Why do gay guys like Madonna?
I'm feeling chatty today, so I'm gonna do another post.
There are a lot of experts on gender and sexuality out there in the world, and I must confess I am not all that familiar with those bodies of work. But has that ever stopped me from bloviating and ejaculating my opinion all over the world's face? Hell no!
So here goes:
I don't understand the connection between being gay and masculinity/femininity. I just don't quite get it.
It's really hard to talk about these things, because you have to use these categories (masculine/feminine) that are sort of bullshit in themselves. Nevertheless, I'm going to go ahead and use them, recognizing that they're kinda bullshit, because I have to use them to discuss this puzzle.
So, when I say a man is effeminate, I think most people have some sense of what I'm talking about. Maybe he's clean, wears nice clothes, is in good shape, likes musical theater and dancing, has good posture and combed hair, doesn't like sports, speaks with certain vocal tones and inflections...you know, the stereotypical gay guy.
And when I say a man is gay, what I mean is that he is physically and/or emotionally attracted to other men.
Now, why the fuck do these things tend to go together? I realize that they often don't, but there does seem to be a noticeable pattern. (Am I wrong about that? If so, tell me). There's no rational reason whatsoever why these things should have anything to do with each other! What am I missing here?
This is why I find gay dudes who are non-effeminate (anywhere from neutral to hyper-masculine) to be really interesting. Dudes who are just like "yeah, I suck dick! What of it? Let's go shoot some shit!"
I admire people who can just be themselves, I guess. And sometimes I feel like these neutral-to-masculine types of gay guys are just being a bit more authentic or something. Like, the media feeds them (and us) this gay male stereotype of hyper-sexed male femininity, and I think I might regard people who fit that stereotype with some suspicion...like maybe they're just trying to fit a mold that society has made for them, rather than being themselves. That would explain this general pattern of male gayness being combined with effeminate characteristics...maybe the stereotype developed from some small grain of truth, but continues to perpetuate itself over time by providing confused young gay men with some kind of pre-made role. Well, I want to fuck men, not women...so something is different about me...and I can't fit into this straight male social world, but I need some kind of identity, and, HEY, instead of fighting a losing battle to be accepted by straight men, I'll just adopt this persona of a stereotypical gay guy and be accepted THAT way! Cause at least then, people will know what I am and what to do with me.
I don't know...I'm just bullshitting.
I realize that my little theory probably isn't true. But I just have a hard time explaining the connection between wanting to love and have sex with a man on the one hand, and wanting to listen to Madonna and dance at the club on the other hand. Like, take Ancient Greece...man on man (well...man on adolescent boy) action was a major part of that culture. But, so was killing the fuck out of people! There wasn't (as far as I know) as much of a connection between one's sexual desire and one's gendered persona.
Anyway...I'm way out of my depth here. And all of this applies to gay women, and to straight men, and to straight women, and to bi women and bi men...it's just so weird to me that who we want to fuck does or is at least expected to have any correlation with any other way that we behave. It's all bullshit!
P.S. Here's a pretty good article on this topic.
posted by Joe @ 10:07 AM
4 Comments:
Great quote from the comments section of that article:
"I guess I'm in the minority in that I actually find effeminate men more attractive for being effeminate. I don't know, something about a neat, clean guy who carries himself with confidence and pride and who isn't too afraid to be kind or nurturing or witty... that's seriously sexy to me. Of course, loud, self-absorbed people who give way too much information about their sex lives are obnoxious, but that's not a function of being feminine. It's a function of being a dick. "
I agree that conflating gender performance with sexuality is highly problematic and isn’t always a satisfying “explanation” for certain telos myths in adult sexuality (especially in terms of rural communities where identification/finding a community through affect is not the main concern; although I realize here that I’m insinuating that you can’t learn queer affectations from the media). However, I think maybe the first thing that needs to happen is a reconsideration of what “effeminacy” is. It’s interesting that loudness, lewdness and general in-your-faceness gets conflated with femininity when the majority of the time, femininity mapped onto female bodies is read as passivity. So are we looking more at a kind of masculinized femininity, an appropriation of parodic feminine elements fused with male privilege? Just like Kinsey mapped out a spectrum of sexual practices, I think we need to remind ourselves that there are also a million ways to perform femininity and masculinity--so many that these terms are perhaps no longer salient for our purposes. To back up Hartinger, aren’t we really just addressing whether someone’s a dick or not? And this determines how they do gender?
@Feelgoodrevival: I agree that these categories of masculine, feminine, effeminate, are practically useless and, even if they're not totally worthless, are still harmful a lot of the time. I was thinking about the fact that pretty much none of the women I know like act as flamboyantly as a stereotypical "queen" might. So, how did that affectation come to be seen as feminine (i.e., as belonging to women)? Cause, even if we assume for the sake of argument that men and women behave differently, "fab" has almost nothing to do with either.
I really don't mean to be saying that any kind of "gender performance" is better or worse...I just think it's odd that gender even exists. I mean, there's probably some portion of genetic predisposition that's combined with a much heavier dose of socialization (which is not to say that socialized things are somehow less real). With straight men and women, you can sort of track how those normative gender identities evolved over time. I just don't quite get how that happened with homosexuals, either genetically or sociologically.
@anonymous: What's your point? That Johnny Cash acts differently than a gay character in a sitcom? I don't know what you're trying to say. Yes, they are recognizably different, and yes, they happen to have different sexual orientations. So what? I don't think anybody was saying that people don't behave in recognizably different ways.
If we're allowed to use fictional characters, how about Omar Little from The Wire? He's television's most badass gay character. Killing and robbing drug dealers and loving on his boyfriends.
Compare him to, say, Jerry Seinfeld...television's most famous clean, spineless, straight weasel. They're recognizably different too.
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