Archive for the 'GLBTQ' Category

Gay sports update

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 30, 2008
in GLBTQ, Links and Sports
. 0 Comments

I am delighted with all the hits I got as a result of Andrew Sullivan linking today to my post about the causal effect that legalizing gay marriage clearly has on sports championships. Jeff Fecke gets the credit.

I haven’t had over 5000 unique visitors in a single day in a very long time — and the last time was in the midst of the whole Full Frontal Feminism argument that tore up the feminist blogosphere!

Sullivan also notes something I forgot, which was that Denmark legalized same-sex unions (without using the term marriage) way back in 1989 — and promptly won the next European championship in 1992.

The evidence grows stronger.

Gay marriage: good for winning championships?

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 29, 2008
in GLBTQ and Sports
. 20 Comments

I got home from working out in time to watch the Spain-Germany European Cup final from Vienna. I’m not inclined to patriotism in any form, but I’ll be darned if I, the son of an Austrian-born war refugee, was going to root for the Germans to win anything in the city of his birth. Spain won a deserved victory. A.S. Byatt has, not surprisingly, the best write-up of the whole tournament.

This leads me to my observation: legalizing gay marriage is good for sports teams. Spain did it a few years back, and wham, they win the Euro for the first time since 1964. Canada did it just before the 2006 Winter Olympics, and bingo, they had their best-ever medal haul. South Africa legalized gay marriage in 2006, and won the Rugby World Cup the following year. Massachusetts gave same-sex couples the right to wed a few years ago — and ask Red Sox and Celtic fans about how nicely things have gone for their teams since. For all those folks who insist that God’s punishment for gay marriage will be obvious, so far the evidence is, um, lacking. The evidence for the opposite is growing.

If California upholds gay marriage at the ballot box in November, I predict championships for USC football, UCLA basketball, the Los Angeles Lakers and the Anaheim Angels — all within short order.

Reprint: Sailboats, Thanksgiving, and Growing Up Loving Lesbians

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 17, 2008
in GLBTQ and Reprints
. 1 Comment

This post originally appeared September 21, 2004. Nearly four years later, it still seems timely.

I’ve been thinking about four women who formed two couples in my childhood. I’ve been thinking about Jane and Carla, Christine and Rachel. (No, not real names). I’ve been thinking about them in terms of explaining how it is that I, a hetero man, became so focused on gay and lesbian rights.

Until my parents divorced when I was six, we lived in Santa Barbara (my father taught at the university). Most of my parents’ friends were academic couples. Somehow, early on, little Hugo figured out that adults seemed to come in pairs, just like my mother and father. In my life, it was obvious that sometimes a pair could be two women. (If my parents had any good gay male friends, I don’t remember them). But I do remember Jane and Carla vividly. They had a sailboat, and one particularly happy memory from my childhood is of sailing out from Santa Barbara on a weekend afternoon, Carla guiding the boat, Jane and my parents laughing and watching my baby brother, me munching on chocolate. I felt happy and loved and safe surrounded by these grown-ups who loved us and each other.

The last Thanksgiving that we spent as a family — before the divorce — was, as I remember, a small affair. My parents invited just one couple: Christine and Rachel. I was only six or so, so my memories aren’t clear. But I remember being clear on the fact that Christine and Rachel went together the way my mom and dad went together. I had no idea what sex was, or what being a couple really entailed. I just knew that most adults paired up, and that it didn’t really matter whether men were with women or women with women. What mattered was finding another adult to be with. That seemed to be very important.

Though our early childhood memories can be deceptive, it seems to me that these four women were around at least as often as any straight couples my parents knew.

I haven’t seen any of those women for years. My parents divorced, and I moved with my brother and mother to Central California. It wasn’t until I was in early adolescence that I realized what the nature of those women’s relationships had been. I was perhaps 13 when, in the course of a serious and thoughtful discussion about homosexuality, I rather innocently asked my mother if she knew any lesbians. She laughed and explained about Jane and Carla, Christine and Rachel. I was floored, and then realized “of course!” The word “lesbian” was used as a laughing pejorative by my male friends, who discussed the graphic details of women’s sexual relationships with each other with a mix of excitement and revulsion. To be able to connect it to these four women whom I had loved and felt safe with was a profound awakening.

