Saying ‘Pause’ Isn’t a Joke, It’s Gay-Bashing
It’s not harmless banter — it’s immature and offensive
In high school, the talk around the lunchroom table was peppered with some now-questionable phrases.
It was almost impossible to get through a conversation without a chorus of interruptions — “Ayo!” and “Whoa” the usual two — indicating that you’d fucked up. And when that happened, the only appropriate response back then was to “pause” yourself:
“I could never be vegetarian; I like meat too much. Pause.”
“Yo, can I get another sausage? Pause.”
Any unintentional double entendre, any sentence that could be viewed as vaguely homoerotic, required us to pause the conversation and reclaim our manhood that was now suspect. It was the rule of the lunch table and reigned supreme. Any deviation from the norm, social misstep, or behavior that could come off as anything less than hypermasculine could subject you to ridicule for days.
While it might be tempting to look back on these antics as products of immature minds and insecurities, I’ve come to realize that they speak to toxicity and deep-seated homophobia that can plague Black and Brown men well into adulthood.
In music, a pause, or “rest,” is a black square marked down to denote silence. It can be given just as much weight as the symphony that precedes it. But if a pause in music is used to reinforce the notes that come before it, the pause in “pause culture” is one that supports the rigid constructs of gender and masculinity.
We were telling our ‘friends’ that who they were was undesirable, that their perceived identity was a transgression that needed to be corrected, and that it was offensive that we could be confused for being ‘like them.’
The idea of toxic masculinity is not new. Coined in the ’80s, the term has become a sort of shorthand to condemn sexual aggression or domineering behavior. But at its root, toxic masculinity is much more insidious. It is not just violence against women or a sense of superiority, but any combination of assumptions and cultural…
