I remember when we were young, a game of Smear the Queer could break out on the playground at any time.
One moment you were playing a friendly game of catch, and suddenly someone would throw the ball at you and scream out, “Smear the Queer,” which immediately made you the target of a tackling mob.
You’d run as hard as your pride would take you, until you were either smothered or managed to toss the ball off onto some other sucker who was feeling a brief sense of invincibility.
It was a game of boyhood bravery with no winners and no losers, where the sides were simple to see, and you could easily choose which to stand on, to either get or get gotten.
But it was mostly just stupidity and boys being boys, something that we thought might separate us momentarily as men.
The rules of Smear the Queer were simple: one person was it, either by chance if the ball was tossed to them or by choice if they grabbed the ball from another or off the ground, and everybody else tried to tackle them to get the ball.
However, not once when I heard that primal call to action shouted out, “Smear the Queer,” did I look around for a homosexual to harass, nor can I even remember understanding the true nature of the name of our game.
It could be argued that the word queer is not being used in the derogatory sense in this instance, that it is simply used to signify the person who is “it”, who represents the unusual or different person in the less sinister sense of the word, the person who is suspect, and therefore, outside of the mob.
And it could also be argued that smear is not meant to indicate an attack on the character of someone or a slanderous defamation of their good name, but rather to cover and smudge a person as some friendly tackling will do.
But then why use the more vicious term Smear the Queer and not some more appropriate name with the same meaning like Smother the Other, and where did the name of this game develop?
I don’t have the answers to these questions, but like many terms that have been used over the years in American society, the name of this children’s game is likely rooted in hatred and bigotry, not from the children who play the game, but passed along by adults and somehow coined into the name of a playground pastime.
There are many examples of these terms in our lexicon, including “Indian Giver” (one who gives something only to take it back with obvious negative implications against Native Americans), and “Yellow” (a coward or traitor with suspect origins in the early American hatred of asian immigrants).
These terms get used at first in hatred, but then get adapted over generations until they end up being accepted terms that are used in everyday English by children that don’t know any better, who are taught by ignorant adults.
Of course, we hope that one day these children mature and realize that words have meaning, and that they will decide to no longer use them for communication, but culturally ingrained hatred isn’t good for our development as a community.
I’m reminded that this game still exists by my cousin, whose two boys were recently playing Smear the Queer with their team after a football practice, as the coach had literally told her.
When she told the other parents who were waiting for their kids that they were just playing a quick game of “Smear the Queer,” her words were met with outrage at the use of such vulgar language.
Funny enough though, none of them stopped the game until the boys were good and tired, and they really didn’t object to their boys either being tackled by a mob or joining a mob to tackle a single child, but just thought it was an inappropriate name for a game.
Even so, I can’t imagine too many parents explained the meaning of the name Smear the Queer to their children on the way home, but it’s probably better that they allow their children to live in innocence a little longer.
God forbid one of them might think they were actually being attacked for who they are and feel that they were no longer just part of the group playing the game.
The game wasn’t quite played how you claim. The first person with the ball punted it into the air, a scrum followed, someone would grab the ball and run. Others pursued until the runner tackled or chose to punt. From there, game play repeated.
Such playing develops both open field tackling skills as well as evasive running skills.
The name Smear the Queer is a fine name. Your beef over it and other names such as “yellow”, “Indian giver” and the like makes you, well, a retard. Oops. Should you have been called an r-tard instead? Is that equally as bad?
Community is a word of rhetoric taught to ghetto dwellers by their local leaders who make it rain with money doled to them by politicians and bureaucrats who first get that money when they take it with threat of force taxpayers.
If anyone punted the ball they would have had the shit beaten out of them for being a little faggot. If you grab the ball, you only give it up after being tackled.
Seriously. ‘Little faggot’. Your moral compass broken or something?
So you’re saying that if you don’t want to be the queer, you’re a little faggot?
NoHomo, I agree with you entirely.
I’m not sure where you played this game, but it went exactly as described where I’m from, northern New Jersey. You had the ball, got tackled, lost the ball, someone else got it, you tackled them. Repeat as necessary.