The very word “lesbian” to me still conjures up Carla and Jane’s sailboat (that is, when it doesn’t conjure up the residents of a Greek island in the northeastern Aegean.) I’ve got quite a few lesbian friends in my life today — as well as gay male friendships. Indeed, some of the closest relationships I’ve had with women in my adult life have been with lesbians. While the stereotype of an older generation of gay women is of folks who were deeply mistrustful of men (often with damned good reason), I note that a great many younger lesbians today are able to form enduring, affectionate, truly honest and “platonic” friendships with straight men. I don’t think we’re going to get the straight man/lesbian version of “Will and Grace” on TV anytime soon, but we may be on our way.

I’ve wandered from my topic. Really, it isn’t much of a topic at all. It’s just that when I think about same-sex marriage or other homosexual issues, I flash back to these women from my childhood. To me, who they were and how they lived seem utterly normal, healthy, and good. It goes without saying that seeing these four women with each other did not harm or undermine me in any way.

And even now, when I hear words like “unnatural” or “immoral”, I think about real people whom I loved and who I believe loved me. I think about sailboats, Thanksgiving dinners, and chocolate. And when folks start condemning or pathologizing women and men who lived and loved like Jane and Carla, Christine and Rachel, I get very, very, very angry.

Making it personal: getting the reluctant middle to embrace same-sex marriage

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 17, 2008
in GLBTQ and Marriage
. 12 Comments

With legal same-sex marriages now being performed up and down the Golden State today, conservative opponents of such unions are scrambling to re-frame their opposition in a way that doesn’t make them sound like, well, party-pooping nasties.

This fall, an initiative on the California ballot will seek to undo what has already been done, and declare that marriage is reserved for a man and a woman. The task for the right-wing is tough, and Maggie Gallagher takes it on in today’s National Review, trying to make the case that the fight over gay marriage isn’t really about, uh marriage. You see, conservatives know that the more the public sees of elderly women tying the knot, or of two handsome grooms exchanging vows, the greater the reluctance on the part of California voters to “rain on the love parade.” Someone who votes “Yes” on the November initiative will be voting to invalidate same-sex marriages that have already taken place — which is, in effect, the same thing as walking up to Phyllis and Del and saying, “I don’t accept that you can pledge your love to each other in the same way that a man and a woman can.”

A certain percentage of the California public will vote against same-sex marriage no matter what, but that percentage is far from a majority. Perhaps only a third of Californians have strong religious objections to same-sex unions. Another third of Californians are enthusiastic about the idea of gays and lesbians getting married, believing that the sex of a couple has no real bearing on the real issue, which is one of love and commitment. And a middle third is ambivalent. That middle third is, perhaps, caught between a vague discomfort with the idea of “calling it marriage” and a strong desire not to be judgmental. That middle third strongly supports civil unions and domestic partnerships; that middle third, at the same time, clings to some old-fashioned ideas about the privileged position heterosexual love ought to occupy. Whoever wins the hearts and minds of that middle third wins the ballot initiative.

For those of us who support these unions, it is absolutely vital that we personalize this battle. Each and every voter who goes into a booth in November needs to understand that they are taking part in a referendum on the rights of other human beings to pursue happiness. They need to be viscerally aware that a “Yes” vote on this initiative is, in effect, a deliberate and conscious choice to invalidate the joyous marriages that have already taken place. If we can make this case, then I suspect that most of the middle third will say something like “You know, in my gut I still am uncomfortable with same-sex marriages. But these folks seem so happy, and I’m just not willing to stop anyone from a shot at a lifetime of joy together.” That’s the reasoning we want to foster. And I’m willing to bet that when forced to make a decision, 51% of California voters are unwilling to break the hearts and shatter the dreams of so many of their neighbors — and family members.

