FUFBUF
Global Gay Nation => Gay Identity - Queer as Volk? => Topic started by: Feral on November 08, 2006, 02:36:58 AM
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Acting Straight (http://www.gaysports.com/page.cfm?typeofsite=storydetail&storyset=yes&id=783)
That got me thinking about how often I hear someone gay use the expression "straight-acting" to describe another gay man. The more I thought about it, the more offensive it became. I'm sure I've been guilty of using it in the past, but more recently, I've come to realize just how damaging the term can be -- both within and outside the LGBT community.
How does one even act straight? Is there one prescribed way to be heterosexual? And why would a gay person even want to act straight? Possibly because the flip side of acting straight would be acting gay.
Ask your average Joe on the street what it means to act gay and you're likely to get a laundry list of gay stereotypes: limp wrist, lisp, obsession with appearance, flamboyant, and effeminate, maybe with a few "you go, girls" thrown in for good measure. Do I know any gay people who fit that description? Sure. But I know even more who don't. The truth is there are as many ways to act gay as there are to act straight. It's the stereotypes that scare some people, though.
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So many gay people are caught up in negative image ideas. Some feel they have to act a certain way in order to be gay -- you have to worship Madonna, call all your guy friends "girlfriend," and sleep around as much as possible. Hey, if that's who you really are then great! You be you. The problem is, I've seen so many young gay guys just coming out embrace these traits simply because they've been led to believe that's what being gay means.
On the flip side, I've also seen many gay guys who are so busy trying to emulate heterosexuals that they start to resent their more flamboyant brothers. I hate to hear a gay man say something like, "I can't stand flamey guys." That's just as homophobic as Fred Phelps picketing a gay funeral with a "God Hates Fags" sign.
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Acting Straight (http://www.gaysports.com/page.cfm?typeofsite=storydetail&storyset=yes&id=783)
That got me thinking about how often I hear someone gay use the expression "straight-acting" to describe another gay man. The more I thought about it, the more offensive it became. I'm sure I've been guilty of using it in the past, but more recently, I've come to realize just how damaging the term can be -- both within and outside the LGBT community.
How does one even act straight? Is there one prescribed way to be heterosexual? And why would a gay person even want to act straight? Possibly because the flip side of acting straight would be acting gay.
Ask your average Joe on the street what it means to act gay and you're likely to get a laundry list of gay stereotypes: limp wrist, lisp, obsession with appearance, flamboyant, and effeminate, maybe with a few "you go, girls" thrown in for good measure. Do I know any gay people who fit that description? Sure. But I know even more who don't. The truth is there are as many ways to act gay as there are to act straight. It's the stereotypes that scare some people, though.
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So many gay people are caught up in negative image ideas. Some feel they have to act a certain way in order to be gay -- you have to worship Madonna, call all your guy friends "girlfriend," and sleep around as much as possible. Hey, if that's who you really are then great! You be you. The problem is, I've seen so many young gay guys just coming out embrace these traits simply because they've been led to believe that's what being gay means.
On the flip side, I've also seen many gay guys who are so busy trying to emulate heterosexuals that they start to resent their more flamboyant brothers. I hate to hear a gay man say something like, "I can't stand flamey guys." That's just as homophobic as Fred Phelps picketing a gay funeral with a "God Hates Fags" sign.
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Read this (http://rawyouth.blogspot.com/2006/11/bob-youre-lot-gayer-than-i-remember.html).
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How does one even act straight? Is there one prescribed way to be heterosexual? And why would a gay person even want to act straight? Possibly because the flip side of acting straight would be acting gay.
While I agree with this fellow in some respects, I think he's being too reductive.
We all know what "acting str8" is, and no, it's not just one mode. It's how we tried to act when we were 12, for good or ill. It's about repressing and conforming. *That* is what's personally damaging about it.
Hell, in that sense, I imagine alot of str8 guys don't much like it either.
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I do think that when a gay describes himself as "straight-acting" (however this behavior might look in person) he is characterizing himself as not "acting gay." Of course, this immediately brings to mind the question "just what is this 'acting gay'?" I don't think the question really needs to be answered. The motivation here is to both characterize some nebulous concept of 'acting gay' as undesirable behavior and to advertise oneself as exhibiting virtuous behavior that is called 'straight.'
