Tag Archives: het/homo binary

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Gays in the mist: why your “gaydar” is problematic

gaydar

Today, over drinks, I was talking with a friend about online dating.  I’m personally partial to online dating for two reasons. 1) Talking to strangers is hard and 2) it takes a lot of the guesswork out the equation for queer people.

As we have discussed here briefly before, public space is heterosexual by default.  We need look no further for evidence of this than rainbow flags and “safe space” stickers on queer (or queer friendly) businesses.  While these spaces are crucial for many queer people, their very existence serves to reinforce the unspoken heterosexuality of the un-marked spaces around them.

In the course of the conversation, my friend asked if I could “tell” when someone in a room was gay.  The short answer is, to some extent, I think that I can.  The idea of “gaydar” is pretty well entrenched in both gay culture and the mainstream at this point.  Regardless, I don’t think it’s so cut-and-dried.  I don’t think I can tell who every gay guy in the room is.  My response was something like “I think I can sometimes tell, but there are probably gay guys here that I wouldn’t guess were gay.”  Fortuitously, when I got home, I saw this video:

gaydarvidcap

Click to watch the full video

I really recommend you watch the whole thing.  I’ll wait.

So, that happened.  I honestly don’t even know where to start with this video.  First and foremost, I guess what bothers me about the whole “gaydar” debate is that I’m not really sure why it’s important to anyone who isn’t gay.  Unfortunately, we live in a world where hitting on the wrong person can get you killed, and I so don’t blame my queer family for wanting a leg up on the situation.  Why anybody who identifies as straight would want or need to know if stranger is gay, however, is beyond me.  It occurs to me that this is either:

a) an extension of our recent cultural obsession with the lives of total strangers
b) a way to reinforce one’s own hegemonic masculinity in comparison to a stranger
c) a justification for micro and macro aggressions against queer people or
d) all of the above

Nonetheless, it would appear that it is, for whatever, important to this blogger, Mark Miller, and his “professional straight man” guest to figure out exactly how and why he does, or does not, have gaydar.

We open on a charming on a charming rendition of “What, what, in the butt,” because nothing says “I’m still one of the guys” like satirizing a stigmatized sex act in which you most likely participate.

I think what most bothers me about this video is that it’s one more way in which my sexual identity gets to be all about straight white men.  Nothing’s ever about straight white men, so I’m glad they’re finally getting their day in the sun.  From the very beginning, it’s clear that Miller is either still really uncomfortable with his own identity (which is totally valid, and everybody gets to make that trip in their own time) or is specifically pandering to his straight best friend.  Instead of saying, “A year ago, I come out to my roommate about identifying as gay,” he says

“A year ago, he found out that I don’t like chicks”

Let’s just parse this out.  First, he “found out”?  Was there some sort of investigation?  Secondly, there are plenty of ways to express your gay identity that don’t involve the overt misogyny of referring to women as “chicks.”  Finally, “not liking chicks” doesn’t make you gay.  You also have to “like dudes.”

But don’t worry, the straight white man-splaining is just getting warmed up.  We’re then treated to Miller’s guest’s opinion that, until you’re close to a gay person

“…it’s like, it doesn’t really exist.  Like it exists but like, you don’t really notice it.”

You heard it here first, gays.  Until this one straight guy discovered a covert gay living in his very house, homosexuality itself did not exist.

That’s maybe not what irks me the most about this quote though.  Yes, it is ridiculous that this guy thinks because he’s not conscious of a group of people, they don’t exist.  What bothers me most is that, as any swishy former theater kid can tell you, straight identified men often have the best. gaydar. ever.  Nobody is better at picking up on non-hegemonic masculinity than a person whose entire identity as a “straight dude” depends on the existence of an other.  Straight masculinity as we know it today is entirely contingent on the existence and identification of men who do not conform to the ideal.

“DJ Donny D,” apparently not content with just ripping off hip-hop culture, then goes on to tell us the four characteristics that trigger his gaydar which, remember, 30 seconds ago Miller established that straight guys don’t have.  For those who didn’t make it through the whole video, allow me to enlighten you.  You too may spot a gay in your very midst.

