Saturday night, my wife and I went to the wedding of some dear friends of ours. The groom works in the music and entertainment industries, and so it wasn’t at all surprising that dancing constituted the chief activity for most of the wedding guests.
(Parenthetically, I’ll note this: secular wedding receptions are longer than religious ones. I’ve gone to a heck of a lot of weddings in my day, and all things being equal, it seems that those couples who have never slept together, having waited dutifully until the Blessed Day, are understandably more eager to leave the reception early. They’ve got business to which to attend, business that may seem somewhat less pressing to those who’ve been lovers for a long time. I don’t know if there’s a study on pre-marital sex and time spent by newly married couples at their reception, but it does seem — based entirely on anecdotal evidence — that the newly married who are most interested in “dancing the night away” with their nearest and dearest are those who have spent lots of time together naked.)
In any case, we had a lot of dancing on Saturday night. And I watched as a number of the groom’s male friends clowned around on the dance floor. The mood was silly and playful (helped along by plenty of alcohol). A few of the guys began to engage in what I can only call the ritualistic mimicking of gay male behavior. Two or three of the guys would start “freaking” each other, rubbing their rears into the crotches of their friends, accompanied by lavish hand movements. Others broke into intricate, graceful, dance steps, twirling and dipping their male partners. All of these men, whom I know quite well, are straight. And they were all joyfully playing to a crowd of fellow dancers who gathered round them, hooting and laughing at the increasingly silly antics of their buddies.
I haven’t posted before on the ways in which straight men engage in “faux homosexual behavior” in order to reaffirm their masculinity. I wrote a long time ago about the ways in “faux bisexuality ” has become chic, even de rigeur for many teenage girls today. But I haven’t posted about the ways in which their male peers engage in similar behavior — albeit for a much different purpose.
Spend time chaperoning a high school dance these days, and don’t be surprised to see two or three girls not only dancing together but rubbing against each other with an exaggerated and entirely unconvincing eroticism. These displays always draw male attention, which seems to be their purpose. When I ask my high schoolers how often they’ve seen girls get pressured (by boys) to kiss other girls, they groan with familiarity. This is, of course, hardly an uncommented-upon phenomenon.
But spend time with boys and even men in their twenties and thirties in certain social situations, and you’ll see something that is almost analogous. It’s hardly new, of course. Going back decades, the heterosexual alpha males of college campuses have dressed up in drag at frat parties. What greater staple is there of the college or high school spring social than having football players dress up as cheerleaders, doing ridiculous imitations of can-can dances or dance routines? This behavior is seen at countless high school assemblies all across the country (CJ Pascoe recounts one such event vividly in her marvelous, Dude You’re a Fag.)
As any social scientist or gender researcher will tell you, boys don’t play at “faux femininity” or “faux homosexuality” in order to arouse their audience. This isn’t about “turning on the girls” in the way that young women’s ersatz bisexual displays are often aimed at gaining male attention. Rather, these young men dance together and rub against one another and put on women’s clothes in order to reinforce their masculinity. Their displays are always greeted by gales of laughter and cheering. The boys who pretend to be girls (or who pretend to be gay, which in high school often amounts to the same thing) see the laughter as validation. The audience laughs at the husky offensive lineman in his cheerleading skirt because, after all, it is supposed to be utterly absurd for anyone to question his raw masculinity. Much of what is funny is rooted in what is incongruous and contradictory — and thus those boys and men whose feminine or gay antics draw the greatest laughter get their masculinity and their heterosexuality validated. The joke is obvious: “Isn’t it wild to see Bubba in his miniskirt? What makes it funny is that he’s so strong, so big, so male, so straight.”
Many queer folks are, understandably, uncomfortable with these displays. At first glance, the behavior of these ‘alpha males’ seems deliciously subversive. A hopeful observer might want to believe that these thirty-something men grinding on the dance floor together, these college lads dressed up like Paris Hilton, are evidence of a wonderful new willingness to flout conventional attitudes towards gender roles. But spend five minutes around these guys, listen to the hooting and the hollering that always accompanies these displays, and you’ll get the message pretty quick: this isn’t subverting a homophobic and sexist culture, it’s subtly (and more often, not so subtly) reinforcing it. The men who engage in this behavior aren’t any more accepting of homosexuality than their peers who refrain from these displays; rather, these displays boost the “masculinity quotient” of the young men involved. If too much anxiety about being labeled “gay” or “feminine” is seen as evidence of weakness, what better way to show off one’s sturdy self-confidence than to assume the role of what one so obviously is not?
