This mostly regards my last post, but these are important reading materials in general:
Zami: A New Spelling of my Name by Audre Lorde
A History of Sexuality by Michel Foucault
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/15/some-animals-are-more-equal-than-others/?ref=opinion
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/dec/28/opinion/la-oe-goldberg-gays-20101228
(Or google: “As Gay Becomes Bourgeois” by Jonah Goldberg… he tears it up!)
Sunday, April 10, 2011
For further (but short and sweet) discussion:
For those of you not following on FB/Twitter, I was involved with the Northeast LGBT conference discussing the dynamic between racial identity and sexual identity with regards to experience and politics. (What else is new?)
There were A LOT of areas that I could have covered in this field. (See: Queer Intersectionality and the Failure of Recent Lesbian and Gay ...
… Intersectionality - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) but I was more interested in analyzing the power structures at work with the unique experiences of the people who attended the caucus. Specifically because i could teach theory till I'm blue in the face, but it doesn't mean anything if a person can't see these structures and forces at work in their everyday lives and if that person can't navigate life accordingly. What I really want to address at this point is some specific broader examples of the micro-political struggles that occur in the LGBTQ community in the United States of America today along racial lines.
As essential as it is to keep these power structures in mind when addressing daily personal struggles surrounding identity (especially interlocking oppressions) my interest lies in the "movement" surrounding the equality and overall acceptance of homosexuals into the traditionally heterocentric world at large. The question I am inclined to start off with is: What issues are at the forefront of this movement?
Marriage (a bourgeois staple), military service (linked to notions of patriotism and Americanism perhaps) and equal protection under the law are among the centric concerns. Obviously, this Angry Homosexist is an unmitigated champion for these causes as well. It is only just that queerfolk have the ability to exercise the same agency as straightvolk (lolz) and be able to hold the government responsible for ensuring basic security against discrimination.
These issues however get a disproportionate degree of attention in the national circus that is the LGBT identity. (I mean does Lady Gaga about the effects of racist and anti-transgender atitudes within the gay community?) Why is that?
Among a great complex of factors, the disproportionate attention and success rate of campaigns for the interests of wealthy, white men within the LGBT movement(s) really comes down to resources and logos.
The matter of resources is of foremost interest to me. As a Black male in the queer community, I am plagued by the issues of anti-homosexual violence, physical, emotional and epistemic, that occurs on multiple levels of the Black community in the United States. Be it in hip-hop culture, predominantly African American schools, gangs (loosely defined) culture or in Black churches, I am inclined to use the resources that I have to combat these social issues at work in my experience as a queer person. But as Black men, (earning 81-91% of our white counterparts and being consistently represented by heterosexual and token Black politicians who can only act in the interest of the majority anyway), we have little agency with regards to giving valence to our causes.
Further, how much more ability do I have as a Black cis-gendered queer male than a woman of color (earning 70% of every dollar that her male counterpart earns and CONSISTENTLY underrepresented even in terms of tokens) to give valence to my causes? How much more than my transgendered counterparts of any race? I do recognize the privileges that work for me in this regard.
However it is those who have always had the resources as a result of colonialism, cultural hegemony, patriarchy and religious inculcation that are able to champion the causes that affect them, even in the name of the LGBTQ community at large. This is inextricably linked to the issue of logos.
Logos refers to “logical speech,” and is something I touch on a lot when discussing interspecies ethics. Speaking the language of the oppressor; addressing the culture with the power to end the discrimination and systemic obstacles that are working against your community; sanitizing/bleaching your identity to appear less monstrous (read: Other) to the hegemony; looking like those in power (prop 8 posters anyone?); these symptoms (a.k.a. assimilationist politics) reflect the democratic notion of logos and how it affects political action. This of course works. It worked for the suffragists and worked for the Black Civil rights movement. But it comes at a cost (see: Bayard Rustin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia). Someone gets kicked to the back of the bus. Silenced.
Being a queer person of color, a gay polyamorist, transgendered, etc. places a person at the center of a battlefield fighting multiple hegemonic forces that can all seem to blur into one. The micro-political squabbles of the LGBT community reflect the struggle for us to gain the same access that other LGBTs have to realizing their goal for our community. Just food for thought.