I've known people who claimed to be "straight-acting" and they seemed like perfectly average 'mos to me -- and not fellows who would easily be confused for straight. If one were to advertise oneself as "not femme" that would be one thing. To advertise themselves as straight is a rejection of their gayness.
To make matters worse, this phrase "straight-acting" is more normally part of a larger construction: "straight-acting and looking." Apparently it is possible to "look" like a total fag, but otherwise "act" straight.
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Well, I had this saved to my hard drive, but I don't have a URL for it any more. It says something about "acting straight", though...
The Myth of Gay Macho (http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0226,goldstein,35992,1.html)
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Here's an URL for it. Think you might could redact it just a tad?
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0226,goldstein,35992,1.html
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So many gay men are living with GIDS, so common is our sense of alienation from other men, that it's fair to say we've never seen a natural gay identity one that isn't shaped by persecution. What we have seen are various strategies to defy or compensate for this primal wound.
Consider the disco-era clone, with his costume shrieking blue-collar butch. He was a creature of reaction to the playground trauma, wearing his masculinity on his sweat-shirted sleeve. But his attempt to claim the trappings of masculinity had an unintended (if predictable) consequence. Straight men fled from the attire gay men had borrowed from them in order to look manly. If gays liked their jeans tight, straights liked them baggy; if fags wore white briefs, real men switched to boxers. So the clone look perpetuated the problem it was meant to cure.
Mr. Goldstein is right about one thing certainly: there isn't anything about gay identity or culture that isn't shaped by persecution. The only people for whom this is not the case are those who haven't been persecuted. When you consider that imagined persecutions affect behavior and identity as surely as real ones, I'm not at all sure that there are any people whose identity is NOT shaped to some degree by persecution.
I think Mr. Goldstein is grievously in error about the clone thing though. The clone look was intended to be masculine, but it was never intended to be camouflage. Quite to the contrary in my view -- it was a peacock's plumage. Further, this supposed straight flight from 'gay attire' was completely invisible to me in the 70s and 80s. I witnessed quite the opposite phenomenon. Just about every affectation of dress that gays adopted was not long after taken on by the straights. It was my observation that the clone look, which held on as occasional costume for quite some time precisely because it WAS such effective plumage, eventually came to be viewed as "tired" by gays. We switched to the much nattier (and baggier) "collegiate" look. My straight college roommate was still quite proud of the fact that he could strike a blue-tipped match on his tight 501 jeans around this time.
In short, I think Mr. Goldstein either lived in a place with a much different straight culture than I was exposed to, or he's twisting (consciously or unconsciously) his memories to fit an agenda. Not that a world "where no man needs to butch up to fly right" is necessarily a bad thing... I just question his tactics.
Homocons cite a certain survey of sex ads to bolster their contention that most gay men are basically butch. This study found that nearly all men who place personal ads in gay papers describe themselves as masculine. What's more, most seek the same traits in a sex partner. If this were really the case, femmy guys would be sitting home alone, which they certainly aren't. Soulful sissies, flaming creatures, ripe papis, and beamish boychicks all get their share. The stud muffin is a recognizable type in the gay community, but he isn't the norm. There is no gay norm, virtual or otherwise. But some types are more acceptable than others. The real question isn't whether gay men are naturally macho, but why we feel compelled to wear that face in public. The answer has everything to do with status.
I am dismayed -- surely a survey of sex ads is among the last places one should look for information on gay culture. This is not a survey of gays, this is a survey of gays who advertise. It omits the entire array of people who manage to inspire people to have sex with them in person. I might suggest that the preponderance of "straight-acting, straight-looking, seeks same" ads indicates that this category of 'mo has a hard time getting dates more than it indicates anything else.
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Think you might could redact it just a tad?
*mmmmwwwwwaaaaahhhhhh*
Done.
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Dude... yer allowed to quote from the thing :D
The homocons' solution to the playground trauma is not so different from the clones'. They want us to stop acting like faggots. Hang with straight men, join a rugby league, take testosterone if you have to, and fercrissake stop empathizing with the victim and start identifying with the aggressor. This self-help program points to a major difference between the gay left and right. Liberationists don't want to reform gay behavior; they want to change the system that needs faggots in the first place.
