Yesterday, Chicago White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen apologized for his latest outburst act, a day after he called Chicago Sun-Times columnist and Around The Horn contributor Jay Mariotti a “(bleeping) fag”. Couple that incident along with the tantrum he threw when rookie pitcher Sean Tracey failed to hit Rangers slugger Hank Blaylock with a pitch and you have an individual who needs to reassess his machismo.

When Tracey was demoted the day after the Blaylock non-incident, I dismissed it as Guillen’s reaction to a rookie not following orders. But when Guillen turned his attention to Mariotti, who at times can be as pleasant to listen to as fingernails running across a chalkboard, he exposed one of the truths about men: we use slurs to describe the weaker of our own species.

From my experience, it’s more common than you think for Latinos to use homosexual slurs to defend our machismo. In our culture, if we feel a male is being less than manly, we tend to use the worst of slurs to state our opinion. However, that truthful explanation does not excuse Guillen for his in appropriate behavior. In America, it’s never appropriate for men, regardless of race, to use a homosexual slur to berate our own.

It gets even worse when we try to skirt that unwritten rule because we resort to comparing less-than-manly men to women instead, which is just as bad, if not worse. Just look at some of the examples we have in popular culture. In one of his dreams, surfer/slacker Jeff Spicoli in Fast Times at Ridgemont High referred to competitors in a surfing competition as “a bunch of fags”. Two years ago, California Governor Arnold Schwartzenegger referred to the Democratic-controlled state legislature as “girly men”, and a large proportion of the male population loves calling the weaker of our species variations of the female sexual anatomy.

Guillen’s outburst did more damage than expose a weakness in Latino culture to the general public. It also exposed a general weakness of men: we have a tendency to use whomever we perceive as weaker to describe the worst of our own.

Robbie Gonzalez is an Independent blogger from El Cajon, California. You can read more of his commentary on politics, sports, current events, and things happening around San Diego by visiting his blog Greetings From America’s Finest City.

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