In my day, I’ll confess I often engaged in — and even initiated — this sort of behavior. In grad school, I had a buddy named Cale. Cale was a rarity: an enormous former football player for a division I-AA school who was getting a doctorate in medieval history at UCLA. Cale was beefy (6′4″, 270 or so) and remarkably quick for someone of his size. He and I bonded because we were the only two medievalists who cared really passionately about virtually all sports (Cale could talk knowledgeably about golf and fishing as well as football). And somehow someone started a joke that Cale and I were lovers. We were both married at the time (to our first wives, this was nearly twenty years ago), and seemingly, our heterosexual credentials were firmly in place. But without ever naming what we were doing, Cale and I responded to this teasing (which had begun because we had the same adviser and were working on very similar projects and spending oodles of time together) by putting on flamboyant, puerile, and risible displays of faux homosexuality. We shrieked at each other in high voices, pretended to have “lover’s quarrels” at parties, and always made a great show of dancing together. Our behavior was wildly over the top, and of course, only took place in front of an audience. Alone together, we were cordial but somewhat distant.
Cale and I were colleagues, and because of the way grant money was disposed, we were rivals. Though we were both married, we both were pursuing the brightest and most mysterious woman in the grad program, which made us all the more competitive. (Again, folks, this was a long time ago. I was a very messed-up twenty-four year-old, even if my skills in paleography and Anglo-Norman French were at the highest they’d ever be.) Cale and I continued to study together, talk sports together, compete for money and for women’s attention for the better part of a year — all while regularly mugging it up for our friends and classmates.
Cale and I only stopped this behavior when the one openly gay man in the program, Alastair, approached us both in fury one day. He pointed out that what we were doing was the equivalent of Al Jolson putting on blackface, and that though he liked us both, he was disgusted beyond words by the way in which (as he put it) our own “internalized homophobia manifested in these pathetic performances.” Cale and I were both chastened, and we toned it down. I apologized profusely to Alastair, but it took me a while to earn his trust again.
Over the years, I’ve found myself more than once playing this game of establishing my masculine bona fides through these sorts of shows, though never to the degree that I did so with Cale all those years ago. (Another parenthesis: Cale and I ended our friendship altogether in a fight over the first Gulf War, which he strongly supported and I just as strongly did not.) But I’ve worked very hard to avoid engaging in these “sexualized blackface” rituals, and I’ve begun to gently and firmly call more and more young men on this behavior when I see it.
But Saturday night at the wedding, with hundreds of people milling about, I wasn’t prepared to pull the groom and his well-lubricated friends aside. There’ll be time for that conversation.
All of this sounded a bit fishy to me, and then the payoff: “As any social scientist or gender researcher will tell you, boys don’t play at “faux femininity” or “faux homosexuality” in order to arouse their audience. This isn’t about “turning on the girls” in the way that young women’s ersatz bisexual displays are often aimed at gaining male attention. Rather, these young men dance together and rub against one another and put on women’s clothes in order to reinforce their masculinity.”
Well of course social scientists and gender researchers are going to say these sorts of silly things - you folks don’t really practice good science, you simply claim that feelings, opinions and personal experience is applicable to the general population, which frankly, it is not. I’m fairly sure it never occurs to social scientists and gender researchers that they are probably completely off-base and that those boys are just clowning around and not trying to “reinforce their masculinity” any more than het girls are trying to “reinforce their femininity” when doing the same type of dances, or butch dykes are trying to reinforce their lesbian gender identity by acting like typical male construction workers.
You social scientists and gender researchers crack me up!
I think the post does leave out the concept of “gay chicken,” making homosexual gestures to another straight guy in order to try to viscerally creep him out.
Mr. Bad, the peer-reviewed research on this is fairly strong. Of course, if you don’t accept sociology and gender studies as legitimate academic disciplines, then none of this matters to you.
But your commenting here is a little like someone who hates science fiction showing up at a Star Wars convention complaining that everyone talks to much about outer space, or someone who hates auto racing going to the Indy 500 only to sit in the stands and whine that the engines are too loud.
