What I Love About ‘Fuckboys’
By Katie Lotz
One of my funniest memories from elementary school is of myself and a few friends trying to compile a list of all the “bad words” we could think of. In hindsight, the conversation is pretty hilarious (picture a group of neighborhood kids sitting on the sidewalk, silently lost in contemplation, until finally someone whispers, “shit,” and is met with an approving wave of nods and “oohh” or “mmmhmm”). This conversation is so silly when I think back on it, but at the time we felt so mature as we discussed this secret language of four-letter words.
However, this memory isn’t entirely innocent and laughable, because through this conversation my friends and I came to a strange realization: the majority of the swear words we knew were specific to women, specifically women who had a lot of sex. Slut, whore, skank; the list seemed never-ending (we had surprisingly extensive vocabularies). This realization, which may seem somewhat insignificant, stuck with me for a long time, and left me wondering, why is there no word like this that describes men?
I feel like I should clarify that I do not condone slut-shaming in any form, regardless of the gender of the person on the receiving end of it. I was not looking for a word to use to slut-shame my male peers. Rather, I was bothered by the cultural implications of the utter lack, the complete nonexistence, of a word that held men to the same sexual expectations as women. The ways in which we use language are important, and popular terms are a reflection of our cultural norms and expectations. After all, you have probably heard of the famous semi-truth that the Inuit language has over 50 different words to describe snow.
After spending a large portion of my adolescence bothered by this linguistic double standard, a new term began to infiltrate my vocabulary via the magic of the internet circa 2014: fuckboy.
‘Fuckboy’ was the first word I was familiar with that was meant to criticize a man for his promiscuity, but it is a very versatile term. As with most slang words, the internet has a few varied definitions to describe it. According to dictionary.com, a fuckboy is a guy who, “doesn’t respect women, but relies on them heavily. He’s distant, doesn’t care about other people’s time, and won’t commit. He’s self-absorbed, does stupid things, and fucks with others’ emotions.” According to Oxford Languages, a fuckboy is “a weak or contemptible man,” or “a man who has many casual sexual partners.” Urban Dictionary is swarming with definitions of fuckboy, but my personal favorite is number three, “a boy who is a player and is in a relationship only for sex.” In short, it’s not a terribly nice word, but it is a bit more emotionally nuanced than simply being the male equivalent of ‘slut’.
So, am I happy that yet another somewhat slut shame-y word has been added to the English lexicon? To put it eloquently: kind of.
Am I endorsing insults, bullying, or generally degrading others? Of course not. The popularization of the word fuckboy simply felt somewhat empowering to me, not only because the ways that we use language are a reflection of our society, but because language is also what informs our preconceived notions and biases from a young age. A language that only knows how to shame women for having sex creates a culture that insists only women must take responsibility for sex. It creates a world that only invents hormonal birth control for bodies with a uterus; a world where only feminine bodies are expected to walk home at night with their keys between their fingers.
The popularization of this word confirmed, to me, that we are moving towards a world where sex is less stigmatized based solely on gender or identity, but rather is viewed as something that everyone should be able to enjoy and share responsibility for.
The cultural impact of this word is certainly significant, but the origin of ‘fuckboy’ reveals a great deal about American culture as well. The earliest use that I could find of this word in pop culture is in the 2002 song ‘Boy Boy’ by Cam’ron. After being used in this song, the term ‘fuckboy’ slowly began to pop up in more and more rap and hip hop songs, before making its way to social media. The popularization of this term by many black musicians speaks volumes to the amount of not only slang terms, but culture in general, that is taken from black creators and culture.
So much about our culture and what we place emphasis on is revealed through our use of language. While I love the way that the popularization of ‘fuckboy’ speaks to a larger movement of sexual equality and freedom, it also speaks to the way that American culture and language takes from black creators and POC, without giving credit where credit is due.