That’s Mr. Faggot to You: Book Review

I first encountered Michael Thomas Ford’s writing in one of those gay magazines that used to pile up on the coffee tables of community centers in the late nineties—the kind of publication that smelled like cheap cologne samples and righteous indignation. His column stood out because it was funny without being frivolous, sharp without being cruel, and unapologetically gay without making queerness the entire punchline. When I found That’s Mr. Faggot to You at a library sale for fifty cents, I grabbed it with the specific joy of recognizing a voice I’d missed. Ford’s essay collections were a staple of gay bookshelves in the nineties and early 2000s, and this one, his most brazenly titled, promised exactly the kind of irreverent, take-no-prisoners humor I needed after a particularly exhausting week of being polite about my existence.

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Bottom Line

Ford collects his sharpest essays on gay life in America—from navigating the absurdity of ex-gay ministries to the politics of Pride parades to the specific indignity of being asked “which one of you is the woman?” at family dinners. The humor lands more often than it misses, the cultural observations remain surprisingly relevant, and Ford’s refusal to be anyone’s respectable gay spokesperson is genuinely refreshing. Some essays feel like products of their era, but the best ones are timeless in their skewering of both straight ignorance and gay pretension.

A Collection That Bites Back

That’s Mr. Faggot to You gathers roughly thirty essays that originally appeared in various LGBTQ publications, organized loosely by theme rather than chronology. The topics range from the personal (Ford’s own coming out, his relationship with his body, his complicated feelings about gay culture) to the political (marriage rights, military service, the religious right) to the delightfully trivial (his hatred of Pottery Barn, his addiction to home renovation shows). The tonal range is impressive—Ford can pivot from genuine pathos to blistering sarcasm within a single paragraph, and he does it without giving you whiplash.

The writing style is conversational and fast, perfect for the essay format. Ford writes like a friend who’s had two glasses of wine and finally feels free to say what he actually thinks. Some of the cultural references have dated—jokes about specific TV shows, politicians, and products from the late nineties won’t land for everyone—but the underlying observations about what it’s like to be gay in a world that alternately ignores, fetishizes, and condemns you remain sharp. On the downside, the collection occasionally feels padded; a few of the shorter pieces read like column filler rather than essential commentary.

Reclaiming the Slur With a Grin

The title essay is the natural place to start, and it’s one of the collection’s strongest. Ford recounts a specific incident where someone shouted “faggot” at him from a passing car—an experience so common among gay men that it barely registers as noteworthy, which is precisely his point. Instead of responding with the expected narrative of hurt and resilience, Ford spins the encounter into a meditation on the power dynamics of slurs, the absurdity of drive-by bigotry (“You’re going forty miles an hour. What exactly is the plan here?”), and the specific satisfaction of refusing to be diminished by someone who can’t even spell the word they’re shouting.

What makes the essay work is Ford’s refusal to be either traumatized or noble about the experience. He’s annoyed, sure. He’s angry in a low-grade, Tuesday-afternoon kind of way. But mostly he’s amused by the sheer inefficiency of homophobia as practiced by people in moving vehicles. The essay achieves something genuinely difficult: it acknowledges the real violence behind anti-gay slurs while simultaneously refusing to grant that violence more power than it deserves. As a gay man who’s been called that word more times than I can count, I found Ford’s approach—irreverent without being dismissive—deeply satisfying.

Another standout is his essay on ex-gay ministries, where Ford attends an Exodus International event and reports back with the precision of an anthropologist and the wit of a stand-up comic. He describes the participants with genuine compassion even as he dismantles the ideology with surgical efficiency. His portrait of a young man he calls “Steve,” who’s been through three rounds of conversion therapy and still flinches when attractive men walk by, is heartbreaking without being exploitative.

The Internal Politics of Being Out

Ford is at his most interesting when he turns his critical eye inward, toward the gay community itself. His essay on Pride parades dissects the annual tension between “respectable” gays who want the march to look like a corporate team-building exercise and the leather daddies, drag queens, and bare-chested dancers who’d rather celebrate than assimilate. Ford comes down firmly on the side of the spectacle, arguing that respectability politics is just internalized homophobia in a polo shirt, but he’s honest enough to admit his own moments of discomfort.

He writes about standing on the sidelines of a Pride parade watching a group of men in harnesses and jockstraps dance on a float sponsored by a lube company, and catching himself thinking, “This is exactly what Jerry Falwell says we are.” Then he catches himself catching himself, and the resulting self-examination is more honest than most Pride discourse manages. He doesn’t resolve the tension neatly because it can’t be resolved neatly. The question of who gets to represent “the community” is as contentious now as it was when Ford was writing, and his willingness to sit with the discomfort rather than offering a tidy answer is one of the collection’s great strengths.