1. Really clean-cut hair
2. Really in shape
3. Too small clothes (gripping of the arms)

and apparently the biggest giveaway

4. How they talk

It’s hard to know where to start here, because there’s just so much to say.  I just got my hair cut on Friday, and it didn’t even occur to me to assume that every. single. person. at the salon was gay.  How silly of me!

For those who watched the video, you’ll remember that the comment about being “really in shape” was made at the gym.  Apparently straight men are supposed to go to the gym but just be really bad it?

Donny, as I assume (but to be fair, do not know) his mother actually named him, uses his own “straight” clothes to talk about the tell-tale “gripping of the arms” that makes a T-shirt gay (unless it’s on Donny, I guess?)

Nonetheless, and according to Donny we’re all in agreement on this, we’re told that gays just talk gay.  In the outtakes, Miller gives the example of saying “That’s so Gucci.”  Uh-huh.

This video makes a few things abundantly clear.  A certain segment of gay culture, the kind of “hot gays” you see on TV with their six-packs, and brand-name clothes, fits perfectly within the consumerism of which our culture has become so enamored.  We see this at the very end of the video when DJ Jazzy Jeff tells us that

“I’m what they call metro, where you dress like you’re gay but you’re not gay.  You love women but you like to look good.”

No, Donny.  You don’t look “good” –by your own definition, you look “gay.”  You’d set off your own gaydar.  You’re just able to disguise your co-opting of “everything but the hard parts” of being gay as consumerism, a value held extremely dear by our culture.

Beyond this, though, the video drives home another, bigger point.  Gaydar is not actually about knowing who’s gay and who isn’t, as if we ever truly could.  Maybe for queer people, this is part of the idea.  But straight people, especially straight men, have no reason to know or care who’s gay.  They are, and we all are, policing masculinity.  Donny can’t know somebody is gay any more than I can.  What he can know is how much that person deviates from his own ideas of acceptable masculinity.  And as a straight guy, not only can he know, he must know.  Especially in an age where the performative lines between gay and straight are increasingly blurring, his very identity as a “straight dude” depends on his ability to point out the other.

Thank God his roommate gave him the chance.

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But you meant well!

Yesterday this meme was all over my Facebook wall.

facebook gay memeFirst off, let me clear, I’m happy to be friends with so many people who want to openly support gay rights.  Nonetheless, this meme is missing the mark.  It somehow manages to be insulting to virtually everyone in the world, while simultaneously claiming, in a roundabout way, to be advocating for gay adoption rights.

‘I’ve never met a gay person who “accidentally” had a kid they didn’t want.’

Where to begin?  As I discussed in my last post, the compulsory hetero/homo binary has created a world in a which a lot of people identify as gay or lesbian and still have sex with people of the same gender, for any number of reasons.  There are scores of gay and lesbian people who have accidentally made a baby.  I have met them.

And let’s talk about the quotation marks around “accidentally.”  Are we to believe that accidental pregnancy is not a thing?  The only way I can read this is in the voice of those weird sex ed movies we all had to watch:

“If you’re old enough to have sex, you’re old enough to handle the consequences.”

This kind of sex shaming allows us to distance ourselves from the realities of people dealing with an unplanned pregnancy by blaming them for having the nerve to have sex!  Which we are also doing!  Or trying to do!

Yes, often when we have sex, accidental pregnancy is a risk.  However, every time a plane crashes, we don’t say

“Well, those idiots never should’ve gotten on that plane!  If you’re old enough to get on a plane, you’re old enough for the consequences.  Oops, my flight is boarding!”

This, I realize, is not the best example since babies and plane crashes are not always equally disastrous, but sometimes they are!  By distancing ourselves from accidental pregnancy, by hypocritically judging it, we’re giving ourselves permission to not feel compassion for someone who may be going through a very rough time.

And that’s ultimately what bothers about that top half of the meme.  The phrase “a kid they didn’t want” is maybe the worst part.  In 5 words, it takes for granted that “wanting” a baby and being able to care for one are the same thing.  Now, I’m sure there are babies that are completely unwanted by their parents.  But there are also a hell of a lot of children in the foster care and adoption system who were given up or forcibly removed because their parents, in one way or another, could not provide for them.  By buying into this discourse of “unwanted babies,” we’re erasing the pain of parents who lose their children and the joy they experienced while together.  Furthermore, given the racial makeup of kids in the system, we’re once again buying into the script of the welfare queen, the drug addicted mother, the gang banger father, stereotypes that are almost without exception leveled at people of color.