In other words, questioning the fundamental premises on which this blog is built is not one of the reasons I allow comments. That’s why you have SYG and other similar fora.
Your future comments in this thread will be deleted.
Gee, people pretending to be something they aren’t - and are laughably not so - for laughs. Like when I was cast in a college skit as “Lanky,” the 8th dwarf.
Hypersensitivity and offense-mongering is what I call it.
Gonzman- Those laughs are cruel when produced at the real expense of others. Just because YOU are not offended by something doesn’t mean it’s not offensive.
“…all things being equal, it seems that those couples who have never slept together, having waited dutifully until the Blessed Day, are understandably more eager to leave the reception early.”
I’d want to see such a study that controls for who arranges the wedding. My observation has been that couples who have been living together tend to be less religious, yes, but they also tend to arrange their own weddings. Meanwhile couples who have more religious ceremonies also tend to have weddings where parents (usually the bride’s) are either managing or attempting to manage the event.
Given that I’m less likely to bail early from a party I arrange than one my parents would (and I *like* my parents!) I wouldn’t be surprised to see a higher correlation in that dimension.
Counterexamples:
1) thinking of friends who’ve arranged their own religious ceremonies I think the trend holds there as well.
2) thinking of my own highly secular wedding, since we arranged everything my partner and I retired long before the dancing, celebrating, natural-hot-springs dipping, and moonlight kayaking ended. But when we fell into bed side by side we were far too exhausted for talk, let alone anything else.
Final random point: Judith Martin, in her Miss Manners column, wisely said that a wedding should be enough fun that you enjoy the experience, but not so much fun you want to do it again. That was our wedding in a nutshell.
figleaf
I will tell ya what, Emily - my life became a thousand times easier when I learned to laugh at myself. And then, suddenly, the petty laughs of small people became insignificant.
I have no idea of the details of Gonzman’s identity. I *will*, however, state that almost everyone who says “life is easier when you learn to laugh at yourself” is a white male.
Perhaps Gonzman is the exception.
Is it possible we’re over-thinking this? How many high school or even college-aged boys actually make a conscious decision to do this with any intent other than to just be goofy? I’d guess none. Guys oten clown around and do wild things to get attention. This is but one way out of many. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that and it seems a bit puritanical and definitely hyper-sensitive to condemn this behavior based on a perceived offense to someone’s sensibilities.
It’s apparent to me that our culture is not at all comfortable with homosexuality and attempts to stifle behaviors that might “offend” the GLBT community just reinforce that. As a general rule, people who are comfortable in their own skin, so to speak, don’t get bent out of shape when they’re poked fun at. If goofy attempts at gaining attention that are not ill-intended are causing offense, we as a society should figure out why we’re so uncomfortable about the issue and work to fix that. Stifling what comes naturally to young men, IMHO, amounts to censorship and is merely an attempt to bandaid a much larger problem.
In other words, fix the problem, not the symptom.
Matt, there is no evidence that this kind of “faux homosexuality” comes naturally to young men; this is a learned behavior not seen universally. It occurs in specific settings, and, like Al Jolson putting on blackface, sends a specific message.
Gonzman is a quarter Lenni Lenape. And a lot more “Minorities” than me say it.
Nice way of saying, however roundabout, that the opinions of “White males” can be dismissed out of hand not because of what they say, but because of what they are.
Wonder what they’d call you if you said that about a black man - or an American Indian?
Folks, let’s stay on topic here. Narrowly on topic, which is why it is that so many young men engage in mock homosexual rituals.
Hugo, the specific behavior may be learned, but you’ll never convince me that the tendency that leads to it is. Homosexuality is a hot topic these days and you’re going to see it referenced throughout the culture in many ways. This is but one. I would argue that this behavior represents merely a competition between or a call for attention from those engaging in it. Reading any more than that into it is over-analyzing it.
As far as I can recall, I’ve never seen more than the tiniest hint of this kind of behavior. Interesting!
I’m having a strong visceral reaction here Hugo.
As a gay man, watching such displays is not just enough to make me angry. Watching two male athletes in “gay black face” one hears very clearly that such behavior is not only worth mocking and that to be gay is to deserve such mockery. Being gay, in this public dance of sexuality, is to be feminine, prissy, screaming. Ross the Intern is a model of butch masculinity compared to this model of homosexuality. The athletes version of homosexuality is extreme and stereotyped.