Played this game on practice fields across the street from Villanova U. The game could be played with as few as 4 boys and as many as a dozen. Besides calling it Smear the Queer, we also called it Rumble. No such thing as punting in our game. You ran to one end of the “field”, and if you got to that end, you had to turn around and run through the tacklers again. As someone else wrote, it perfected real open field tackling (“hit and wrap” as my middle school coach said) because the player didn’t give up the ball until brought to the ground. Then kind of like rugby, the ball would roll out and your bravery was challenged on whether you would pick up the ball if you were the nearest person. Anyone willing to toss the ball in the air to avoid being tackled was considered a wuss. I’ll leave my politics at the door as the name calling here is just stupid in remembering a childhood game. We could have called it “avdffvw” (however you pronounce the random keys I just typed) and no one would have cared. Playing the game definitely prepared me for high school and college ball.
It went the first way described in my neighborhood in rural Northwestern Pennsylvania as well. I was one of the only girls that played…. and I always felt honored to be tough enough to play and do well.
Same here, and I grew up in Maine. . With two older brothers, and a handful of older cousins who were boys as well, I was the only girl brave enough too play this game along side them, the version without punting of course.
Wow. Total fascist over here. Of course being called fascist shouldn’t offend you.
So you know what a fascist is? Do you?
That word gets used a lot by people that have no clue…
What the hell is a scrum
Queer means odd, and on a field where only one person has the ball, they are queer by definition.
Who knows the origins of the name, but it’s possible that it was called “smear the queer” before queer became a synonym for homosexual.
I think the biggest reasons the name Smear the Queer persisted is threefold…
1: It rhymes
2: It’s an alliteration with a good rhythm
3: It sounds funny
Because of this, the name is what would be declared Kid Legal. 😀
Your so stupid and your article sucks. Smear the Queer is called such because the person wth the ball is different because they have a ball, not to mention they are trying not to get tackled. Queer in this case is both an Adjective and a Verb. Queer eventually came to become a Noun, as in “Your a queer.” aka homosexual, but this was much later and it comes from the the fact queer as an adjective means differnt and homosexuals are different then people who are heterosexual. The childs game was never rooted in any kind of hate.
Yellow if you knew anything comes from a very ancient meaning of coward, and the meaning is that cowards piss themselves, hence they are yellow from pissing themselves. It never came from being Chinese. The fact you would think Chinese are “yellow” says far more about you then anyone else.
The term Indian Giver comes from the fact that when Native Americans would “give” stuff to the settlers, they most likely were “loaning” or “looking to trade” and never meant to just be giving away goods for nothing in return. Native Americans came from a pure barter system and the settlers didn’t get this and naturaly when the Native Americans took things back, this most likely pissed the settlers off. Is the term is somewhat offinsive to say, but ironicly it comes from simply a misunderstanding on both sides.
Wow…..I know way more then you on all of this. I should have wrote this article, and you should have STFU.
Well said.
“Your so stupid” is a great way to indicate your own lack of intelligence. If YOU’RE going to call someone else stupid, at least use the correct word.
Hello Ryan,
You make some interesting points, especially about the article sucking and me being stupid.
As far as Smear the Queer goes, I already conceded within the above article that the word queer could be used in its literal sense in this case, and not necessarily be derogative, but even if that’s the case, I don’t see any sense in the name still being used to this day, when the word queer is now strongly associated with homosexuality. There are plenty of words that don’t originate from hate, but have been converted as such, so people with a conscience don’t use them anymore. Yet, some people still want to defend the term Smear the Queer, even when it has outgrown its original use.
I would also like to correct your statement that “homosexuals are different then people who are heterosexual.”
Homosexuals are not different than heterosexuals in the way that the adjective queer implies (“differing in some odd way from what is usual or normal” – Merriam-Webster). They’re only different in the sense that we are all unique as individual human beings, but they’re not outsiders, odd, or queer in any sense, so that is not a proper use of the word queer, even in its literal sense.
As far as “yellow” goes, please expound on the ancient meaning of this word, I would love to hear more about its origins and where this comes from. It’s kind of silly though that you claim it is a fact that I think “Chinese” are yellow. I actually didn’t say the word “Chinese” at all in my article, as all asian people are not Chinese, and I was just discussing the possible origins of this derogatory word usage.
As far as “indian giver” goes, whether it was a misunderstanding or not, it’s still offensive to say, so I’m glad we can at least agree on that.
You may very well know more about the history of these terms than I do, as I don’t claim to be an expert on anything, but was merely making some observations on the use of language.
Smother the other would have been deemed offensive. “Oh my goodness, now you are othering people!!!” Words have the meaning and intent of the user of them. Not of the ones that hear and read them. You people need to quit butchering the language let things be. I am dumbfounded that so many of you, who are offended by so much, don’t see that your lenses of interpretation will never end.