The world that queer radicals would create is one where no man needs to butch up to fly right. Masculinity would be something every male possesses, not a test every boy must take. Gay men would be free to follow their hearts without sacrificing prestige and so would straights. After all, macho is a wound for everyone. It isn't just about boys bonding and dads passing their cojones along to their sons. It's also about boys brutalizing each other to establish a hierarchy based on fear of the feminine, and fathers injuring their sons for failing to make the grade. It's about mothers repressing their daughters, and butch girls suffering through the female equivalent of the playground trauma: the prom from hell.
I can't help but take one more shot at Mr. Goldstein's self-serving false dilemmas. This creature that he terms a "homocon"... just what is it? I know who he's talking about -- they're the same folks who don't like the Pride Parades because they're so undignified, so flamboyant, so really 'faggy'. I suppose you might draw parallels between these people and straight theocons or social conservatives, and it'd be a pretty fair rendering. These people may be conservative, but not because of the behavior that's being depicted in this piece. These "homocons" are just assimilationists. They aren't integrationists who wonder why we just can't all get along... they're dyed in the wool assimilationists. They want to dissolve into a great undifferentiated sea of straight people. They mistakenly think this is normal. These are fake straight people, and this rabid rejection of all that they perceived to be gay, coupled with a lemming-like move toward all that is straight and "normal" is internalized homophobia of the worst sort. I can sympathize with them, since I know what drove them so mad to begin with. Sympathy only goes so far, however... there is no comforting a dog with rabies.
The problem here is that Mr. Goldstein's classic solution from the Left is just as mad, just as homophobic, and really quite pointless. This is the voice of the old GLF. The organization may be long dead, but it's "Liberationists" carry on. Sadly, liberation of the gay people is never what they had in mind -- and this would be the cause of that split between the Gay Liberation Front and the Gay Activists Alliance: the liberationists not only aren't paying enough attention to gay issues, they pay attention to everything BUT gay issues. These Liberationists style themselves as some species of Messiah -- they will save the whole of humanity from themselves, if only given the chance. Here, they propose to solve the entire problem of masculinity in men by changing straight people. Good luck with that. I can understand the impulse to identify the cause of an affliction and root it out at the source, but it doesn't always work out that way. The fact remains that gays just don't have the power to re-mold straight society into a form that suits us. One might even argue that even wanting to is immoral. Gays having a great deal to say about the way straights raise their children is not too unlike straights having a great deal to say about the relative levels of dignity on display in one of our parades.
I will agree with Mr. Goldstein that straight people are the single worst choice in care-givers for a gay child -- and there ARE gay children. They ought not be brought up to be straight; it does incalculable damage to them. Many of us manage to re-align ourselves with a more appropriate culture, but far too many of us are turned into metaphorical rabid dogs for whom little if anything remains to be done. Gay children should be raised by gay people, and at the earliest possible opportunity. Identifying and securing the safety of these children would be a titanic task, but it is one that has a far greater chance of success than some pipe-dream about recasting civilization in our image.
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Read this (http://rawyouth.blogspot.com/2006/11/bob-youre-lot-gayer-than-i-remember.html).
He's in college. In the U.S. Need I say more?
Okay, I will. I was terrified in college. It was the 1970s. I was good looking, gay and scared, like many. All the chutzpah, all the balls, the courage to go line up with the nellies men and scream "We're here, we're queer, get used to it, don't fuck with us!" came light years later.
By '93 I was fat, dressed in a purple sweat suit that made me look like Barney the Dinosaur. A group of us drove all night in my Dodge Omni (6 in that tin can!) to march on Washington.
Nearly 20 years after college, almost everything had changed with personal experience, the pain getting fat as a gay man had inflicted, and the realization that it was okay to be me - gay, queer, a faggot, "one of the girls" or whatever else I wanted to call myself...
When they're too young, take them off the hook and throw them back... :wink:
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He IS in college (certainly was when the article was written).