I don’t think marriage should be entered into lightly or inadvisedly, as the BCP says. But the more same-sex couples wed, the better. It’s easy to oppose gay marriage when it’s an unreal abstraction — it’s harder to undo what has already been done. Most voters don’t want to be the “bad guy”, even when they remain troubled to one degree or another by homosexuality. So the more happy, smiling faces we can put out there, the more examples of gay and lesbian couples embracing domestic bliss and fidelity we can sear into the consciousness of Californians, the more reluctant many of those voters will be to undo what has already been so joyously done.

It’s a battle for hearts and minds, baby, and with civility and grace towards those on the other side, I’m ready to fight it.

We’re gonna win, 51-49. Bank it.

Divorce, gay marriage, and disillusionment

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 13, 2008
in GLBTQ and Marriage
. 15 Comments

Starting next week, same-sex marriage will be legal here in California. Despite the reluctance of a few registrars in inland, more conservative areas, each of California’s 58 counties will be issuing marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples next week. I know several couples who will be getting married soon, including some who were wed in San Francisco four years ago during the brief period in which same-sex licenses were issued in that city.

And of course, I’m thinking about the fascinating conservative argument that allowing gays and lesbians to marry is somehow bad for marriage as an institution. I’m quite confident that my marriage — to a woman — will be just as strong next week as it is today, and most honest heterosexual married folks would say the same.

I work a lot with young people. I got married to my third wife in May 2001, and we separated just over a year later. The kids in my youth group threw a shower for us before we were married, and they — especially the girls — wanted stories about the proposal, the ceremony, the honeymoon, the dress, and so forth. My third wife and I indulged them. When I announced our separation in October 2002, many of these same kids were devastated. I remember that night in youth group vividly: several teens wept. Two of the girls were furious with me, one choosing not to speak to me for several months. When she finally did want to talk, she told me that my divorce had made her feel hopeless and bereft. She told me she was much more cynical about marriage as a consequence.

What this painful experience taught me is this: heterosexual divorce disillusions a hell of a lot more kids than will homosexual marriage. I’ve seen how my divorce(s) hurt the young people in my life; I’ve never seen any evidence of a young person being “damaged” by their awareness of a same-sex union. Yet no religious conservative tried to stop me from marrying again (and again, and again.) The divorce rate among evangelical Protestants in this country is famously as high as it is for their secular brethren, of course, so most pastors are keenly aware that the condemnation of remarriage after divorce will lose them their congregation lickety-split. Gays and lesbians are a safer target. In this sense, those within the Catholic tradition who refuse remarriage after divorce are on more consistent ground when they oppose gay marriage than those within most branches of American Protestantism, who allow multiple “do-overs”.

Of course, I’m a fan of multiple do-overs. And so too is the God I worship, a God whose grace and whose table are open to all who have stumbled again, and again, and again, and again. That grace is alive and well in this, my fourth and final marriage. If I can be wed four times, despite the chaos inflicted by three earlier divorces, surely my gay and lesbian brothers and sisters deserve a chance to treat the institution of marriage with more care than I until recently evinced.

GLBTQ fall syllabus reading list

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 21, 2008
in Books and GLBTQ
. 0 Comments

The books I’ll be using this fall in my Gay and Lesbian American History class:

Transgender History, Susan Stryker

Different Daughters: A History of the Daughters of Bilitis and the Rise of the Lesbian Rights Movement, Marcia Gallo

A Desired Past: A Short History of Same-Sex Love in America, Leila Rupp

The Invention of Heterosexuality, Jonathan Katz

And lots and lots of suggested, optional readings.

From ‘78 to ‘08, California leads the way: on same-sex marriage, changing voter demographics, and why we will win this November

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 20, 2008
in GLBTQ and Politics
. 3 Comments

This fall, for the first time in nearly three years, I’ll be teaching my History 24F: Introduction to Lesbian and Gay American History. (For those interested, it’ll be Monday and Wednesday afternoons from 1:35-3:10PM).

This same fall, Californians will almost certainly be voting again on a ban on gay marriage. As virtually everyone knows, last Thursday the California Supreme Court invalidated the prior ban on same-sex marriages, clearing the way for marriage licenses to be issued to gay and lesbian couples within a matter of weeks. A stay may yet be forthcoming, pending the outcome of the November vote. It is widely assumed that opponents of same-sex marriage have enough signatures to get an initiative onto the November ballot. Presuming they do, it will be an exciting and nerve-wracking battle.

