Fucking Faggots
"The relationship between adolescent masculinity and sexuality is embedded in the specter of the faggot. Faggots represent a penetrated masculinity in which ‘to be penetrated is to abdicate power’ (Bersani, 1987: 212). Penetrated men symbolize a masculinity devoid of power, which, in its contradiction, threatens both psychic and social chaos. It is precisely this specter of penetrated masculinity that functions as a regulatory mechanism of gender for contemporary American adolescent boys."
- ‘Dude, You’re a Fag’:
Adolescent Masculinity and the Fag Discourse
After my last post on the "guy friendship rules," a commenter who would not identify him or herself left the comment "heterosexuality is so taxing." That comment struck me as amazingly problematic and struck a chord with an issue that I've been trying to explore recently.
Girls (y'all are some God damn girls)
Why do you act this way? (why do you act this way, huh?)
Why do y'all act like fucking sissies
- Eminem, "Girls"
My question is basically the same as Eminem's. Why do gay people act like that? Or in this case, why do gay people not act in accordance with the "guy friendship rules"? Why do they act like "fucking sissies"?
[DISCLAIMER: For the purposes of this post I am only referring to gay guys - also if you haven't figured it out yet, I'm using the language that I'm using to call into question the very meaning of these words - no I don't believe that God hates fags or anything.]
By that I mean why is one's performance of gender related to sexual desire? What does wanting to fuck women have to do with letting your friends know:
"When you are scared -- I will rag on you about it every chance I get."
What does fucking men have to do with a really loud Lisp, making your wrists as limp as humanly possible and portraying a gender performance generally marked as effeminite?
The very idea of 'gaydar' rests on the fact that gays act differently than straights in clearly discernible ways. Shouldn't the only way you can tell the difference be when you see a guy fucking a man or a woman in the middle of the street?
If we are to believe that gender, sexual desire, etc. are purely social constructs, then why do gays CHOOSE that particular performance. Or can they choose? Is it that they always cried easily, were less athletic, and disliked the roughhousing that other boys enjoy?
Why should gays be exempt from the general rules of gender performance that the rest of us are used to?
"becoming a fag has as much to do with failing at the masculine tasks of competence, heterosexual prowess and strength or an anyway revealing weakness or femininity, as it does with a sexual identity. This fluidity of the fag identity is what makes the specter of the fag such a powerful disciplinary mechanism. It is fluid enough that boys police most of their behaviors out of fear of having the fag identity permanently adhere and definitive enough so that boys recognize a fag behavior and strive to avoid it.
According to this group of boys, gay is a legitimate, if marginalized, social identity. If a man is gay, there may be a chance he could be considered masculine by other men (Connell, 1995). David, a handsome white senior dressed smartly in khaki pants and a white button-down shirt
said, ‘Being gay is just a lifestyle. It’s someone you choose to sleep with. You can still throw around a football and be gay.’ In other words there is a possibility, however slight, that a boy can be gay and masculine.
By invoking it so often, boys remind themselves and each other that at any point they
can become fags if they are not sufficiently masculine."
- ‘Dude, You’re a Fag’:
Adolescent Masculinity and the Fag Discourse
So why do gays act like fags?
The most accepted explanations are:
a) the essentialist argument - they're born gay and part of that genetic makeup is a propensity to act like a fag
b) the constructionist argument - as children gays feel ostracized because of their different sexual desire than the other boys; to accommodate this alternative desire, they perform an alternative gender performance.
I don't buy either of these arguments. I'm an MCM major so I don't believe in essentialist arguments and the constructionist argument relies on the belief that sexual desire is SUCH A LARGE INFLUENCE on them as kids that they are forced to completely change their gender performance. I don't know about y'all but I was much more interested in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles than sexual desire as a kid. Not to say that kids don't experience sexual desire in their own way as kids but I don't think it dominates their life enough to mark such a drastic change in their behavior.
All I see is sissies in magazines smiling
Whatever happened to whylin out and bein violent?
Whatever happened to catchin a good-ol' fashioned
passionate ass-whoopin and gettin your shoes coat and your hat tooken?
New Kids on the Block, sucked a lot of dick
Boy/girl groups make me sick
And I can't wait 'til I catch all you faggots in public
I'ma love it.. (hahaha)
- Eminem, "Marshall Mathers"
Here's my theory: there's massive conflation going on. I think gay actually means four different things:
a) a sexual desire for the same-sex
b) sexual behavior with the same-sex
c) part of the gay community
d) social behavior that can be picked up by gaydar as "acting gay"
I think each one of these things can happen without any of the other three. I don't feel like writing down all the combinations so stop reading right now and consider all the different combinations.