Youth has it's drawbacks. Fortunately it is a malady that improves steadily with time -- and all without treatment. :P
This particular young man is among the more thoughtful I have encountered. As the views of a twenty-something, I take them very seriously. My own perspective on such matters is unabashedly that of a forty-something. My college experience was a world away from anything chronicled by this "Ridiculous Raw Youth." I must say... his seems to be an improvement over mine. (Though the real, live, free-range hippies of my day are an experience that he is deprived of. This may be among the positive changes that have taken place.)
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(http://freenet-homepage.de/vanrozenheim/images/immature.jpg)
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(Though the real, live, free-range hippies of my day are an experience that he is deprived of. This may be among the positive changes that have taken place.)
Much like the real, live, free-range punks of my day. (Sorry, dear, to inadvertantly point out that your day and my day were, errr, somewhat separated in tiime. :P)
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Hey now... don't be dissin' the hippies! :D
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Who's dissin' hippies? I was well fond of the hippies in my day. They weren't the faux hippies you occasionally find nowadays, oh no. Like I said: real, live, free-range hippies. They were a little long in the tooth even then (OK... some of them were A LOT long in the tooth), but I would listen to them for hours in rapt attention. Probably I should have devoted at least a few of those hours to my studies, but then probably the university should have employed more free-range hippies. The oral history in those people was astonishing. I did not read about the Detroit riots in books, I heard about them from people who lived in the neighborhoods where they took place.
Much like the real, live, free-range punks of my day. (Sorry, dear, to inadvertently point out that your day and my day were, errr, somewhat separated in time. :P)
Much like :)
Has it escaped your notice that you were then (and remain now) a "trophy" husband?
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Oh please. You two make it sound like a May-December Romance, or something! :roll:
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As Kyle would saltily point out, there were no hippies in his day (unless, he points out, you include the fat Maoists in the Political Science department).
May-December it is not, but a "trophy" he was (and is) and I thoroughly relished each droplet of jealousy and envy that our appearance together at some function would occasion. I may not have much sense when it comes to shoes, but I have fine taste in men.
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Oh please. You two make it sound like a May-December Romance, or something!
Now, listen here. I *intentionally* married in such a way so as always to be 'the young one.' Don't be upsetting my little, fantasy apple-cart!
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That IS one of the saving graces of time. It's dreadfully and inexorably consistent that way.
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Verily, Ancient One. (Or should I call you "Yoda"? :wink: :P )
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Maybe if we used the term "straight-immitating"...
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Maybe if we used the term "straight-immitating"...
... we would come closer to the core of the phenomenon and a number of gay men could be healed from their desease. Call it "imitating" or "mimicry" - fake straight men are still fake.
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One more shot at the issue, this time from the South African perspective:
Out of the closet ? but strictly after nine (http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=3015&art_id=vn20070428095618491C943497)
There was always someone who knew of men who were gay but made the choice against being openly gay so as not to jeopardise their social standing and professional standing, he says.
"I was quite surprised when I socialised with people and I would talk about this storyline, and they would say: 'I know someone like that'."
[..]
"They are gay people who choose to live heterosexual lives," explains Majatladi. "From morning till nine (pm) they are straight. After nine they come out, as it were.
"These are guys who are not confused about their sexuality; they are clear about their sexual orientation, but they choose to suppress it and choose to compromise. From sun-up they are straight, and at sundown they come out."
What kind of reaction does he expect, especially from the black community?
OK, this is a bit extreme considering the intent of this thread -- but it is certainly true that some homosexual men are acting straight so perfectly they finally become straight men -- though fake ones. Is it actually possible to be a "straight" "MSM"???
8X
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Out of the closet ? but strictly after nine
Then they're not really out, are they?
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Is it actually possible to be a "straight" "MSM"???
I suppose that depends upon how marked the neurological differences between Gays and Straights are. Many people imagine that they are trivial, when they will acknowledge the research that shows these differences exist at all.
There is a neurological difference between being left-handed and being right-handed. It is certainly possible for a left-handed person to be obliged (I've never known one to choose) to behave solely in a right-handed manner. This practice very frequently has moderate to severe effects on other aspects of the person's behavior. Indeed, every speech therapist I have ever known (there have been but 7, so it's hardly a conclusive sample) would immediately recommend that a stuttering right-hander use his or her left hand exclusively as an experiment to rule out the effects of living as a "fake right-hander."