2008 marks the 30th anniversary of the defeat of the Briggs Initiative. A California State Senator, John Briggs, got a measure on the November 1978 ballot that would have barred gay and lesbian folks from serving as classroom teachers. Gays and lesbians had never won a statewide ballot fight anywhere in the country before, and pre-election polls predicted doom. Thousands of jobs would have been at stake. But gay and lesbian activists, led by San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk, rallied a diverse coalition to oppose what became known as “Proposition 6.” Of all people, former governor Ronald Reagan came out against Briggs. To the surprise of many, the initiative went down to defeat. For the first time ever, gay and lesbian folks had won a statewide battle in America. Three weeks later, Harvey Milk was assassinated, and passed into legend. Continue reading ‘From ‘78 to ‘08, California leads the way: on same-sex marriage, changing voter demographics, and why we will win this November’

“A man getting a gender studies major is most likely to be gay”: on the importance of refuting that problematic stereotype

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 5, 2008
in Feminist Pedagogy, GLBTQ and Men and Masculinity
. 29 Comments

Frederick sends me a link to this article from last week’s University of Chicago paper: Men find Academic Home in Gender Studies.

Sexuality, masculinity, and interracial pornography have held particular allure for David Klein since high school, but only after coming to the U of C did Klein find a theoretical framework for talking about his interests.

“Theories of gender and sexuality have a part in everything. I think queer theory has a lot to offer in terms of frameworks for looking at the world,” said Klein, who is a second-year in the College.

Klein is one of only three undergraduate men currently declared as gender studies majors at the University.

Since the creation of the major in 1996, men have comprised around 20 percent of undergraduate gender studies majors. However, with an average of only four undergraduate gender studies majors per year, the small department often graduates classes without any men at all.

Men historically make up around 10-15% of the students in my women’s history class. They make up around 45% of the students in my men and masculinity course, 40% of the students in my “beauty and the body” class, and traditionally make up about half of my gay and lesbian history survey. We don’t have formally declared majors at the community college, of course. I do know, however, that I’ve been successful in “converting” a number of students to a Women’s Studies/Gender Studies track after transfer. But of those students who do transfer on as Gender Studies majors, most– about 80% — are women. It’s one thing to get guys to take the classes, and another thing altogether to get them to make it the focus of their academic careers. Continue reading ‘“A man getting a gender studies major is most likely to be gay”: on the importance of refuting that problematic stereotype’

“Chivalry is deeply feminist”: butch-femme culture and a rethink on gender roles

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 26, 2008
in Chivalry and performing gender roles, Clothing and Fashion, GLBTQ and Relationships
. 25 Comments

Brownfemipower gets the hat tip and the curtsey for linking to this fascinating post at Sugarbutch Chronicles: Bringing Butch Back. It’s a succinct corrective to many of the received assumptions of Second-Wave feminism’s response to gender roles and chivalry:

Chivalry is deeply feminist to me. When in femmes, I expect femininity to be deliberate, done with the whole knowledge of the compulsory heteronormative restrictions which dictate that women must be and do certain things, particular that we must wear high heels, delicate cloth, restrictive clothing. Femininity is not made for comfort or movement, it is made to accentuate the sexualization of a woman’s body - and that’s why things like holding her doors open (so she doesn’t dirty her white gloves or expensive manicure), pulling her chair out (so she doesn’t have to awkwardly move a bulky piece of furniture, and risk getting it caught on her skirt or stockings and ripping something) or holding her coat (so she doesn’t have to reach around and risk ripping the tight seams in her shoulders or upper back) are necessary to me, as an acknowledgement of how restrictive femininity can be, and of how difficult it is to walk around the world in these clothes, as a celebration of the beauty of femininity on the body, and with deep respect for the courage to costume and perform femme to begin with.

Bold mine.

