This is something, Robbie, that I struggle with. “She” and “Mary” and so forth – these are not in my gay vocabulary. And my fellow gay men rarely apply them to me, generally speaking, maybe because I unconsciously telegraph an aversion to it. I sort of – oh, this is awful, but, hey, we’re talking about internalized homophobia, and a lot of this stuff is deeply personal, right? So, **** it. Like so many parents of queer kids, I “tolerate” this language more than I “accept” it. But it’s not because I object to femininity. I feel pretty in touch with my own femininity and adore femme-ness in other gay men – not in a fetishistic way, but in a “you do you” kind of way. I’m aware that I fall somewhere in the middle, and I never pretend towards masculinity. I probably just as consciously fight that. I’ll throw out a “gurl” now and again, but with a shade of irony, since the very use of it, in itself, is a unavoidably a comment on how “not me” that is.
My problem – and I say this knowing my gay history – is the way the language makes an
equivalency between gay men and women. I object to that because I feel like – or, more accurately, wonder if or worry that – it’s an example of gay men adopting, without realizing it, the way straight men have historically framed gay men – as women – like,
actually -- as sissies, as
not men. I feel like we, as gay men – we can be masc, femme, anywhere in between, but we just… aren’t women. It’s not about behavior or gestures or sibilant S’s. It’s about penises. To me, it seems to be the same mechanism that makes gay men yell, "YOU'RE SUCH A BOTTOM!" as a slur. So, I often wonder if the language is part of an ingrained, taught self-loathing. Or maybe it’s self-loathing to think it’s self-loathing. Or maybe both are true. I don’t know.
And it cuts close to things that my mother says. She’s cooled it in the past few years, but when I first came out, she’d say things like, “I want you to find someone like you. I’m okay with you being gay, but I’d be really disappointed if you brought home a flamer. That’s just not who you are.” And even though she doesn’t say it anymore, I know she thinks it. There’s this awful prejudice among the “tolerant” straight folks about femme gay men, and I think her greatest fear is, “Well, he used to be straight, and now he’s gay. Who’s to say that, now that he’s gay, he won’t decide he’s a woman next?” I think these things are different sides of the same coin.
I’m not articulating this well, but my own thoughts on it are often messy, too, so I guess this post is a reflection of that. It’s something I work through every day, and I never know how to feel about it.
EDIT: Oh, and Robbie, I feel I should clarify, since, when we met, I believe you called me Mary and she and queen -- at least. I don't get mad about it. I'm not even sure I bristle. I like that it challenges me. So you keep doing you, gurl. I'll be your Blanche anytime.
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Updated On: 1/30/15 at 12:08 PM