Then they're not really out, are they?
Nope... and I very strongly feel they are doing themselves real damage.
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Androphilia: Rejecting the Gay Identity, Reclaiming Masculinity (http://www.portlandmercury.com/portland/Content?oid=330289&category=22148)
When I discovered this book, with its subtitle "Rejecting the Gay Identity," I was anxious to read it. Despite the fact that I am not at all ashamed of being homosexual, I do hold that sexuality is incidental. Who men like to fuck is tantamount to which dressings men like to pour on their Cobb salads.
Jack Malebranche, in Androphilia, is right here along with me—at least thus far. He takes it further, however, arguing that "masculine" homosexual men need not be saddled with the "stigma of effeminacy" simply because they fuck dudes. Rather than call themselves "gay," these men should identify as "androphiles" (men who appreciate masculinity). Androphilia was much more academic than I expected, and even includes a short essay arguing against same-sex marriage. Malebranche lives in Portland, so I took the opportunity to clear up a few misunderstandings.
Another "MSM"... Nothing against "masculinity" but much to say against machismo. These guys are going to tell me that all those "straight-acting" boys who are scared to shit to come out as gay are more of a man that a effeminate boy who proudly confesses belonging his people? They must be kidding.
However, I see it with some amusement that there are actually some "androphile" folks who express the same ideas as Adolf Brand in his "Der Eigene" (mysogynie of of them).
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These guys are going to tell me that all those "straight-acting" boys who are scared to shit to come out as gay are more of a man that a effeminate boy who proudly confesses belonging his people? They must be kidding.
You said it. I went to school with a boy who was physically slight, who had an “artistic temperament”, who didn’t like sports, who played clarinet in the school band, who was more comfortable around the girls than other boys, who was slightly effeminate, and who was unfortunate enough to have the name “Perry”. Of course, with that singular lack of imagination or intelligence, the “cool kids” and the “jocks” and eventually pretty much everyone dubbed him “fairy Perry” and he was, over the course of his school career, bullied many times beyond counting, punched, kicked, beaten up, called names, spat at, sneered at... and this was even *before* he or any of our contemporaries had reached the age of puberty. That there was no objective “evidence” that Perry was a “fairy” was immaterial to the bullies -- they hardly needed an excuse to torment and bedevil Perry. And it certainly didn’t help that, when we *did* reach puberty, Perry seemed to remain the stereotype of “the fag”... although (still) there was no objective “proof” of his orientation one way or the other, as before, there was no need for “proof” -- Perry had long before been cast into the role of perpetual victim, and that’s just the way it was.
It is a mark of shame on that school that nothing ever seemed to be done about it by the teachers or staff, except in the most outrageous incidents. It is also a mark of shame on Perry’s fellow students that we became so accustomed to Perry being the target of the bullies that we pretty much just took it as a “given” -- that just seemed to be his lot in life. And while I include myself in that general sense of blame, I also carry a strong sense of shame over the fact that I was gay myself -- although I was completely unwilling to acknowledge that, or accept it myself at the time, being in active and fervent denial. But the thing was, while I stayed safely “hidden”, Perry never once backed down from the names, or the gawd-awful bullying. He took years and years of abuse (and neglect from the staff) but I never *once* heard him say “But I’m NOT!” He took the punches and kicks (and sneers and name-calling, which I’m sure in many ways was even more painful)... and he never once denied any of the slurs or ill-informed, ignorant name-calling.
In the intervening years, I have had much opportunity to regret my earlier cowardice, and my unwillingness to stick up for Perry, not least because I finally quit trying to be someone I wasn’t and admitted the fact that I am gay. I felt much the same as Bishop Gene Robinson did, when he described watching a classmate in his school being targeted as a “fag” and being afraid to stand up for him because Robinson was terrified that he would be targeted alongside his classmate, if he did. Robinson said that he has never lived down that sense of shame that he felt over his failure to speak up, and to act, and said that is a large part of the reason he is so adamant now about standing up for equality rights for queers now. I understood everything Robinson was saying.