There were A LOT of areas that I could have covered in this field. (See: Queer Intersectionality and the Failure of Recent Lesbian and Gay ...
… Intersectionality - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) but I was more interested in analyzing the power structures at work with the unique experiences of the people who attended the caucus. Specifically because i could teach theory till I'm blue in the face, but it doesn't mean anything if a person can't see these structures and forces at work in their everyday lives and if that person can't navigate life accordingly. What I really want to address at this point is some specific broader examples of the micro-political struggles that occur in the LGBTQ community in the United States of America today along racial lines.
As essential as it is to keep these power structures in mind when addressing daily personal struggles surrounding identity (especially interlocking oppressions) my interest lies in the "movement" surrounding the equality and overall acceptance of homosexuals into the traditionally heterocentric world at large. The question I am inclined to start off with is: What issues are at the forefront of this movement?
Marriage (a bourgeois staple), military service (linked to notions of patriotism and Americanism perhaps) and equal protection under the law are among the centric concerns. Obviously, this Angry Homosexist is an unmitigated champion for these causes as well. It is only just that queerfolk have the ability to exercise the same agency as straightvolk (lolz) and be able to hold the government responsible for ensuring basic security against discrimination.
These issues however get a disproportionate degree of attention in the national circus that is the LGBT identity. (I mean does Lady Gaga about the effects of racist and anti-transgender atitudes within the gay community?) Why is that?
Among a great complex of factors, the disproportionate attention and success rate of campaigns for the interests of wealthy, white men within the LGBT movement(s) really comes down to resources and logos.
The matter of resources is of foremost interest to me. As a Black male in the queer community, I am plagued by the issues of anti-homosexual violence, physical, emotional and epistemic, that occurs on multiple levels of the Black community in the United States. Be it in hip-hop culture, predominantly African American schools, gangs (loosely defined) culture or in Black churches, I am inclined to use the resources that I have to combat these social issues at work in my experience as a queer person. But as Black men, (earning 81-91% of our white counterparts and being consistently represented by heterosexual and token Black politicians who can only act in the interest of the majority anyway), we have little agency with regards to giving valence to our causes.
Further, how much more ability do I have as a Black cis-gendered queer male than a woman of color (earning 70% of every dollar that her male counterpart earns and CONSISTENTLY underrepresented even in terms of tokens) to give valence to my causes? How much more than my transgendered counterparts of any race? I do recognize the privileges that work for me in this regard.
However it is those who have always had the resources as a result of colonialism, cultural hegemony, patriarchy and religious inculcation that are able to champion the causes that affect them, even in the name of the LGBTQ community at large. This is inextricably linked to the issue of logos.
Logos refers to “logical speech,” and is something I touch on a lot when discussing interspecies ethics. Speaking the language of the oppressor; addressing the culture with the power to end the discrimination and systemic obstacles that are working against your community; sanitizing/bleaching your identity to appear less monstrous (read: Other) to the hegemony; looking like those in power (prop 8 posters anyone?); these symptoms (a.k.a. assimilationist politics) reflect the democratic notion of logos and how it affects political action. This of course works. It worked for the suffragists and worked for the Black Civil rights movement. But it comes at a cost (see: Bayard Rustin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia). Someone gets kicked to the back of the bus. Silenced.
Being a queer person of color, a gay polyamorist, transgendered, etc. places a person at the center of a battlefield fighting multiple hegemonic forces that can all seem to blur into one. The micro-political squabbles of the LGBT community reflect the struggle for us to gain the same access that other LGBTs have to realizing their goal for our community. Just food for thought.
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
You can now follow me on Facebook guys. The links work a little bit better there and I can reach a woder audience. Trust me, I'll still be blogging it up like a champ though.
http://www.facebook.com/darren.j.glenn#!/pages/The-Angry-Homosexist/161037433921499
http://www.facebook.com/darren.j.glenn#!/pages/The-Angry-Homosexist/161037433921499
Friday, October 29, 2010
The Clint McCance Episode
Clint McCance. A name that will FOREVER make my blood boil. As one facebook user describes him, he is the "hillbilly jerk" that was determined to use both his voice as the elected vice president of an Eastern Arkansas school board and his facebook page to express a little bit more than distaste for the recent nationwide tribute to the five suicides of bullied queer high school students in the form of wearing purple.