OK, I think that these four VERY different definitions become conflated into an all-encompassing gay identity. Gays act like fags because they a) have a sexual desire for the same-sex and b) want sexual behavior with the same sex so they c) become a part of the gay community by d) acting gay. Why gays chose acting like a fag to be their specific performance is a whole 'nother question. It probably has to do with valorizing the identity that seems most pitiful to normative masculinity as both a resistance and subjection to normative masculinity, itself.
So that's all well and good and it seems I've figured this out. Unfortunately, there's one piece I haven't accounted for. Why do gays act like fags when they are children and haven't gone through the process I described above? Why do gay people often exhibit d) gay behavior before c) becoming part of they gay community? Is it just innnate like the essentialists believe? If you can give me the answer, I promise to credit you in my thesis.
"Looking at ‘fag’ as a discourse rather than a static identity reveals that the term can be invested with different meanings in different social spaces. ‘Fag’ may be used as a weapon with which to temporarily assert one’s masculinity by denying it to others. Thus ‘fag’ becomes a symbol around which contests of masculinity take place.
The fag epithet, when hurled at other boys, may or may not have explicit sexual meanings, but it always has gendered meanings. When a boy calls another boy a fag, it means he is not a man, not necessarily that he is a homosexual. The boys in this study know that they are not supposed to call homosexual boys ‘fags’ because that is mean. This, then has been the limited success of the mainstream gay rights movement. The message absorbed by some of these teenage boys is that ‘gay men can be masculine, just like you.’ Instead of challenging gender inequality, this particular discourse of gay rights has reinscribed it. Thus we need to begin to think about how gay men may be in a unique position to challenge gendered as well as sexual norms."
- ‘Dude, You’re a Fag’:
Adolescent Masculinity and the Fag Discourse
And is it their responsibility?
- ‘Dude, You’re a Fag’:
Adolescent Masculinity and the Fag Discourse
After my last post on the "guy friendship rules," a commenter who would not identify him or herself left the comment "heterosexuality is so taxing." That comment struck me as amazingly problematic and struck a chord with an issue that I've been trying to explore recently.
Girls (y'all are some God damn girls)
Why do you act this way? (why do you act this way, huh?)
Why do y'all act like fucking sissies
- Eminem, "Girls"
My question is basically the same as Eminem's. Why do gay people act like that? Or in this case, why do gay people not act in accordance with the "guy friendship rules"? Why do they act like "fucking sissies"?
[DISCLAIMER: For the purposes of this post I am only referring to gay guys - also if you haven't figured it out yet, I'm using the language that I'm using to call into question the very meaning of these words - no I don't believe that God hates fags or anything.]
By that I mean why is one's performance of gender related to sexual desire? What does wanting to fuck women have to do with letting your friends know:
"When you are scared -- I will rag on you about it every chance I get."
What does fucking men have to do with a really loud Lisp, making your wrists as limp as humanly possible and portraying a gender performance generally marked as effeminite?
The very idea of 'gaydar' rests on the fact that gays act differently than straights in clearly discernible ways. Shouldn't the only way you can tell the difference be when you see a guy fucking a man or a woman in the middle of the street?
If we are to believe that gender, sexual desire, etc. are purely social constructs, then why do gays CHOOSE that particular performance. Or can they choose? Is it that they always cried easily, were less athletic, and disliked the roughhousing that other boys enjoy?
Why should gays be exempt from the general rules of gender performance that the rest of us are used to?
"becoming a fag has as much to do with failing at the masculine tasks of competence, heterosexual prowess and strength or an anyway revealing weakness or femininity, as it does with a sexual identity. This fluidity of the fag identity is what makes the specter of the fag such a powerful disciplinary mechanism. It is fluid enough that boys police most of their behaviors out of fear of having the fag identity permanently adhere and definitive enough so that boys recognize a fag behavior and strive to avoid it.
According to this group of boys, gay is a legitimate, if marginalized, social identity. If a man is gay, there may be a chance he could be considered masculine by other men (Connell, 1995). David, a handsome white senior dressed smartly in khaki pants and a white button-down shirt
said, ‘Being gay is just a lifestyle. It’s someone you choose to sleep with. You can still throw around a football and be gay.’ In other words there is a possibility, however slight, that a boy can be gay and masculine.
By invoking it so often, boys remind themselves and each other that at any point they
can become fags if they are not sufficiently masculine."
- ‘Dude, You’re a Fag’:
Adolescent Masculinity and the Fag Discourse
So why do gays act like fags?
The most accepted explanations are:
a) the essentialist argument - they're born gay and part of that genetic makeup is a propensity to act like a fag
b) the constructionist argument - as children gays feel ostracized because of their different sexual desire than the other boys; to accommodate this alternative desire, they perform an alternative gender performance.
I don't buy either of these arguments. I'm an MCM major so I don't believe in essentialist arguments and the constructionist argument relies on the belief that sexual desire is SUCH A LARGE INFLUENCE on them as kids that they are forced to completely change their gender performance. I don't know about y'all but I was much more interested in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles than sexual desire as a kid. Not to say that kids don't experience sexual desire in their own way as kids but I don't think it dominates their life enough to mark such a drastic change in their behavior.
