our friendships have an undercurrent of violent urgency, like they are carefully orbiting the threat of mutually-assured destruction. We are conduits to each other’s truest souls—I can tell a lot about a woman from her best gay friend, and vice versa.
The intensity of such a relationship thus brings with it a real territoriality, because how do you lose somebody you bare your soul to? This becomes especially apparent when a Fag-Hag relationship is driven apart by the Hag’s acquisition of a boyfriend. I have seen many a Fag become resentful of their displacement in a Hag’s life, because it serves as a reminder of insufficiency. Can the Hag opt in and out of this world, returning to the hegemony whenever it suits her? Can the Fag ever be enough to emotionally fulfil her? This almost psychosexual tension underlies so many Fag-Hag dynamics, but its intensity makes it all the more beautiful.
As of late, I have been hanging out with a lot less women than I used to, and a lot more Fags than I ever anticipated. I suppose my journey with nonbinary identity necessarily includes my Becoming the Hag. I am treated with the same distanced respect that I have given to so many women in my life. It has been a fascinating experience—that sort of exasperated amusement you get when a bunch of gay guys start talking about cum, the venomous need to insult and humble, the almost maternal instinct you feel to take care of them. I have been both parties, and it is something I hold dearly. What I take away is the profound beauty of the relationship between the Fag and the Hag, as something so inexplicable, and also utterly vital. There are no other relationships that feel quite so compelling, and I am honoured to be a part of its cycle. May the Fags and Hags find each other in all lifetimes to come.
I am truly obsessed with your manner of conveying your fascinating thoughts and compelling ponderings. But this piece in particular strikes me in a special way, for I have always endorsed the Fag-Hag relationship as the center of my faggothood — sometimes I even feel as though the reason I'm gay has more to do with my worship of the female joys and tribulations than with my attraction to the ill-equipped sex. I will treasure your piece dearly, thank you for preaching your enthralling musings 🤍
I think u need to problematize this by examining atypical Fag/Hag scenarios (bisexual man who queenzones you, gay fratboys (or whatever their nz equivalent is), lesbian hag)