To illustrate exactly the flame that is currently making the blood of this Angry Homosexist boil, let me just pull some of the quotes posted by this respected member of his community: "Seriously they want me to wear purple because five queers committed suicide. The only way I'm wearin' it for them is if they all commit suicide... I can't believe the people of this world have gotten this stupid. We are honoring the fact that they sinned and killed themselves because of their sin."
That was basically McCance calling down the shitstorm that he inevitably recieved. He was eventually interrogated by a genuinely puzzled and bewondered Anderson Cooper, who was in awe at what exactly the mechanics were that were at work when McCance made the conscious decision to not only formulate such an abjectly derogatory opinion, but also to publicize it in the attempt to facilitate to development of more anti-homosexual sentiment--the same kind that lead to the tragic (to say the least) suicides that sparked the memorial in the first place.
But this is not what is grinding my gears alone. I would not return to my blog after a 5 month hiatus just for one dumb-ass piece of self-righteous trash. What truly SICKENS me is the support that he is getting from people all over the internet. There is a facebook page... actually, here's the link:
http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Do-NOT-fire-Clint-McCance/128621650526071
"Do not fire Clint McCance" is there battle cry. Clint McCance supporters unite to voice their own dissent of homosexual proclivity as it naturally occurs. Users summoning text from THE BIBLE to breathe life into their hatred. Some people who posted even tried to work some gay conversion therapy magic in there. Again, being (notice I said BEING) a queer person was repeatedly condemned as a sin (in line with the thought of McCance) and that there is no reconciliation with an immutable preference built into one's being and a relationship with God.
At this point, I can only direct a fiery tirade to all those Clint McCance supporters out there, or those who, while not agreeing with his words and violent directives still use this as an opportuinity to condemn, not a lifestyle but a life...
This entire ordeal has made me more proclive to hate straight people. I'm already heterophobic--unable to trust heterosexuals as readily. But the words I saw on that facebook wall have burned into my mind and I can so easily say that I HATE straight folk. What if I did that? I hate Straight, White Conservative, Upper-middle class, American, English-speaking Christians. ALL of them. YOUR PEOPLE shit on the planet, strip the environment of it's resources, kill indigenous tribes with such ease that I'm conviced that it is just in your nature to destroy people of color. You erect shambles to encage your fellow earthlings and breed life just to destroy it in mass numbers, carving the flesh of millions on your carefully crafted overpriced dinnerware from mega-stores that are driving humble local business into the ground and creating slaveries across the globe in countries that "don't count." And then you have the nerve to stick your nose into a clean, leatherbound book to justify your thirst for the blood of God's creatures and God's children who are unable to love the same way you do. Who experience the same kinds of sexual urges you do (and you know you do) in just a different way. You look into a book written by other straight, white males in the past and IGNORE where it says that we are ALL (straight, gay, colored, white, American or from countries that don't count, human or animal) "fearfully and wonderfully made." A book so rife with interested, politically informent mistranslated that God doesn't even know where (esp. in the Old Testament) we get half this stuff from. You use that book to justify polluting the enivronment to transport yourselves to someone else's country to coloni--I mean, Christianize them, assimilate them and purge them of their "sin."
What if I were to say something like that? Fortunately, I am sober enough (barely, but my anger is not SO blinding) that i recognize that heterosexist does not equal heterosexual. Clint McCance, I thank you. You brought out the true ignorances in people. You reminded why I am... the Angry Homosexist.
--TAHS
To illustrate exactly the flame that is currently making the blood of this Angry Homosexist boil, let me just pull some of the quotes posted by this respected member of his community: "Seriously they want me to wear purple because five queers committed suicide. The only way I'm wearin' it for them is if they all commit suicide... I can't believe the people of this world have gotten this stupid. We are honoring the fact that they sinned and killed themselves because of their sin."