Hello Morghan,
Thank you for your comment. I definitely agree that the name of the game Smear the Queer might have preceded the use of the term queer for homosexuals. However, I would still argue that the name should no longer be used for a children’s game, given the current controversy around the word queer.
Here is some interesting information from Wikipedia about alternative names for the game Smear the Queer:
Muckle
Muckle (sometimes called ‘muckle the man with the ball’, ‘kill-the-guy-with-the-ball’, ‘kill the carrier’, or ‘smear the queer’ among other names) is the reverse of regular tag; all of the other players chase ‘it’. This player is denoted by carrying a ball (usually a football). When they are caught, they are tackled, or ‘muckled’. Whoever retrieves the ball first or whoever attacks the one who is it then becomes it. Sometimes the last player arriving to tackle the former ball carrier is the next person to be it; in other variations the player with the ball throws the ball up in the air, where it is caught by another player who becomes it.
Well it isnt being used today . The name is just remembered being called such. Where im from we call it Free Frog or Funny Fumble”. By the time i was introduced to the Game i never heard of Smear the Queer “.
I’m not sure why you think the game doesn’t have that same name anymore, but I can promise you it does. When I was introduced to the game 10 years ago that’s what it was called, & my 13 year old brother knows it as the same. Unfortunately, it’s not being remembered as such, it is such.
Of course…..we were just stupid kids. Not knowing the implications of derogatory terms. It was not nearly the most violent thing we did waiting for school to start. Fist fighting, knife throwing Indian wrestling and more…..
When I was a kid in So. Cal in the early 1970s we played it before school. It was called smear the queer because one of us would steal something like a girl’s hairbrush and use that for the game. We were queer because we had something of a girl’s. That is the origin of the name and game.
Hello Teachu Alesson (you sure did),
I don’t know the official rules of the Smear the Queer league, but I’m sure it varies greatly among school children and groups of friends. I guess we played a pretty crazy version of it without too many rules.
If you want to call me a retard, because I don’t think it’s an appropriate name for kids to use these days, that’s fine, but I just hope you won’t teach kids to call people retards when they don’t agree with them.
I’m not really sure what your rant about “community” is trying to say at the end of your comment, but good luck to you.
I have to say, after rewatching Baseketball (was still enjoyable enough after all these years), and recently watching Dodgeball for the first time, it would be awesome for some group to form an international Smear the Queer league. 😀
Thankyou, I used to play smear the queer back in the 70’s in California, and the explanation you gave was exacly as I remembered.
(ahhh-memory lane) the days of being the smallest kid on the play ground that the older girls would call me “pip squeek” ( those girls were my secret girlfriends 🙂 I digress, anyway, back then for a 7 year old boy the term smear the queer was a sign of manhood, that one could take the abuse of being tacked, grassed stained and bruised. It was a commradere amongst kids. Innocence lost to the days of gay stigma. sign of times they are a changin’.
P.S.
For all of you who are so critical about this article
“catch you now have the ball–SMEAR THE QUEER!!!!!!!”
Right exactly. We called it Funny Fumble in Buffalo
In the upper midwest, STQ was basically a game we played while waiting for more guys to show up to play another game. Usually STQ was more fun than kickball, or kick the can or whatever stupid game was planned. Often we just played STQ, we also called it kill the man. Fumbleitus, was a similar game, as you are tackled you had to fumble the ball. You lose if you don’t fumble. I am guessing tony dorsett played a lot of this as a kid.
As for those who read the article to criticize the author…. you need to relax, get some exercise or someone to cuddle with. Pip squeek is on targer, it was a sign of maturity. When you survive 45 minutes of STQ you are the man.
I am in my 50’s and remember my parents calling Liberace a queer. My grandparents used to call effeminate males queers. They came from the south and also called African Americans “niggers”. Since I am homosexual I dislike both words on the same principle; they are hurtful. Now my grandparents were not hateful people, but the word nigger has become a hateful word over the years. Our family had to insist that the grandparents stop using that word (at least in public).
Since I am a large man, they didn’t call me a queer, but there were several small and weaker males that held that moniker till we went on to high school. I don’t know if they were actually gay. One particular guy was really smart and I am sure he is now a scientist. I had the biggest crush on him.