Such antics also send a very clear message about what not to do. Actually being attracted to another man, is to invite violence. The sexuality minstrel show is clearly about what is unacceptable - the other side of established their masculine bona fides is establishing what is not acceptable behavior.
A gay man showing any real attraction to one of the performers is as likely to be phsyically assaulted as anything else. As a gay man, watching such displays it’s difficult not to be uncomfortable - the subtext of sexuality violence is close to the surface. I know more than a few gay men who have subjected to sexualized violence at the hands of straight men who are earning their masculine stripes by “giving it to the fag”.
The deliberate blurring of gender lines also teaches the gay man watching the show that he’s not an authentic male, that he might as well be a woman (yes, it’s stunningly sexist). Like so many such displays, sexualized blackface serves to teach us who is “in” and who is “out” and to keep the people who are out in their place.
Thanks, Glenden. I’m copping to where I have fallen woefully short in the past on just this issue, and am grateful that you’re making the point that this is a serious, serious problem. “Boys will be boys” is invariably a line used to excuse something fairly appalling.
Oh, and Figleaf, your comments always go into my spam folder (thanks to your blogging handle) so I often only rescue them hours later. But I love the Miss Manners quote!
I wonder where men performance dressing as women (for Halloween and camp laughs) and drag queens fit into this. Because it pretty much seems like sexualized blackface for fun and profit…
I think that drag is very, very different. Those who embrace drag are being subversive, are taking risks, are modeling a radically different way of being male. The boys who play “grab-ass” with each other and speak in falsettos to amuse their friends and validate their masculine bona fides are doing something to reinforce rather than subvert the dominant paradigm.
Hey Hugo - it’s important to see the dynamic at play here but also important to understand that all of us grew up in this culture, imbibing its values. To participate in the things our culture says is okay doesn’t mean you have fallen short. I would see it differently if you’d always known how gay men experience the situation and ignored that.
Did you see that SNL skit years ago where John Goodman was making fun of Christopher Lowell? It was pretty funny, mostly because they were making fun of how Christopher Lowell has weird taste for home decorating. Your post got me thinking about it because John Goodman is the epitome of “masculinity” in shows like Roseanne, but briefly played a role as a lead gay character in a show I can’t even remember now. I wonder how that translates – he has both made fun of homosexual men, yet played one in a TV series. Just some food for thought.
I don’t see the difference so much. Much drag happens in closed clubs in supportive environments where people are specifically *paying* to see it. I also don’t see how dressing in women’s clothing and wearing fake breasts and often embodying exaggerated stereotypes of femininity while performing music or dancing is modeling a different way of being male?
Tara, drag culture is a fundamentally unique way of life — I ought to have said that it goes beyond male or female; it is something difficult to place into the neat little gender boxes we have. This kind of thoughtful perfomativity is radically affirming of all people, at odds with the very sort of thing I’m describing here, which is really about lampooning a minority group.
*rolls eyes*
this phenomenon isn’t only limited to big beefy, drunks. surprisingly, a lot of geeks and nerds participate in this behavior. it’s seems widespread among DnD geeks, the occasional video gamers, but rarely seen among the science though-but that could because i don’t spend a lot of time in the science labs.
I’ve seen drag go both ways. There are definitely guys who dress in drag at costume parties as a way of mocking femininity. (They’re usually the same guys who get angry when you let on that you don’t think their sexist jokes are all that funny.) But I’ve also had a friend dress in drag at costume parties as a prelude to coming out of the closet, and for him putting on a dress with performing heterosexual masculinity. Quite the reverse, in fact: it was an act of non-heterosexual non-masculinity. And I’ve never felt like I was unwelcome at an actual drag show just because I was female.
* with –> was not an act of
Hugo,
Never leave a working defibrillator around doctors or paramedics who have not yet been trained in their use. One guy burned his ears off. Several people have gone to the ER to be checked out following blasting themselves with 360 Joules. One fellow burned his vocal cords with a lighted stylette (hot lightbulb on the end of a stiff wire — get it in the right place and the larynx glows).
Resuscitating a dead or dying person is frightening, and so the urge is to play with the tools (toys?) to make it less frightening. Left on its own, the play tends to not go well.
