A story:

I am skinny, unathletic and have long hair.
This was also the case back when I was in high school. As any guy who was skinny, unathletic, or had long hair in high school probably already knows, this resulted in me getting called "faggot" a lot.

When I say "a lot" I mean "on a daily basis." Sometimes more. It got better towards the end of junior year, because I started gaining some semblance of an illusion of popularity. Up until then though, I rarely went more than a week without somebody calling me a fag, gay, or a girl. You ignore it for the most part, because the people who say that sort of thing are stupid and it's easy to see that. You get used to it. One trimester, every single day after lunch I'd have to walk past a small gaggle of soon to be dropouts standing outside of the holding cell classroom where they kept the rejects everybody knew was just going to drop out anyway, and every single day a particular one of them would say "Cut yer hair, fag."
So repetitious. So pointless. So simple. Eventually I started saying it along with him.

My school had a very good wrestling team. They went to State every year, and usually went to the Nationals. Their coach became an assistant coach on the Olympic Wrestling Team. The wrestlers were quite popular amoung people who paid attention to that sort of thing. Occasionally one of the wrestlers would call me a faggot.

That was where I drew the line.

I may have had a girlish figure and long beautiful hair, but I refused to be called any sort of gay-bashing slang by a high school boy who puts on a light blue spandex leotard with short shorts to go out and grab hold of a similarly half-naked muscular high school boy and roll around on the floor with him, pressing their sweat-covered, meaty man-flesh together in an effort to "pin each other."
I'd point this out, when one of the wrestlers would say I was gay.

I ran a lot in high school.