Anyway I remember playing that damn game and the weaker guys would usually get smeared pretty badly! The jocks used to like smearing the guys they didn’t like. I was bigger than all of them (and working on a farm) was quite a big stronger too. I didn’t get smeared very often, but some of the others did and if they cried they were queers!
A sad side note is that I stayed in touch with several of the smaller (non-queers) guys and they didn’t like that game for other reasons. They used to get picked on by the jocks. The whole thing culminated (for me) in 5th grade when I stood up for a few of the “queers” and ended beating up the biggest jock. Yes I bested him quite quickly. That set the tone for my future life.
Years later I was enjoying a sunny day with my boyfriend in an area frequented by gay people, when a couple of drunken guys started calling some others “faggots” from a convertible. I guess I was trying to impress my boyfriend when I grabbed the loudest one from the open car and yelled “how are you going to feel telling your daddy that a faggot kicked your ass!”. Luckily for me they drove away with tires squealing and my boyfriend looked at me like a hero.
Well that is my story. Thanks for reading!
FAG!
That title has been shifted to annoyingly loud Harley owners. :p
A good friend of mine, also homosexual, recently mentioned getting his Boy Scout Eagle’s Award at the young age of 13 (amongst the youngest ever) due in part to the fact that once he completed it, he would no longer have to play ‘Smear The Queer’ with the other boys when they should have been working on merit badges or tying knots or something. Obviously, a homosexual child would take offense to this and see it in terms of what it means to be Queer today and could possibly see it as an opportunity for the other boys to pick on him. I think it’s been established that this game is really meant for boys to prove they’re tougher than the other, etc. in terms of size, strength, and athleticism – all qualities heterosexual boys and a majority of society see as being admirable. I’m not lnocking the game itself, dont get me wrong – boys will be boys and find ways to beat each other up, per se. However, if this game makes others feel ostracized because of it’s name, it does need to be erased from our vocabulary. Much like educated society has realized that ‘nigger’ can be seen as on offensive term, so should the word queer. There’s no need to use language that inadvertantly hurts others or puts them down — even for the sake of ‘history’ or because it was the word they ‘used back then. I’d like to hope that society is becoming more civilized and intelligent as time goes on, by learning from mistakes and not ignorantly continuing ignorant phrases or practices from the past that now mean something different or that which is now hurtful and damaging to others.
Hi,
I played “Smear the Queer” a lot in middle school. I played with my a group of friends. We never discussed the the name that I can remember. We always played for fun. Sure we tackled the person with the ball, but never to hurt the person, just to tackle him. A person could and often did throw the ball away when they thought they might be tackled. So the game was a bit ruff, but we mostly just got skinned knees or elbows. One time my friend tackled me and accidentally kneed me in the lower back, kidney I think. I couldn’t get up for five minutes. He felt so bad. But it was fun for us, not violent (except as I described), and we never thought about the name back then.
Thanks for the great article!
I remember playing this. None of the guys who I played with were especially vicious, nor especially jocky, so it was probably a bit toned down compared to other people’s experience. We used to call it “Maul Ball” which is from the children’s TV series “Recess” Such a great show. Good times.
I played “smear the queer” in the 70s also, like most every one said the queer was the “it” person/boy even when I learned the popular meaning was for homosexual male I remember and still today don’t associate “smear the queer” with LGBT or whatever is the popular term today bashing/hate.
I stopped playing mostly because got tired of my dad yelling at me for letting the kids play on the best/cushiest lawn on the block, then we move to the mountains(no lawn, two boys my age, nearest town 17 miles away, etc. just not enough kids to play any normal city kid’s games.
Of course I had a motorcycle then we played hide and seek in the forest w/flashlights, motorcycles/atvs talk about scared being in a really good hiding spot thinking every sound was a bear. Sorry nothing like walking down a road in the pitch black, can’t see your hand in front of your face.
Very interesting reading all the comments, thanks.
I played this game in the 70’s many, many times. The ball was thrown up, and whoever caught the ball was ‘it’. The only rule was that you could not ‘trip’ the guy with the ball. After the pile-on the ball was tossed in the air, and the game continued. When I was young, we knew of no negative implication of the word ‘queer’ other than the person with the ball.