Most of the discussions about “chivalry” and “courtesy” in the feminist blogosphere are rooted in heterosexist assumptions. Virtually every feminist, early in his or her public “career” as a warrior for gender equality, gets involved in the “opening doors” and “paying for dinner” discussion. It’s remarkable how many young women, convinced that a fondness for playing traditional gender roles is at odds with egalitarian ideology, cite a fondness for “common courtesy” and “being treated like a lady” (or a “girl”, or a “woman”) as a primary reason for rejecting the feminist label. While few feminists claim that a straight woman’s conscious enjoyment of traditional gender roles automatically vitiates her feminism, most feel that it goes too far to claim the enthusiastic participation in “chivalry” as a genuinely “feminist choice.” Continue reading ‘“Chivalry is deeply feminist”: butch-femme culture and a rethink on gender roles’

Barack Obama, first-rate theologian: on Romans 1, Matthew 5, and “obscurity”

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 4, 2008
in Christianity, GLBTQ and Politics
. 13 Comments

I’m watching primary results tonight with a sanguine air; I still remain conflicted about who it is I want to win the Democratic nomination, and if I had to pick tonight, I’d still pick the junior senator from New York. As I type, I’m watching one of my heroes, Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs-Jones (who is — and this is not well-known — one of the best friends to the animal rights movement in the House) speak in Ohio at the Clinton victory party. But I have much affection for the dynamic Illinois senator as well.

In any event, that senator, Barack Obama is taking some heat from the religious right for his interpretation of Scripture. In Ohio, last week, according to the Baptist News, he spoke about same-sex unions.

“I believe in civil unions that allow a same-sex couple to visit each other in a hospital or transfer property to each other,” he said, referring to unions that grant all the legal benefits of marriage, minus the name. “I don’t think it should be called marriage but I think that it is a legal right that they should have that is recognized by the state. If people find that controversial, then I would just refer them to the Sermon on the Mount, which I think is, in my mind, for my faith, more central than an obscure passage in Romans. That’s my view. But we can have a respectful disagreement on that.”

The Baptist News notes that the Sermon on the Mount is Matthew 5; the Romans passage is from the first chapter, verses 26-32. The Baptists complain that Obama is cherry-picking Scripture. Conservative talk-show host (and Mitt Romney biographer) Hugh Hewitt writes:

…even liberal evangelicals are going to be scratching their heads of Obama’s approach to Scripture…

“Godwin’s Law” warns against the use of Hitler or Nazi analogies in arguments. A second useful law: A candidate should never cite Scripture except with great specificity and unless he or she expects and desires to return to the subject and have every reference they used parsed over by millions of Bible readers.

Well, I’m pretty confident I meet the definition of a “liberal evangelical”, and I know my Scripture reasonably well. And Obama nailed it perfectly when he described Romans 1 as “obscure“. Obscure is often misunderstood to mean “unimportant”. But it doesn’t mean that; Webster says it means “not readily understood or clearly expressed.” Ask nine out of ten New Testament theologians about what Paul’s point is in the first chapter of this, his greatest letter, and most will say “yeah, it’s obscure.” While the Sermon on the Mount was just that — a sermon to a large crowd in which Jesus makes bold, prophetic statements about how we are to live, Romans is a densely argued, tremendously complex letter that touches on issues such as grace, the necessity of the cross, and the church-state relationship. Continue reading ‘Barack Obama, first-rate theologian: on Romans 1, Matthew 5, and “obscurity”’

Jane Rule, 1931-2007

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on December 8, 2007
in Books and GLBTQ
. 0 Comments

Apparently others saw the obituaries earlier, but both the big New York and Los Angeles papers just printed Jane Rule’s death notice in today’s editions. Rule was the author of Desert of the Heart (which was turned into the marvelous “Desert Hearts”, a 1985 film in which my cousin Dean played a key role). For that work alone, Rule became an iconic lesbian literary figure. But my favorite novel of hers is a much less well-known book, Memory Board. I’ve read it and reread it many times, and found it not only deeply moving, but immensely comforting. It’s one of perhaps only half-a-dozen books I re-read every year or two, and it would make the list of my ten favorite novels ever written in the English language. I’ll re-read it again this holiday season.

