Christian Hendricks is a documentary photographer and filmmaker who spent last summer on the road travelling to rural areas and small towns while capturing queer culture in the southern United States.
One of his subjects, Douglas Kennedy of Millsaps College, gave an interview about what it’s like to be gay in a Jackson, Mississippi, fraternity.
Kennedy talks about the use of the word faggot by the guys in his frat and shares the story about how one of his friends sat in on a fraternity meeting to gain material for an article she was writing about homosexuality in college fraternities for her journalism class. She added the homophobic rhetoric she heard to her piece, which ended up being selected for publication in the school newspaper.
The aftermath of the article made many of Kennedy’s fraternity brothers irate and made him even more of an outsider. The campus controversy became so intense it resulted in the school paper’s demise.
Listen to Kennedy’s story below, and check out Christian Hendricks’s website for more glimpses into gay Southern life.
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