All I see is sissies in magazines smiling
Whatever happened to whylin out and bein violent?
Whatever happened to catchin a good-ol' fashioned
passionate ass-whoopin and gettin your shoes coat and your hat tooken?
New Kids on the Block, sucked a lot of dick
Boy/girl groups make me sick
And I can't wait 'til I catch all you faggots in public
I'ma love it.. (hahaha)
- Eminem, "Marshall Mathers"
Here's my theory: there's massive conflation going on. I think gay actually means four different things:
a) a sexual desire for the same-sex
b) sexual behavior with the same-sex
c) part of the gay community
d) social behavior that can be picked up by gaydar as "acting gay"
I think each one of these things can happen without any of the other three. I don't feel like writing down all the combinations so stop reading right now and consider all the different combinations.
OK, I think that these four VERY different definitions become conflated into an all-encompassing gay identity. Gays act like fags because they a) have a sexual desire for the same-sex and b) want sexual behavior with the same sex so they c) become a part of the gay community by d) acting gay. Why gays chose acting like a fag to be their specific performance is a whole 'nother question. It probably has to do with valorizing the identity that seems most pitiful to normative masculinity as both a resistance and subjection to normative masculinity, itself.
So that's all well and good and it seems I've figured this out. Unfortunately, there's one piece I haven't accounted for. Why do gays act like fags when they are children and haven't gone through the process I described above? Why do gay people often exhibit d) gay behavior before c) becoming part of they gay community? Is it just innnate like the essentialists believe? If you can give me the answer, I promise to credit you in my thesis.
"Looking at ‘fag’ as a discourse rather than a static identity reveals that the term can be invested with different meanings in different social spaces. ‘Fag’ may be used as a weapon with which to temporarily assert one’s masculinity by denying it to others. Thus ‘fag’ becomes a symbol around which contests of masculinity take place.
The fag epithet, when hurled at other boys, may or may not have explicit sexual meanings, but it always has gendered meanings. When a boy calls another boy a fag, it means he is not a man, not necessarily that he is a homosexual. The boys in this study know that they are not supposed to call homosexual boys ‘fags’ because that is mean. This, then has been the limited success of the mainstream gay rights movement. The message absorbed by some of these teenage boys is that ‘gay men can be masculine, just like you.’ Instead of challenging gender inequality, this particular discourse of gay rights has reinscribed it. Thus we need to begin to think about how gay men may be in a unique position to challenge gendered as well as sexual norms."
- ‘Dude, You’re a Fag’:
Adolescent Masculinity and the Fag Discourse
And is it their responsibility?
posted by He Hate Me at 1:32 PM
3 Comments:
I can actually buy your conflation argument, though not necessarily the casual chain that follows (which you yourself pointed out is flawed). I would say it is insightful or something, but this is something that Siobhan and Erik actually argued about while watching Dr. Who. Sio, who, mind you, worked at the Gay Men's Health Clinic in NYC as a volunteer and is all for marriage equality, would call silly things on TV or in life "gay", refer to her homosexual friends as "gay", and berate the ignorant for their use of "gay" as an epithet. Erik once tried to argue that she was being inconsistent, and she made an argument for context, being a linguist. Regardless of context though, that example lends weight to your argument of conflation.
Perhaps you could explore the idea of social alienation (stemming from "difference") as being a cause for BOTH parts C and D. I have obviously not thought this through, as this is merely a comment and not a thought-out post, but is that not the argument used in some ethnic studies circles to describe both the formation of the hip-hop community and certain hip-hop values and behaviors? Keeping in mind that, although racialized, hip-hop culture =/= (an exclusively) black culture, note the race of one of your sources above (Eminem). Similarly, (D) acting gay need not be confined to homosexuals, which takes into account the phenomenon of metrosexuals and the like.
Your thoughts?
1) that was me. i couldn't figure out blogger. my bad.
2) i think your last question ultimately assumes that adolescent "fags" are necessarily prone to grow up into queer folks. that's a statistical question, more than one of subjectivity, and one that falls into a trap of essentialism that you're trying to avoid.
i agree with most everything else, except why we (i get to use the royal we) choose to act like fags (for future reference, i have uppity views on straight people using epithets for gay people) has a few historical roots in stonewall-era queer culture, and queer youth culture after AIDS, though i agree with your summation totally.
You have to read this book, "The Sissy Boy Syndrome". It's a psychiatric study of a sample group of six year-old 'sissy boys.' Fifteen years later, the study tracks the group and finds that 3/4's of the 'sissy boys' now identify themselves as gay or bisexual.
I read it just for the personal interviews, especially from the fathers: "He keeps putting the damned towel on his head and pretending that it's long hair. I have to slap him and tell him, You are NOT a girl."
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