But as for Perry, who knows, he might very well have been straight, but that was hardly the point. He was getting tormented as a “fag” regardless of whether he actually was a homosexual or not, yet I had been too gutless to speak up... Well, a few years ago, I set out to see if I could track Perry down; I wanted to apologize to him, at the very least. I wasn’t able to locate his parents, and was not having much luck when, after a few weeks, I found him by complete accident, on google. Or, at least, I found his name, on a segment of the Canadian AIDS quilt. And then I found a notice of a tree that had been planted in a Calgary park in his memory and his honour by his partner, Dave. I was 15-odd years too late -- he’d gotten sick in that first wave of AIDS that swept the continent in the early ‘80s, and he’d died in 1987, about age 24.
So, it turned out all those bullies were right about one thing. Perry *was* gay, after all. But they were completely wrong about all the rest. He might have been a “pansy”, a “fag” (and whatever else were the common slurs of the day), but he was *not* a “weakling”, or a “chickenshit” or a “wimp”. He was one of the toughest, strongest, bravest kids in that entire school. He was certainly tougher, stronger and braver than I ever was. Maybe, because he fit the stereotype so well, it was harder for him to “pass”, but to my knowledge he never even made the attempt. He had guts, and he had more strength and character than any of the bullies. More than any of his classmates who never tried to intercede with the bullies. More than his teachers, or the staff at his school. And certainly more than me.
There’s a lot of Perrys out there, still -- incredibly heroic, brave little fags, effeminate boys with a gentle nature who would rather be in art class or the band than the gym. Courageous flamers who won’t (or can’t) deny their own nature, while the many “masculine” homos sit tight and keep their traps shut for fear of receiving the same torment their more effeminate brothers endure on a daily basis.
I. Will. Never. Be. Silent. Again.
And I will never leave some poor kid to face that type of shit alone again. It’s too late to “do right” by Perry, or even apologize to him, but as I said, there’s lots of Perrys still out there, and this time, I know where I stand -- with the brave “fems” who won’t hide in the closet and deny themselves. They’ve got more character, more class, and *far* more bravery than any of these “straight-acting” poseurs who are so “ashamed” of the “flamers”.
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Don't Look Gay: Why American Men Are Afraid of Intimacy with Each Other (http://www.alternet.org/sex/55816/)
Why do adolescent boys often leave empty seats between each other when they go to the movies? It's a product of the culture of male homophobia in America which pushes men to avoid intimacy and gay stereotypes.
On Saturday afternoon at the Cineplex you can see them: adolescent boys, there to watch one of the action films that Hollywood makes with an audience of young males in mind. What’s distinctive is where the boys sit in the theater. Though they might’ve come to the movie together and might even be close friends, they’ll leave an empty seat between them.
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What accounts for that space? A short answer, something academics like me are notoriously reticent to provide, is that countless American boys and the men that they become are afraid of intimacy with each other, fearful of how intimacy might be construed -- of what others and maybe even they themselves might decide that the closeness suggests. What I’m alluding to, of course, is homophobia.
Mr. Ibson's article is worth a read. He could have picked a better example for his opener though. Accounting for the empty seat is quite simple -- the armrest.
They want two of them... all to themselves. I've done it myself on more than a few occasions... it's very often just a simple case of armrest territoriality.
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Tossing aside all of the tiresome Queer-Theory talk of 'sexuality as nuance,' we find this:
What I am suggesting is that some opposition to “gay marriage” is animated by tremendous discomfort with the love, tenderness, and intimacy between men that their marrying each other implies. Notions of men having furtive sex with multiple male partners with whom they are not in love or lastingly involved might be considerably less disagreeable.
Surely such behavior on our part is not 'less disagreeable' to str8 people, but there's something that *is* different about gay men actually being allowed to ratify their relationships to themselves and the State. And that difference is Power.
If we all continued to skulk about, furtively seeking nothing but sex, we would be less able to defend ourselves. Yes, there is something we may potentially get from pairing up that goes beyond doubling our wardrobes, and that's a second gun in every knife fight.
*That's* what str8 people are actually worried about, and--funny thing-- they don't even know it.