The best part about Advanced Cardiac Life Support classes is the megacode section. They put out defibrillator CPR manikins, intubation heads, IV arms, and real (if worn) defibrillators and laryngoscopes and needles and ET tubes are used.
It’s play, rehearsal to make scary concepts less scary. It’s play to help us deal with our emotions about what we’re playing at.
What if “blackface” and “gayface” are forms of play, not to assert male dominance (that’s the excuse everyone would tell themselves — remember, I’m a depressed person and well-versed in how the brain lies to itself to make sense of our feelings and actions) but to deal with an unfamiliar and scary concept? What if the mocking and goading are not the goal but the reaction to a “broken defense mechanism”?
It’s worth noting that men dressing up in drag may not be “gayface” at all, but “womanface.” Women are scary concepts to a lot of men. Are they really dressing up as a woman to confront their fears and insecurity about women?
What if by demonizing this play, we’re preventing change? Wouldn’t that be a kick in the teeth?
What if the problem isn’t what’s being played at, but that it’s not intentional and thus not as constructive as it might be? What if by taking it away, we’re taking away the mechanisms for dealing with those fears — and making the fears worse?
Ever read the book “Black Like Me”? It was blackface. Today, it would be considered offensive. But that was a book that profoundly affected a lot of us growing up in the ’60s.
Rob, there’s a reason why we call it homoPHOBIA — you’re right that much of this behavior is rooted in the fear of being labeled gay, or even worse, effeminate. But the best people to ask about the effectiveness of blackface are African Americans — and the best folks to ask about this faux homosexual behavior are gays and lesbians. I’ve met relatively few of the latter who think this is harmless behavior.
Blackface, gayface… how about “fat suit”? That sort of phobia, I’m qualified to comment on.
Knowing full-well that this will be deleted, I’ll go ahead and ask anyway:
Hugo, you said “Mr. Bad, the peer-reviewed research on this is fairly strong. Of course, if you don’t accept sociology and gender studies as legitimate academic disciplines, then none of this matters to you.”
It’s one thing to claim that “the peer-reviewed research on this is fairly strong” and quite another to actually provide even one citation to said peer-reviewed literature. If you want any of us to consider sociology and gender studies to be legitimate academic disciplines, then you might start by acting like said disciplines indeed are as you say.
Got a reference or three?
1. David Plummer: The Quest for Modern Manhood: Masculine Stereotypes, Peer Culture, and the Social Significance of Homophobia” Journal of Adolescence 24, 2001.
2. Beth Quinn “Sexual Harassment and Masculinity: The Power and Meaning of ‘Girl Watching’”. Gender and Society 16, 2002.
3. Peter Lyman “The Fraternal Bond as Joking Relationship: A Case Study of the Role of Sexist Jokes in Male Group Bonding” in Men’s Lives (ed. Kimmel) 1998
All are excellent articles, none as far as I know available on line. All use standard social science research practices.
Mr. Bad, I really don’t think it is Hugo’s job to teach you academic feminism 101… he gets paid to do that in his professional life, so maybe if you want the info you should float him a few bucks (for the chincillas you know).
If you want to know sources so badly, find a local college and see if you can audit a women’s studies course…. or just find the syllabus for one online and do as much of the reading as you can for free. (I highly recommends the WS program at UW-Madison, where you can see the 101 syllabus online at: http://www.womenstudies.wisc.edu/WSP/Courses/WS101/WS101.htm). Find a feminist book store in your area and browse the psychology, sociology, or gender studies section. Get on the mailing list (paper or email) for a feminist press like Seal. Go to your local library and put “feminism” in the catalog, or just browse the 305’s (that is where feminism is located in the Dewey Decimal System). If you browse Amazon.com in the listmania section, there are TONS of lists of good influential feminist books. Or you could ask other feminists for book suggestions NICELY instead of assuming that it is our job to bust our hump to educate you. Heck I’ll suggest “Intersex and Identity” by Sharon Preves right off the bat. It’s one of my favorite books about science and gender.
Basically, get off your butt and do the work your self, because right now your argument sounds like “I’ve never really looked for this kind of information so I’m going to tell you that it isn’t real unless you deliver it right to my door”. And frankly, that’s just lame. At least make an intelligent argument man.