That was basically McCance calling down the shitstorm that he inevitably recieved. He was eventually interrogated by a genuinely puzzled and bewondered Anderson Cooper, who was in awe at what exactly the mechanics were that were at work when McCance made the conscious decision to not only formulate such an abjectly derogatory opinion, but also to publicize it in the attempt to facilitate to development of more anti-homosexual sentiment--the same kind that lead to the tragic (to say the least) suicides that sparked the memorial in the first place.
But this is not what is grinding my gears alone. I would not return to my blog after a 5 month hiatus just for one dumb-ass piece of self-righteous trash. What truly SICKENS me is the support that he is getting from people all over the internet. There is a facebook page... actually, here's the link:
http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Do-NOT-fire-Clint-McCance/128621650526071
"Do not fire Clint McCance" is there battle cry. Clint McCance supporters unite to voice their own dissent of homosexual proclivity as it naturally occurs. Users summoning text from THE BIBLE to breathe life into their hatred. Some people who posted even tried to work some gay conversion therapy magic in there. Again, being (notice I said BEING) a queer person was repeatedly condemned as a sin (in line with the thought of McCance) and that there is no reconciliation with an immutable preference built into one's being and a relationship with God.
At this point, I can only direct a fiery tirade to all those Clint McCance supporters out there, or those who, while not agreeing with his words and violent directives still use this as an opportuinity to condemn, not a lifestyle but a life...
This entire ordeal has made me more proclive to hate straight people. I'm already heterophobic--unable to trust heterosexuals as readily. But the words I saw on that facebook wall have burned into my mind and I can so easily say that I HATE straight folk. What if I did that? I hate Straight, White Conservative, Upper-middle class, American, English-speaking Christians. ALL of them. YOUR PEOPLE shit on the planet, strip the environment of it's resources, kill indigenous tribes with such ease that I'm conviced that it is just in your nature to destroy people of color. You erect shambles to encage your fellow earthlings and breed life just to destroy it in mass numbers, carving the flesh of millions on your carefully crafted overpriced dinnerware from mega-stores that are driving humble local business into the ground and creating slaveries across the globe in countries that "don't count." And then you have the nerve to stick your nose into a clean, leatherbound book to justify your thirst for the blood of God's creatures and God's children who are unable to love the same way you do. Who experience the same kinds of sexual urges you do (and you know you do) in just a different way. You look into a book written by other straight, white males in the past and IGNORE where it says that we are ALL (straight, gay, colored, white, American or from countries that don't count, human or animal) "fearfully and wonderfully made." A book so rife with interested, politically informent mistranslated that God doesn't even know where (esp. in the Old Testament) we get half this stuff from. You use that book to justify polluting the enivronment to transport yourselves to someone else's country to coloni--I mean, Christianize them, assimilate them and purge them of their "sin."
What if I were to say something like that? Fortunately, I am sober enough (barely, but my anger is not SO blinding) that i recognize that heterosexist does not equal heterosexual. Clint McCance, I thank you. You brought out the true ignorances in people. You reminded why I am... the Angry Homosexist.
--TAHS
Friday, June 4, 2010
The White Side of History
From Binghamton University's Right Side of History Page: "A civil rights struggle is brewing in America, and we want to be on the right side of history. Get involved to support equal rights for our lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) friends!"
From the official Right Side of History website: "After extensive research, RSOH launched a pilot on Facebook to test the power of personalizing equality as a way to collect names of new supporters. RSOH Founder Brian Elliot invited 600 straight friends to join a group supporting his right to be a full citizen. Four weeks later, more than 19,000 people had joined "Give Brian Equality" - an effort to galvanize support for a single LGBT American's legal equality. Most of these supporters were straight, and few had ever been on an LGBT organization's constituent list before. The huge potential impact of rolling this out to LGBT Americans and their tens of millions of friends was immediately clear.
Based on this proof-of-concept pilot, we're building a platform that will have the power to amass the largest list of straight supporters of LGBT equality in the country. This standing army of supporters will be mobilized at critical times to take actions on behalf of their LGBT friends.