“If you don’t want gays to adopt, tell straight people to quit having kids they don’t want.”

Oh you thought we were done?  Don’t go yet, we have to find out how to get gays to stop adopting.  That is what’s so crazy about this meme.  I happen to know, because of the friends I have who shared it, that they interpreted this as a pro-gay statement.  But it can just as easily be read as a very practical piece of advice on how to get gays to stop adopting.

It frames gay adoption as the problem, and not the bigoted views that would lead someone to hold that opinion.  I don’t want gays to stop adopting.  Or lesbians.  Or bi, or trans, or poly families, or anybody, as long as those people want to adopt and can provide a good and loving home for the children they bring into their lives.  Ultimately, that’s the crux of the issue.  Gay people are not adopting because we just want to help out straight people.  And we’re not doing it on a whim.  It’s not as if we got off our latest cruise, mimosa in hand, and had to decide between a shih-tzu and a baby and thought “You know, let’s take the baby, it’ll live longer.”

Gay couples struggle for years to be able to adopt children, sometimes unsuccessfully.  We’re prohibited from adopting as couples in many states, including my own.  And we can’t be certain that the laws won’t change tomorrow and take our kids away.

If straight people suddenly stop having kids they “don’t want,” there will still be gay couples who want to adopt.  You can’t solve that “problem,” because it’s not a problem.  Where is the meme that says “If you don’t want gays to adopt, shut up” or “If you don’t want gays to adopt, stop being a huge bigot”?  Queer people are not here to be your problems anymore than we’re here to fix them.  The problem is not that some queer people want to adopt.  The problem is that some bigots don’t want them to.  Where’s that meme?

UPDATE: In answer to “Where’s that meme?”, one of my dedicated readers created this meme:

fixed meme

LOVE IT!

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Those who live in glass closets…: Outing and the politics of compulsory homosexuality

aaronschock

Early today, Buzzfeed posted a blind item outing GOP Congressman Aaron Schock, substantiated by what essentially reads like one of Perez Hilton’s cattier blog posts.  Schock has long been known for his well-kempt appearance, rockin’ bod, and “colorful” fashion sense (I’m pretty sure if you stare at that outfit and then look at a white wall, you can still see it on your retinas.) And obviously, since any stylish, fit man can be nothing else but a 100% grade A American homosexual, these physical attributes have led many to “assume the worst.”

As if this were not enough, the “report” cites a source who says:

“here’s a hypothetical: what if you know a certain GOP congressman, let’s just say from Illinois, is gay… and you know this because one of your friends, a journalist for a reputable network, told you in no uncertain terms that he caught that GOP congressman and his male roommate in the shower… together. now they could have been good friends just trying to conserve water. but there’s more. what if this congressman has also been caught by tmz cameras trolling gay bars. now what if you know that this very same guy, the darling of the gop, has also voted against repeal of don’t ask don’t tell, opposed the repeal of doma, is against gay marriage; and for the federal marriage amendment, which would add language to the us constitution banning gay marriage and would likely strike down every gay rights law and ordinance in the country?

Are we still not allowed to out him?” (lack of respect for capitalization in the original)

Before we discuss whether we are “allowed to out him,” there are a couple things that I think are equally worth debating.

First, the main reason anybody thinks Aaron Schock is gay is because he has the nerve to dress stylishly (and occasionally blindingly) and he takes care of his body.  While I admit that, creature of the culture that I am, I would probably also see this man’s appearance as evidence that we might be on the same team, that doesn’t make it OK.  By stating publicly that by virtue of his very appearance we can tell that he’s gay, we’re not only grossly overgeneralizing about a diverse and varied community, we’re actually oppressing that very community.  What this  does is reify that there is only one way to “look” gay.  This serves to deprive the vast majority of gay men on this planet who do not look like Mr. Schock (myself very much included) of an identity that many of us are working very hard to defend.  It is also reinforces the same messages of body-shaming and economic stratification with which we are already bombarded by voices from within our own community.