Wow, just another ass —- trying to figire out the meaning of every word ever said, and why it is said, and what the true meaning of the word is, and who it hurts or offends,.#$$^%$% Come on, smear the queer is simply a named game we all played in the 70’s as I grew up. Nothing going on a warm summer night during summer break, kids would stay out later, and we’d gather in the field and start up this game. As someone earlier mentioned it was actually (without me knowing it( a great way for me to work on my physical skills including quickness, toughness, agility, etc which would go on and work for me from little league through college football. Let’s STOP trying to label everything and just let simple fun things remain that, simple fun and afternoon/evening with peers having fun (of course until someone loses a tooth..LOL)
I’m a girl and lost teeth
Bear in mind, we were just stupid kids……. not PC
I see this article has become a target of fascists, who of course won’t be offended by being called that since that would make them hypocrites.
The nazis think people can’t tell that they’re arguing in bad faith. The same people who think it’s okay to call people Queers throw baby tantrums when they’re called bigots, xenophobes etc. If they actually had spines they might’ve actually been a true force to fear. It’s true that tragedy repeats itself as farce.
OUT OF CURIOSITY, HOW FAR BACK DOES THIS GAME GO BACK? IM 31 AND PLAYED IT IN 5TH GRADE. WHEN DID YOU ALL PLAY IT?
im 57 and I played STQ all the time back in the 70s…we would play it during P.E. and during the summer breaks…loved it!
Ok. Interesting article and even more interesting responses. I’M A GIRL(or at least use to be). Noone said anything about girls playing(beginning of the female league???) Grew up in the 80s and this is what we called it “smear the queer”. I understand that it is politically incorrect now and would never teach kids to call it that NOW. Back then, it was ok. Stop being so negative towards the article’s author. It was a pleasant childhood memory…..PERIOD. I wouldn’t encourage the name I knew it by but thats ok, the game is the same.
Ok. Back to the female aspect.
No-one mentions females playing. Sometimes there was more females than males playing. It’s about us having fun and stupid things we did….even GIRLS(God forbid). My teeth went into ANOTHER GIRL’S forehead(cracked root of tooth and tooth half out), both covered in blood, went home, cleaned up and came back out to play. This is what we did.
The article brought back great memories that I was able to share with with my husband. Thank you from someone, FEMALE, that was never afraid to be the “queer”((oh….SO politically incorrect…lol)).
Smear the Queer was quite common in the 60s and 70s on American playgrounds. I played it during elementary school. I never made any connection between “queer” and homosexuality and I strongly doubt many (if any) did. The “queer” was simply the one who had the ball, and the phrase was homophonic. The word “queer” was still used frequently to mean “odd” at that time and was even used as a verb, of course– to “queer” the meaning of something, meaning to obscure it or to mess something up. “Kill the Man with the Ball” was another name for a synonymous game, perhaps the only difference being that you could still play “Smear the Queer” with no ball, by someone simply being “it” until tackled, at which point the tackler became “it.”
I see many people are unfamiliar with the historical terminology and usage of the term queer and how the name for the game came about and it’s connection to the term for homosexual.
The word queer has been used to describe men who liked other men since the late 19th century. Those who held those types of feelings were looked down upon and shamed, and in extreme cases beaten and/or killed. Hence the name for the game. When word would get out that a mib was out looking for a person claimed to be”queer” that person would run and look for a place to hide to avoid being caught and beaten. As a child in the eighties I played the game, and understood it’s connotations. It was not a kind game as it was usually started in order to pick on a weaker kid.
Statring in the late eighties gays began a movement to reclaim the word to take away it’s negative connotation. And in some ways they have been successful, as they aren’t shamed by the term in general.
As David states it was a game of the 60’s for me. I’m 66 and found this discussion from a Google search. It was a random thought I was having on a cold lazy day about that game and was my neighborhood the only ones who played this? We thought NOTHING of the name other than how funny it sounded screaming it.
Played in Wisconsin in the 70’s in middle school. Queer did not have the meaning it has today. We had a blast playing, especially in the snow. Would come in from lunch or recess all wet and most likely stinky. As I recall, nobody got seriously hurt.
We played STQ as well as Capture the Flag at P.S. elementary school recesses 1954-59 in rural/suburban Philadelphia. Both sexes were involved and a ball was not always required. Queer equals odd/different. A “queer duck” did not describe homosexual waterfowl (lone male ducks are always attacked by all the resident male ducks when they attempt to enter a different flock). At “show and tell” you could expect to see a grandfather’s firearm every once and awhile, and we played mumbley-peg with our pocket knives during recess, but they were to remain in our pockets while in class or were certain to be taken by the teacher. The maple desk tops were sanded down and re-finished each summer by the janitor to eliminate knife carved initials. Times were different