is for Bitch.  The fantasy of the vicious, back-stabbing vagina dentata, always quick on her feet, always ready to demolish her opponent with a stunning rejoinder, is the fantasy of a powerless minority that asserts itself through language, not physical violence. Straight men express aggression through fist fights and sports; gay men through quick-witted repartee and caustic remarks. Straight men punch; gay men quip. Straight men are barroom brawlers; gay men, bitches. Given the centrality to the subculture of the image of the arch queen, it is not an exaggeration to say that gay politics grew out of gay wittiness. Wittiness was the first very tentative step towards gay liberation, a vitriolic expression of discontent, of our disdain for American prudery, which we reviled through verbal protests, a compulsion to denigrate, to engage in cutthroat bickering, which eventually reached critical mass and led to concrete political action. Bitching, in other words, was a form of protopolitics.