His essay on body image in the gay male community also deserves attention. Ford writes candidly about his own struggles with weight and gym culture, describing the experience of walking into a gay bar and immediately calculating where he falls on the desirability hierarchy. It’s raw and funny and a little painful, and it anticipates by twenty years the conversations about body positivity that are now commonplace in queer spaces.

Writing Style and Craft

Ford’s greatest asset as a writer is his timing. He knows exactly when to deploy a joke, when to pull back into sincerity, and when to let silence do the work. His sentences are clean and purposeful—no unnecessary adjectives, no throat-clearing preambles. He writes the way good comedians talk: every word earns its place. The dialogue he reproduces (or reconstructs; this is essay writing, after all) has the ring of authenticity, particularly in his interactions with straight people who mean well but can’t stop asking invasive questions.

The pacing varies by essay, which is expected in a collection. The longer pieces tend to be stronger because Ford has room to develop his arguments and let his observations accumulate. The shorter pieces—some barely three pages—occasionally feel like sketches rather than finished work. The overall structure of the collection could be tighter; grouping by theme rather than chronology was a reasonable choice, but some of the thematic connections feel forced.

Emotional Impact

The book made me laugh out loud on a plane, which is always slightly embarrassing. Ford’s essay about attending his high school reunion as an openly gay man—complete with a boyfriend his former classmates couldn’t stop staring at—had me cackling in a way that made my seatmate visibly uncomfortable. But the book also made me unexpectedly melancholy. Reading these essays in the 2020s, you’re struck by how many of the battles Ford was fighting in the late nineties are still being fought. The specific adversaries have changed—Exodus International is gone, marriage is legal, Will and Grace is no longer revolutionary—but the underlying dynamics of prejudice, assimilation pressure, and internal community conflict remain stubbornly familiar.

The essay that lingered longest was a quiet piece about Ford visiting a friend dying of AIDS. It’s the least funny thing in the collection and arguably the most important. Ford writes about holding his friend’s hand and talking about nothing—television, bad hospital food, a nurse with a conspicuously terrible hairpiece—because the big subjects were too heavy to lift. That essay reminded me of friends I’ve lost, and the specific gallows humor that gets you through those hospital visits.

Pros and Cons

What Works

• Comedic precision: Ford’s humor is specific, well-timed, and never relies on easy stereotypes. He’s funny because he’s observant, not because he’s performing. The jokes emerge from genuine insight rather than shtick.
• Emotional range: The collection moves fluidly from hilarious to heartbreaking without the transitions feeling manipulative. Ford earns his serious moments by never being po-faced about them.
• Honest self-examination: Ford doesn’t exempt himself from criticism. His essays about his own prejudices, insecurities, and contradictions are among the strongest in the collection and give the more outward-facing pieces credibility.

What Could Be Better

• Dated cultural references: A significant number of jokes depend on knowledge of late-nineties pop culture, political figures, and gay scene specifics that younger readers won’t have. This is an inevitable hazard of collecting topical essays, but it does limit the book’s shelf life.
• Uneven quality: The collection includes at least half a dozen essays that feel like filler—competent but unremarkable pieces that would have been fine as magazine columns but don’t justify preservation in book form. A tighter edit would have made a stronger collection.

Who Should Read This

Gay men of a certain age will find this book nostalgic in the best possible way—a reminder of the specific cultural moment when being openly gay was neither fully accepted nor fully illegal, and humor was one of the few weapons available. Younger queer readers will find it illuminating as a historical document, though some of the references will require footnotes. Straight readers looking to understand the gay male experience through something other than tragedy porn will appreciate Ford’s refusal to be inspirational. Skip this if you prefer your LGBTQ literature solemn and uplifting; Ford would rather make you snort coffee through your nose.

Final Thoughts

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Michael Thomas Ford has written in multiple genres since this collection—novels, young adult fiction, holiday humor books—but his essay work remains my favorite expression of his voice. That’s Mr. Faggot to You captures a specific moment in gay American life with wit, warmth, and a refusal to be anyone’s token. Not every essay is a winner, and the cultural specificity that makes the best pieces vivid also dates the weaker ones, but the collection as a whole holds up remarkably well. Ford’s central insight—that the best response to homophobia is not dignified suffering but gleeful, unapologetic living—hasn’t aged a day. I’d happily read his other essay collections, Alec Baldwin Doesn’t Love Me and It’s Not Mean If It’s True, and I suspect they’d deliver the same mix of laughter and unexpected emotional gut-punches that made this one such a pleasure.