Guise and Dolls
Room for Squares
It’s human nature to make assumptions about things that you don’t really understand. We’re all guilty of that, so it’s hard to fault others for making guesses about you, so long as they are willing to change their views after meeting you. But what happens when people refuse to change their assumptions? What happens when ignorant, pre-conceived notions become misinformed, lasting impressions?
Essentially, this is a battle we’ve all fought before. You know those playground bullies who’d never pick you for their teams because they thought you were a sissy? Well, you worked hard to prove to them that you could indeed play their games, girl-like throwing notwithstanding. Fast forward 15 years, and you find yourself in the same gym with these people, bulking to see who can get the bigger biceps. But while you can prove your masculinity time and time again on the field or behind the pitch, when it comes time for you to share a locker room you realize that you still don’t see eye to eye.
There are a lot of misconceptions about gay men that straight people hold as irreversible truths -- the main one being that being gay somehow makes you less of a man and more like a woman. It’s why we like to shop so much, why we like to gossip and hang out with the girls, and why we pay so much attention to the way we look. Masculinity and homosexuality have never been mutually exclusive, but such a distinction is clearly drawn by most of the world.
Just look at Boy George. Thirty years later, people aren’t calling him “Man George”. Let’s also examine all the straight emo boys in eye liner, the very same ones for bearing their souls and emotions to the world through song. Why do they feel as if the only way for them to effectively do this is to wear women’s makeup? Could that be mere coincidence? That the ability to be in touch with your emotions is somehow only found in the guise of the so-called “weaker” sex? And so, because gay men talk about their feelings and care about the way they look, they’re somehow incapable of being virile?
The idea of a homosexual as some cowering pansy in women’s clothing is nothing new. My sister once came to me, clearly shaken by a dream that she had had. In it, I, her gay brother, had wanted a sex change operation. Instead of laughing off this ridiculous notion, she came to me truly concerned: “You don’t really want to be a woman, do you?” No, I don’t. I don’t even want to wear women’s clothing. In fact, I don’t want to have anything to do with women. By coming to me, not only did she affirm that I will always be somehow incomplete to her, but she also confirmed what I had already suspected most people to believe: that gay men are, in essence, the same as women.
How can we blame them, when the depictions of most television gays are starkly asexual? On “As The World Turns,” we currently have daytime TV’s first teenage gay couple, but studio execs are dead set against showing any PDA. That mentality isn’t reserved only for daytime TV: Will didn’t get in a serious relationship until the end of “Will & Grace”. Add to this the bevy of make-over mavens on reality shows and what you have is a procession of sex-less, “unmanned” gay men. The message is that it’s impossible for a gay man to be sexual and adhere to traditional notions of masculinity at the same time.
What I’m trying to get at is that far from being a community of Peter Pansies all wanting to play dress up, there are those of us who are effeminate and those less so, but we are all of us men. Hell, it’s no cakewalk being gay; you have to be strong. My challenge to all who harbor the idea that all gay men secretly wish to be drag queens, transvestites, or transsexuals (I’m sure to them, there’s no distinction) is this: If you insist that we play dress up, where are all the gay policemen? Where are the gay construction workers? The gay sailors, the gay leather-men? The cowboy and the American Indian?
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