I have to admit that the first time I heard a man joking about himself being gay, my reaction was relief. When I was in high school, guys had joked about other guys being gay, but no one ever suggested it of himself, even in jest. So, here I was, in my freshman year in college, and a couple of guys started joking about some other guy being gay. He was, as far as I knew, straight, and not especially effeminate, but he wasn’t super alpha male macho, either, and he was rather shorter than average. And so, when he grabbed the joke and ran with it, my thought was, thank God! College is going to be a place where people don’t get intimidated about this stuff as easily as they did in high school.
I can see the “blackface” side, too, though, and maybe I’d have reacted differently if the guy in question were more alpha male, and if he had played along with the joke in a style that played more strongly to stereotype.
Hugo, the Plummer article does not address the behavior you discuss above - it addresses homophobic behavior while your missive is about youth who ape homosexual behavior. The researchers surveyed 30 adolescent boys over a 2-year time period; not a very large sample, especially for these kinds of studies, thus the statistical power of the analyses would be at best very weak. However, the authors don’t really do any analyses, they simply present results and speculate on how feminist theory applies to the trends they saw; I see no effort on the part of the authors to actually test whether or not the theory they base their discussion on is valid, i.e., upheld by the data. But again, the article is mostly irrelevant to the topic at hand so the point is moot.
The Quinn article is equally irrelevant to the topic at hand, this time addressing a study of 43 adults over the course of (I think) a year (18 men and 25 women, again, another very small sample size) re. their perceptions of ‘ogling’ as sexual harassment. As with the first article, there is scant little objective data offered other than summary stats re. the study population and the article is mostly a discussion of feminist theory; no actual work examining whether or not those theories are valid, either in the context of the current research or on a larger context, are attempted. There is lots of discussion devoted to applying feminist theory to the given responses, but in no way does it even attempt to test the theories upon which it is based.
Finally, I could not find the last article in the listing for peer-reviewed journals, however, it looks like it’s in a book edited by Kimmel and thus likely is not peer-reviewed. Books do not undergo the strict scrutiny that peer-reviewed journals do, so I view them with more skepticism. Still, if the first two articles are examples of standard social science research practices then I dare say that the skepticism with which many of us in the hard sciences hold for the soft sciences is indeed healthy and earned. I would be glad to look over any articles you may be able to cite that address the phenomenon you address in your blog article, but as I said, these don’t cut it in that regard.
Sarah: Struck a nerve, did I?
Oh, I forgot to provide the relevancy for my last post: Hugo, it still seems that what you’re doing is simply speculating re. why the guys were ‘dirty dancing’ and therefore I maintain that it’s quite likely that they were simply horsing around. Just like girls do, straight or not.
And in the context of this sort of thing, one opinion is as good as another, so I believe we have ourselves a draw here. ;)
Mr. Bad, of course, you can also look at the entire Pascoe book “Dude you’re a fag”, which was based on her dissertation research at Berkeley.
Why do I always feed the trolls? I ask myself…
I can see the “blackface” side, too, though, and maybe I’d have reacted differently if the guy in question were more alpha male, and if he had played along with the joke in a style that played more strongly to stereotype.
That’s interesting, and causes me to question some of my own behavior. At times, to be outrageous and get laughs, I’ve used similar approaches for humor. For example, despite being ‘out’ as a straight man, in the past I have spoken in a deadpan manner and with a, um, straight face, about my enjoyment of extremely decadent and obviously gay sex acts. (Works great with unblinking eye contact too.)
In some ways, it’s testing people on my (unusual, no-holds-barred) sense of humor, and I wouldn’t use such material in front of everyone. At the same time, I need to recognize that I’m doing this with a safety net because I can always retreat back to frat-boyish straight privilege - “what? Y’all thought I was serious? Naw, that’s some sick shit, yo. I’m jus’ clownin’, dawg.”
Always got to remember that there’s a fine line between being funny and outrageous and just being an asshole.
Yes Mr Bad, people who speak about things which they know nothing about and stubbornly refuse to educate themselves about do hit a nerve with me, both as a feminist and as a librarian. There is a world of information out there which most people do not avail themselves of before spouting their opinions. The US has one of the best public library systems in the world and some of the most geographically available universities and colleges, yet the average citizen doesn’t avail themselves of that information.
