A couple of days ago I argued (or, if you like, pontificated) that gay people should embrace, rather than repudiate, words like "faggot" and "dyke." In the last analysis it isn't important to stop people from using such epithets, because they'll just come up with other words to take their place. This works both ways. Just as any word we claim for ourselves (like "gay") will be appropriated as tokens in the status games of masculinity, any word that Boy Culture uses in those games will include us in its meanings, because men who are penetrated by other men are the ultimate case of failed masculinity.
"Retard" seems a likely candidate right now. I've written before about a gay kid I knew who said that wasting food in the dorm cafeteria was "retarded", though he was adamant that no one say "That's so gay" in his presence. The gay advice columnist Dan Savage, criticized by a reader for using "retarded" as an insult, promised to substitute "leotarded": "I won’t be mocking the mentally challenged, just the physically gifted. I will pick on the strong—and the limber—and not the weak." In honor of this derisive gesture by Savage, I'm going to follow his lead and rename this blog "This Is So Gaytorade" for a few days. Then I will not be mocking the heterosexually challenged, but defending a great sports drink -- though not, alas, capitalizing on the product placement. (To his credit, I should mention that for years Savage printed every letter asking his advice with the salutation, Hey, faggot! "in joking reference to this lively debate [among gays] about reclaiming hate words.")
But I digress. My reason for returning to this topic is to clarify something. Many people react to the idea that they shouldn't distance themselves from the safely disreputable by assuming that they're being told that they should change their style to imitate the safely disreputable -- for example, that if they embrace the word "faggot" they have to dance naked and drunk in gay pride parades or something. Rather, I want gay people to show some solidarity with the safely disreputable, by getting it into their heads that bigots don't care how often they go to church, how monogamous they are, how much money they earn, how faithfully they avoid Pride Parades, how consistently they vote Republican -- how normal, in short, they allegedly are. If you are gay, you're a faggot in the eyes of bigots, no matter how many pounds you can benchpress; if you're lesbian, you're a dyke in the eyes of bigots, no matter how skilled at needlepoint you may be.
The same attitude infects other minorities, of course. Many European Jews tried to combat the rising tide of anti-Semitism around the beginning of the 20th century by publicly denouncing the stereotypical Jew with his sidelocks, frock coat, and degenerate feminine ways. They preferred to emulate their own stereotype of the butch, blond goy. Paul Breines wrote in his 1990 book Tough Jews: Political Fantasies and the Moral Dilemma of American Jewry, page 141:
As a Zionist, for example, [Theodor] Herzl oversaw the founding of the first Jewish Burschenschaft, or fraternity, at the University of Vienna in 1897, its purpose, writes Arthur Koestler, later a member, being to demonstrate that “Jews could hold their own in dueling, brawling, drinking, and singing just like other people. According to the laws of inferiority and over-compensation,” Koestler adds, “they were soon out-Heroding Herod once more” – practicing dueling for hours each day, eventually becoming the most feared and aggressive swordsmen in the University.”Not content with pointing out how assimilated they were, they agreed that the stereotypical hasid was despicable, eminently deserving of Christian hatred. I think it's safe to say that this attitude didn't delay the Holocaust by even a minute. Surveying a batch of 1970s pulp novels starring "a squadron of muscle Jews, the 'deep-chested, sturdy, sharp-eyed' Jews for whom Max Nordau had called" (192), Breines comments,"One can be direct here: This is Jewish self-hatred masquerading as robust Zionism" (193).
To repeat: this does not mean that all male Jews should be narrow-shouldered, concave-chested shlemiels and yeshiva buchers (be still my heart!) -- that would be as one-sided as the opposite view, that none should be.
Just the other day, the gay site PlanetOut passed along the news that
In February, Skate Canada, Canada's Figure Skating Governing Body, announced a new Public Relations campaign to make skating in Canada look "tough."Skate Canada is well aware that figure skating's image is seen as, well, gay and Skate Canada hopes to change that by focusing on the difficult aspects of figure skating such as strength, power, endurance...all the stuff that makes skaters sweat heavy!...Skate Canada wasn't helped when two-time Olympic Silver Medalist, Elvis Stojko, went on a self-appointed mini press tour, speaking on behalf of what Skate Canada was looking for. Stojko told the Toronto Sun "If you're very lyrical and you're really feminine and soft, well, that's not men's skating. That is not men's skating, ok? Men's skating is power, strength, masculinity, focus, clarity of movement, interpretation of music."