Secondly, the assumption that even if Mr. Schock were having sex with men (which I do not claim to know) he would necessarily be gay reinforces a hetero/homosexual binary that completely erases the real and lived experiences of bisexual and queer identified people, as well as MSMs, the hetero- or homo-flexible, and the bicurious.  Mr. Schock’s case is not unique.  In the past year we’ve witnessed the public comings out of Frank Ocean, Robin Roberts, Maria Bello, and Tom Daley, none of whom said “I’m gay.”  They all simply said that they were currently in relationships with partners of the same gender.  Nonetheless, the media has persisted in labeling each and everyone one of them as gay.

At the root of the hetero/homo binary are two main problems.  First, as Shane Phelan has theorized:

“The threat of bisexuality has always been choice.  Bisexuality seems to call inescapably for choices about whom and how to love.  For lesbian-feminists, the threat is that bisexuals will choose a man.  For heterosexuals, the threat is that bisexuals will choose a same-sex lover.  For lesbians and gays, the threat is that bisexuals belie the claim that we can’t help our desire.” (Sexual Strangers, pgs. 127-128)

Second, bisexuality (especially for men) is always spoken about as a “phase.”  Nobody wants to believe that man can be bisexual.  This has nothing to with the nature of some inherent male trait and everything to do with the way our society defines masculinity.  The male bisexual threatens the ideal of the “phallic” or impenetrable male because he refuses to conform entirely to a societally sanctioned sexual role.

This definition of masculinity is so engrained in our society that it has become a self-fulfilling prophecy, producing evidence of itself in the innumerable young men who have taken their first step out of the closet as bisexual, only to eventually admit their “true” homosexuality (once again, me!).  Except there’s no such thing as your “true” sexuality outside the bounds of how society makes you define it.  It’s not difficult to conceptualize that a society that refuses to allow men to be sexually flexible is going to produce men who feel they may only identify within a binary.  Once again, I don’t know what happens in Mr. Schock’s head, pants, or bed, but for the purposes of this argument that’s not really the point.

Now, are we “allowed to out him?”  I will admit that there is a tiny angry queer in my brain that says “Yes, out them, out them all!”  It’s hard not to feel that, given Mr. Schock’s voting record, a little vengeance isn’t justified.  And yet, I have been outed.  I have been outed in places where it was very, very dangerous for that to happen, and in fact illegal for me to be gay.  I know what it is to feel you have to hide your sexuality, whatever that may be, and the powerlessness of knowing you can’t ever get that cat back in the bag.  I understand the impulse to out, but I also understand the consequences.  So, I don’t know.

What I do know is that we can’t out him as gay, or bi, or whatever.  Only he can do that.  Gay, and bi, and even queer, are labels that describe us only when we in some way accept them.  This is not to imply that this is a free or rational choice.  The decision to identify as a sexual minority is necessarily influenced by societal factors totally beyond our control.  Nonetheless, the process of coming out is, in a way, our assuming a given label that will partially define and shape our respective experiences.

Finally, I don’t think it’s necessary to out Mr. Schock.  Sure, if he is having sex with men, his voting record is unarguably hypocritical.  But even if he’s not, his voting record is disgusting.  Instead of focusing our political energies and media attention on outing this one politician, shouldn’t we be focusing our energies on making sure he’s not a politician anymore?

Mr. Schock’s orientation, whatever it may be, is not what should appall us about his voting record.  It should appall us that we’re not appalled by the voting records of the rest of the homo/bi/trans-phobic lawmakers in this country.  What does it say that we only expect people to vote for human rights when they have a personal stake in the issue?  Instead, we should be reacting to the general climate of bigotry that reigns in our country and its government under the guise of religion and “family values.”  So don’t waste your time “outing” this guy, if that’s even a thing.  Write him a letter, write the GOP a letter, sign every petition you can find, and work to elect somebody you can agree with to his, and other, positions.

So.  Are we “allowed” to out him?  Certainly.  But why waste your energy?  Use it for something infinitely greater.

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On a personal note, I’m loving how engaged you all on my Facebook posts.  But can I ask you to do it in the “Comment” section here instead/also?  I’d love to open up these discussions to people who might not be my Facebook friends!  THANKS!