This is not your typical gay rights organization. We're losing the rainbow. We're reframing the issues. And we're making it easier than ever to get involved whether you're a frat guy in Alabama, a stay at home mom in Utah, or an activist in New York. Sign up and we'll keep you up to date on our progress. This will change everything."
Before I continue, it is worth noting the Herculean effort that it is taking for me to contain my laughter long enough to continue this blog post.
Firstly, the Right Side of History frames it's particular course of political action in that of the democratic process, filled with all its inspiring and humanizing discourse as well as all its insidiously problematic assertions about who deserves rights.
The movement is all about getting legislation passed to ensure legal equality across the board for people who's lifestyles are not considered in the current language of the law. It is about egalitarianism, and justice for all. I am all about these things too. And that's where our commonalities end...
The democratic process works like this: If one can reason with the folks in power, appeal to THEIR (monocultural) conception of "the law" (Themis) and make them believe that you are worthy of THEIR rights, then maybe they will redefine the boundaries of the law.
For example, Black Americans could not get in a word edge-wise with the white-washed, negrophobic US legislatures until they assimilated, adopted their Anglo-Saxon model of humanity/familial bonds/lifestyles and made them feel that they were "just like them" (see boomerang perception). Once Blacks in America appropriated the Anglo-Saxon legal language of "liberty," "justice" and "fairness," used their own cultural more of shame against them and made the Anglo-American government percieve them as American enough to have their rights. In order to progress in society, Blacks had to mimic the cultural ideal of the Anglo-Saxon imagination. Consequently, homosexual, non-Christian, financially disadvantaged, natural-haired and even female African Americans had to be placed to the background of the movement.
From the official Right Side of History website: "After extensive research, RSOH launched a pilot on Facebook to test the power of personalizing equality as a way to collect names of new supporters. RSOH Founder Brian Elliot invited 600 straight friends to join a group supporting his right to be a full citizen. Four weeks later, more than 19,000 people had joined "Give Brian Equality" - an effort to galvanize support for a single LGBT American's legal equality. Most of these supporters were straight, and few had ever been on an LGBT organization's constituent list before. The huge potential impact of rolling this out to LGBT Americans and their tens of millions of friends was immediately clear.
Based on this proof-of-concept pilot, we're building a platform that will have the power to amass the largest list of straight supporters of LGBT equality in the country. This standing army of supporters will be mobilized at critical times to take actions on behalf of their LGBT friends.
This is not your typical gay rights organization. We're losing the rainbow. We're reframing the issues. And we're making it easier than ever to get involved whether you're a frat guy in Alabama, a stay at home mom in Utah, or an activist in New York. Sign up and we'll keep you up to date on our progress. This will change everything."
Before I continue, it is worth noting the Herculean effort that it is taking for me to contain my laughter long enough to continue this blog post.
Firstly, the Right Side of History frames it's particular course of political action in that of the democratic process, filled with all its inspiring and humanizing discourse as well as all its insidiously problematic assertions about who deserves rights.
The movement is all about getting legislation passed to ensure legal equality across the board for people who's lifestyles are not considered in the current language of the law. It is about egalitarianism, and justice for all. I am all about these things too. And that's where our commonalities end...
The democratic process works like this: If one can reason with the folks in power, appeal to THEIR (monocultural) conception of "the law" (Themis) and make them believe that you are worthy of THEIR rights, then maybe they will redefine the boundaries of the law.
For example, Black Americans could not get in a word edge-wise with the white-washed, negrophobic US legislatures until they assimilated, adopted their Anglo-Saxon model of humanity/familial bonds/lifestyles and made them feel that they were "just like them" (see boomerang perception). Once Blacks in America appropriated the Anglo-Saxon legal language of "liberty," "justice" and "fairness," used their own cultural more of shame against them and made the Anglo-American government percieve them as American enough to have their rights. In order to progress in society, Blacks had to mimic the cultural ideal of the Anglo-Saxon imagination. Consequently, homosexual, non-Christian, financially disadvantaged, natural-haired and even female African Americans had to be placed to the background of the movement.