The article produced a small frenzy in the comments section. While numerous commenters criticized Skate Canada, many defended it, saying things like
Maybe it'll send a different message to those in the "gay community" who associate gay with being feminine. ... So gay people (as a whole) should act and speak like other Americans (where boys act/talk like boys and girls act/talk like girls). Certainly there are those of us who are gay and the rest of the world would find difficulty in figuring it out and while the masculine and more traditional of us may be the silent majority it's the flaming sissies that make the headlines a vast majority of the time when prancing around in fairy wings in pride parades and idolizing every female pop singer that becomes the latest fad (and wants to be just like HER). The latter is the image that get's associated with GAY and it sucks frankly.Or this:
So as far as I'm concerned we can sh#t can the "girl" acts and get comfortable with our "Masculine" side. I'm sick of Gay being code for weak and feminine. Let"s see some Gay men kickin ass!Or this:
I'm Canadian and I 100% the "man-up" policy. This policy should apply to all gays everywhere! It's okay to be gay, but at least be a real man. If I wanted to date a femme, I'd be straight.And much, much more. Most tellingly, I think:
... i always tell people its kind of an inside joke. I tell them "you know there's gay people and then there's fagots".One can be direct here: this is gay self-hatred masquerading as assimilation and manly-manism. These guys agree that to be a sissy, no matter how athletic (and figure skaters, like ballet dancers, are athletes) is despicable, and antigay bigots are justified in hating them and wanting to drive them out of sight at the very least. Indeed, these commenters are explicitly and avowedly on the side of the bigots.
Is it because the kind of masculinity they espouse is a positive image? I don't think so; hockey players fighting on the ice aren't what I'd call a positive role model for anybody. Nor are the high school boys C. J. Pascoe wrote about, who feel that they're entitled (and obligated) to beat up sissies; who wouldn't go to prom if even one gay guy was at the event, lest their fragile masculinity be somehow compromised; who, "Walking between government and drama classes, ... yelled 'GET RAPED! GET RAPED!' as he rhythmically jabbed a girl in the crotch with his drumstick" (page 100). These are the alpha males, the leaders, the popular guys everyone looks up to. It isn't the flaming sissies with streaked hair and swishing hips who are harmful to others, it's the men who denigrate them, dehumanize them, harass them, beat them up, and even kill them.
If the only alternative to being "masculine" in those terms is to be a "stereotype" -- and as the PlanetOut commenters are enough to show, many men think it is the only alternative -- then bring on the eyeliner and spike heels. But I don't think it is; at least I hope not. Reading Pascoe's account of what she calls "the rape paradigm," or remembering the Speakers Bureau volunteer who tells how once a month, in his high school in the 1980s, the cool kids would wear t-shirts that read "SILLY FAGGOT -- DICKS ARE FOR CHICKS", I find myself asking a question I never thought would pass my lips:
Where were the adults?
Where were the adults when Pascoe's Ricky was being harassed and beaten up, or when Keith was jamming a drumstick into another student's crotch and yelling "Get raped"? (Standing back and watching it happen, she says.) Where were the adults when those t-shirts were being worn in the halls, classrooms, and cafeterias? (Doing nothing, or chuckling at the wit of it all.) Even the word "dicks," which I'd have thought a punishable breach of decorum, didn't bother the administration. Considering that political messages or other attention-grabbing slogans are verboten in so many school dress codes, I find it incredible; but antigay bigotry is uncontroversial and apolitical. Their high moral standards, their obsessive concern with a docile student body, can be forgotten for the right cause. Students often have to fight to start gay-straight alliances in their schools, because administrators fear they'll be disruptive. A school in Utah, I think it was, banned all student groups when a court ordered it to allow a gay-straight alliance to organize there. (Yes, it was.)
(P.S. Compare this current case.)
Before you can work on the kids, you have to work on the adults. Including the gay ones.