Okay, folks, let’s ignore the trolling and stay on the topic of the post only.
Just to agree with Glenden about the blatant threats underlying these behaviours. As a (real! live! non-fictional!) bisexual lady, the pervasive fauxbi annoys me.
Not only does faux bisexexual behaviour make me uncomfortable to appear affectionate to my female lovers in public, for fear of being ogled or cheered on, but it reinforces the myth of bisexuals as being promiscuous, and just desparate for sex with whoever we can get it with.
Perhaps it’s just my longing to be special, but it bugs me that it’s easier to be a bi female than anything else. In a sexualised world, where sex apparently equals naked female bodies, straight girls do feel a lot of pressure to find other women sexually attractive. Not as people, you understand, just as objects of sex. A very informal poll of my straight female friends revealed that (of those who watched porn), most watched lesbian porn, despite having an aversion to doing it themselves. Straight and homosexual guys, well, you know that story. And bisexual men probably get the worst treatment of all.
Not to mention it makes things rather confusing for those of us who are actually interested in same-sex relationships, not just play-acting.
Anyway, thanks for the fantastic blog.
Ooops, I’m really sorry Hugo - I jumped the gun. My bad.
I’ll refrain from any more posts on this thread now. I’ve said my piece.
Hugo,
I recognize that blackface and gayface can be harmful. But I’m asking two very important questions: what if it’s necessary (or at least the fastest route to eliminating prejudice) and what if it could be done in a non-hurtful (or at least far less hurtful) way?
1. What if the “harmful” is necessary to make progress? Using the ACLS theme, the goal of the defibrillator is to kill the patient. Really — you’re deliberately stopping the heart. The hope is that the heart (and maybe a couple grams of epi) is healthy enough to restart. I’ve had it work — and I’ve had it not work. The proximal cause of death of at least one patient was yours truly. The point is, sometimes we have to do damage to make things heal.
What if blackface was a necessary step? What if, in areas that are still segregated, a period of blackface would help those societies grow out of their racism faster?
2. Bad CPR is better than no CPR. M*A*S*H did it historically accurate, a kid watched, and when his mother went into cardiac arrest, he did CPR like he saw on M*A*S*H. The mother lived. That doesn’t mean you should not try to do better CPR.
What if there were a way to constructively use “blackface” and “gayface”? Design it to make it non-hurtful, use it as a learning tool.
There are certain ways the mind works, certain patterns on the path to change. Many educational theories have fought against these patterns, and they fail because they are working against the programming grain.
What if, in the name of political correctness, we’ve institutionalized racism? Wouldn’t be the first time good intentions made something worse.
I’m not saying this is correct, but I am pointing out that it hasn’t been examined. Of course, some might prefer not to ask hard questions because they might not like the real answer. Creationists on evolution, Griffin on global warming, Bush on Iraq, Cheney on torture….
This was really interesting. I’ve never, and I repeat, never, seen straight males pretend to be gay as described in the original post. Could this be a regional phenomenon? I live in Ohio, whereas Hugo’s in California.
While returning from swing dancing in Cleveland last week, one of my friends commented if any males in our rural, farming-centric county became skilled at swing dancing, he’d probably get beat up. I responded he’d be alright as long as he only talked about it around women and other male swing dancers. This area may still be in the “can’t joke about being gay other than using it as a synonym for ’stupid’” phase.
I am aware of the gay mocking gender varient or imitative gay behavior in young men and yes, it holds a current of violence and threat inherent in it. Simply watching it is a warning; if you are like this, we will find you!
however, gender varient cultural play does allow for LGBT people to take thier tentative steps out of the closet. I think of Halloween, Anime and Science Fiction conventions where male sailor moon figures always appear (among others) and the TV show FREAKS and GEEKS where one of the 12 year old boys is always pretending to be the Bionic Woman and, of course, shows up at halloween as…The Bionic Woman. This wiggle room area of gender variance in North American culture means that he gets a few eyebrows raised but doesn’t get beaten up until he starts coming to the prom as the Bionic woman. There are so few outlets for closets LGBT people that I would hate to see all eliminated in our need for a perfect world when in reality, for a gay closeted kid in backwoods (insert state here) these “jests” may be the only time they get to express themselves.