Friday, May 21, 2010
"F'cked Up Thing or Most F"cked Up Thing Ever?" (Round 1)
This is the first installment of a new online participant game I started. It's called "F*ucked Up Thing or Most F*ucked Up Thing Ever," where the audience decides whether or not what I post here is truly the most f"cked up thing they had ever seen, or just simply f*cked up.
The first example:
http://www.stylelist.com/2010/05/06/mission-makeover-from-fashion-fumble-to-stylishly-chic/?icid=main|aim|dl3|link3|http%3A%2F%2Fwww.stylelist.com%2F2010%2F05%2F06%2Fmission-makeover-from-fashion-fumble-to-stylishly-chic%2F
The first example:
http://www.stylelist.com/2010/05/06/mission-makeover-from-fashion-fumble-to-stylishly-chic/?icid=main|aim|dl3|link3|http%3A%2F%2Fwww.stylelist.com%2F2010%2F05%2F06%2Fmission-makeover-from-fashion-fumble-to-stylishly-chic%2F
Sunday, May 2, 2010
"I'm Not Myself Tonight" (shitshow s4 ep22)
This late Sunday night, I am dismounting the coat tails of a very profound weekend with regards to my homosexist advocacy. Specifically, my friends and I devoted this night to entering one of the most straight-dominated establishments of our college town in support of one of our heterosexual friends. In an effort to assist him on his quest for a good night, we entered the fold of a bar that I usually describe as: "it's basically where straight people go to exchange STDs."
Then plan? We all went deep undercover as straight people to act as a system of support for him while blending into the setting. The girls femmed it up to the point of atonishment, donning mildly catty, impressionable and subtly stereotypical long-island, hetera personas. My other male friend, who was already a natural hetero, simply fell into some of the more brutish aspects of the stereotypical male hetero consciousness. I astounded my friends almost to the point that they were genuinely disturbed by my complete transformation into a total bro-ski. I hardly recognized myself. I was the (socially) straightest I have ever been. It was awesome to be able to shed the coding of my sexuality and wondrous how easy it was. I could spend an entire blog series discussing the ways in which my race factored into my new alter-ego, but for tonight it would only be a tangent.
The outcome of the night is also inconsequential to this entry, but I will assert some of the basic phenomenology. It was an admitted relief to not be automatically marked or other-ized based on the perceived sexuality that I bare, or even by the way I present myself as a militant, political queered symbol (I have my reasons for doing that... yet another blog).
Now, why should straight people not be offended by us seemingly mocking them? Well let's talk about hegemony for one thing. I'll make the analogy to race (which I'm not particularly wont to do, but I find it appropriate this time). A Black American male, who already lives in a white-bred, white-owned, white-washed world, purposefully assuming a "White-acting" persona would never meet any criticism from the Major Social (my term for the mainstream) as he is (one could say "Finally") moulding himself to the normative standards of behavior that is set by the (Capitalist) culture that longs to fully subsume his body and mind. He's "finally" woken up and realized that holding onto his alterity in behavior only (one could say) 'exacerbated the problem of his Blackness. Likewise, in "straightening up," I'm only acting in accordance to the prescriptives that are already in place pressuring me to be like "everyone else" or behave "the way I should." If I did that everyday, I would make the friends that I should make, make my parents proud and I could enjoy an ease that, in my insecure stages prior to my metamorphosis into TAHS, I always craved. I don't want to exacerbate the problem of my non-heteronormativity by behaving like a homo, now do I?
The next point of contest to any possible offense is that, straight folk, I LIVE IN YOUR WORLD! I live in YOUR world, watch your television, am told that you are my role models, am expected to want to be like you and thus can only live comfortably (and I can trouble that) in the margins. And yet you make fun of us, you find us monstrous, wayward, unnatural and so far removed from yourselves that you would quicker puff out your chest and chat up how heavily and militantly preoccupied you are with only heterosexual encounters to the point of gross exaggeration and self-denial (yes guys, I see through some of you).