Transgender Homecoming King: in celebration of Andrew: UPDATED

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on December 4, 2007
in GLBTQ and Pasadena City College
. 1 Comment

Not much time to post here this morning, but I have a short piece up at Inside Higher Education today: The Meaning of a Transgender Homecoming King. Last month, PCC elected my former student, Andrew Gomez (who is transitioning from female to male) as its Homecoming King. Homecoming is a bigger deal here than on most community college campuses, and I have some reflections at IHE.

UPDATE: I realize that the IHE piece was edited, and some of what I wrote was left out; the full piece as I originally wrote it is below the fold. Continue reading ‘Transgender Homecoming King: in celebration of Andrew: UPDATED’

Photo Pride on Flickr

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 20, 2007
in GLBTQ and Photos
. 1 Comment

I got this email from someone named Ceceilia, asking me to pass along the word, and I’m happy to do so here.

I’m a student activist and frequent reader, wondering if you would be willing to spread the word about a really, really important (really easy!) fundraiser on Flickr for The Point Foundation, which provides scholarships to marginalized LGBT student leaders. I’m a Point Scholar myself, and you can read my bio on the website at www.thepointfoundation.com. This foundation has been a true lifesaver for me, and though their financial help is really easy to quantify, the emotional support and mentoring relationships they have given me are valuable beyond words.

In an effort to support scholarships–there are 94 of us now!–The Point Foundation has partnered with Yahoo’s Worldwide Pride 2007 on Flickr, and for every photo that is uploaded to the group’s photo pool, Yahoo will donate $1 and up to $25,000. Thus, I’m asking you to help spread the word!!!! Every dollar counts! And god only knows how many pride photos are on Flickr!!!

Photos don’t necessarily need to be of pride (especially if participants aren’t queer or didn’t go to pride), but they just need to be representative of people who are proud to be LGBT or are proud of LGBT people. Further instructions are posted below.

1. Go to The Point Foundation website
2. Click on the Worldwide Pride 2007 (Yahoo) link
3. Create a Yahoo ID if you do not have one
4. Join the Worldwide Pride 2007 photo pool
5. Upload your photos
6. Create multiple Yahoo IDs
7. Go back to step one, wash, rinse and repeat!
8. Celebrate Pride!

“Sexualized blackface” on the dance floor: some thoughts on men and faux homosexuality

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 29, 2007
in GLBTQ, Memories and Men and Masculinity
. 43 Comments

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.

Boys, girls, the fag discourse and compulsive heterosexuality: a review of CJ Pascoe’s book

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 16, 2007
in Aggression and violence, Books, GLBTQ, Men and Masculinity, Sexual harassment and Youth
. 25 Comments

I’m taking a day away from writing about Jerry Falwell. I will post my own reflection, including “the good, the bad, the ugly” tomorrow.

On a blessedly different subject than anything I’ve been writing about lately, I’ve just finished a wonderful new book that I’m considering for use in my “men and masculinity” course next year. Dude, You’re A Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School is from C.J. Pascoe, a Cal grad and a sociology professor at Puget Sound up in Washington state. It’s a remarkable, challenging, provocative and at times depressing study of the obsession with “proving masculinity” and the “fear of faggotry” among contemporary American high school students.

I picked the book up on Saturday afternoon, and read it all by Sunday night. Though like many social science texts, it’s jargon-laden (and the APA style of citation drives me bats), Pascoe’s work is fresh and exciting. While in grad school at Berkeley, Pascoe spent a year among students at the pseudonymous “River High School” in Riverton, California. (She’s very careful not to name the real school or real town, though from little references she drops, it sounds suspiciously like somewhere near Stockton.) She didn’t pull the Cameron Crowe trick of pretending to be a high school student; Pascoe made it quite clear to the administration, the teachers, and the students that she was there as a researcher writing a book about boys and masculinity.

Pascoe writes of what she calls the fag discourse. The discourse manifests itself in the almost incorrigible way in which young men label each other “fags” while seeking to avoid having that label applied to them. According to this discourse, fear of being called out publicly as a “fag” is the primary driving force behind what Pascoe cleverly calls the display of “compulsive heterosexulity.” Playing on Adrienne Rich’s classic notion that contemporary society functions with a discourse of compulsory heterosexuality, Pascoe notes that among young men desperate to establish their masculine bona fides with their peers, what we see in American high schools amounts to compulsive, almost frantic efforts by young men to prove their manhood.