And lastly, I was embodying a "straight guy." Not "a guy who happens to be straight." There's a conceptual difference there that is key. I was aiming to mock the stereotype and found it hilarious how easily even a caricature of a member of the Major Social can blend in and fit in the world. Going for that Platonic essence of male heterosexual sociality is what made this experiment valuable in the first place. I recognize intimately that heterosexuals are more than just heterosexuals and are complex agents of multiple nuanced identities. The critique that my "performance" was based on however was of those men who are unnecessarily overcoded by their heterosexuality.
I'm not done analyzing last night by a long shot. Especially given the encounter I had towards the tail end with the girl who cried the word "faggot" three too many times in front of the wrong Angry Homosexist. I will leave you with a link to a piece of satirical comedy wherein the character is threatened by the phenomenon pursuant to what my firends and I accomplished last night: the ability to shed the overcoding of our respective alternate sexualities.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFjWRGaV-Fs
--TAHS
Then plan? We all went deep undercover as straight people to act as a system of support for him while blending into the setting. The girls femmed it up to the point of atonishment, donning mildly catty, impressionable and subtly stereotypical long-island, hetera personas. My other male friend, who was already a natural hetero, simply fell into some of the more brutish aspects of the stereotypical male hetero consciousness. I astounded my friends almost to the point that they were genuinely disturbed by my complete transformation into a total bro-ski. I hardly recognized myself. I was the (socially) straightest I have ever been. It was awesome to be able to shed the coding of my sexuality and wondrous how easy it was. I could spend an entire blog series discussing the ways in which my race factored into my new alter-ego, but for tonight it would only be a tangent.
The outcome of the night is also inconsequential to this entry, but I will assert some of the basic phenomenology. It was an admitted relief to not be automatically marked or other-ized based on the perceived sexuality that I bare, or even by the way I present myself as a militant, political queered symbol (I have my reasons for doing that... yet another blog).
Now, why should straight people not be offended by us seemingly mocking them? Well let's talk about hegemony for one thing. I'll make the analogy to race (which I'm not particularly wont to do, but I find it appropriate this time). A Black American male, who already lives in a white-bred, white-owned, white-washed world, purposefully assuming a "White-acting" persona would never meet any criticism from the Major Social (my term for the mainstream) as he is (one could say "Finally") moulding himself to the normative standards of behavior that is set by the (Capitalist) culture that longs to fully subsume his body and mind. He's "finally" woken up and realized that holding onto his alterity in behavior only (one could say) 'exacerbated the problem of his Blackness. Likewise, in "straightening up," I'm only acting in accordance to the prescriptives that are already in place pressuring me to be like "everyone else" or behave "the way I should." If I did that everyday, I would make the friends that I should make, make my parents proud and I could enjoy an ease that, in my insecure stages prior to my metamorphosis into TAHS, I always craved. I don't want to exacerbate the problem of my non-heteronormativity by behaving like a homo, now do I?
The next point of contest to any possible offense is that, straight folk, I LIVE IN YOUR WORLD! I live in YOUR world, watch your television, am told that you are my role models, am expected to want to be like you and thus can only live comfortably (and I can trouble that) in the margins. And yet you make fun of us, you find us monstrous, wayward, unnatural and so far removed from yourselves that you would quicker puff out your chest and chat up how heavily and militantly preoccupied you are with only heterosexual encounters to the point of gross exaggeration and self-denial (yes guys, I see through some of you).
And lastly, I was embodying a "straight guy." Not "a guy who happens to be straight." There's a conceptual difference there that is key. I was aiming to mock the stereotype and found it hilarious how easily even a caricature of a member of the Major Social can blend in and fit in the world. Going for that Platonic essence of male heterosexual sociality is what made this experiment valuable in the first place. I recognize intimately that heterosexuals are more than just heterosexuals and are complex agents of multiple nuanced identities. The critique that my "performance" was based on however was of those men who are unnecessarily overcoded by their heterosexuality.
I'm not done analyzing last night by a long shot. Especially given the encounter I had towards the tail end with the girl who cried the word "faggot" three too many times in front of the wrong Angry Homosexist. I will leave you with a link to a piece of satirical comedy wherein the character is threatened by the phenomenon pursuant to what my firends and I accomplished last night: the ability to shed the overcoding of our respective alternate sexualities.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFjWRGaV-Fs
--TAHS
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