Anyone who has worked with adolescent boys knows how much anxiety many of them feel about their own masculinity. It’s not news to say that our sons, like their fathers before them, often have to endure or participate in physical or at least verbal violence that we tragically and falsely believe is necessary to transition into manhood. It’s not news that boys torment each other with the “fag” epithet. And it’s not news that the real stigma in being labelled a “fag” doesn’t lie in the association with homosexuality, but with being seen as feminine. Pascoe correctly points out what has been clear for years — that what we often see as homophobia is really thinly disguised misogyny.

Pascoe’s most original insights are her most troubling. After a year of observing the kids at “Riverton”, she found that boys chronically used their access to girls’ bodies as a way of establishing masculine credentials and escaping the “fag” label. Pascoe describes what I’ve seen all too often (and what I always try and break up as quickly as I can when I’m with high schoolers): the tendency of many young men to touch and “playfully” harass young women as a way of proving their own manhood. Pascoe describes incident after incident, in cafeterias and gyms, in breezeways and even, sadly, in classrooms. Pascoe:

… other ‘touching’ episodes has a more explicitly violent tone. In this type of touching the boy and the girl ‘hurt’ each other by punching or slapping or pulling each other’s hair until in the end the girl lost with a squeal or a scream. Shane and Cathy spent a large part of each morning in government class beating up on each other in this sequence of domination. While it was certainly not unidirectional, the interactions always ended with Cathy giving up… while this sort of interaction disrupted Cathy’s work and actually looked exceedingly painful, she never seriously tried to stop it.

There are quite a few similar, heartbreaking anecdotes. Pascoe notes, not surprisingly, that this sort of aggressive behavior (which to an impartial observer regularly constituted assault) was only done in the presence of other men. Pascoe notes what I’ve often observed:

When not in groups — when in one-on-one interactions with boys or girls — boys were much less likely to engage in gendered and sexed domination practices. In this sense boys became masculine in groups… when with other boys, they postured and bragged. In one on one situations with me they often spoke touchingly about their feelings about and insecurities with girls.

Bold emphasis mine.

Many men in the men’s movement have lamented the “fag discourse” in American youth culture. Most adult men have their own scars and wounds that they received in adolescence as they struggled to establish their manhood in the eyes of their peers. Less often discussed, most adult men — when pushed in therapy or group discussions — will cop to the various ways in which they cruelly inflicted wounds on other boys. As Pascoe and others have pointed out, the only way to deflect the fag label is to slap it on to some other nearby man. Most adult men carry with them the wounds inflicted by the fag discourse in their youth — and many carry the guilt of the verbal and psychic violence they did to their peers.

But when men get together to lament the fag discourse and to talk about how difficult it is to grow up male in this culture, how painful it is to try over and over again to establish one’s manhood, we forget something that Pascoe, rightly, doesn’t. The fag discourse doesn’t just victimize men; indeed, men aren’t even it’s chief victims. Pascoe notes that time and time again, women’s bodies are used as yardsticks for men to measure their manliness. When boys brag about their sexual conquests, or pressure young women for sex in order to have a story to tell “the guys”, it is women who are the chief victims of the fag discourse. When boys, as Pascoe describes, snap bra straps and slap bottoms and pull hair in order to display their apparent “right of access” to girls’ bodies, they do this not out of authentic sexual desire but because of this compulsive need to perform, over and over again, as masculine. Women are harassed, assaulted, and taunted because we are raising generation after generation of young boys that sees no better way to establish their manhood than by demonstrating their ability to impose their will on the bodies of their female peers.

So much of the writing by pro-feminist and gay men about the “fear of faggotry” has focused primarily on the profound psychic (and occasionally, physical) injury young men inflict on each other. Pascoe doesn’t dispute the genuine pain and desperation that adolescent guys endure, but she convincingly makes the case that they are not the chief victims of the discourse they perpetuate and try, over and over again, to escape.

I recommend Dude, You’re a Fag with enthusiasm.