From: amz@iguana.cis.ohio-state.edu (Arnold M Zwicky)
Subject: practicing roles
Followup-To: soc.motss
Summary: we all do
Organization: secret motss cabal, practicing faggots division
Date: Sun, 23 Aug 1992 15:29:37 GMT

eewwww, *icky*, gay boys *practicing* behavior that identifies them
as gay!  (not you, scott...)

as someone who has recently been practicing his faggotry in these
very precincts, hoping to do better at it, intending to identify
more fully and more clearly with gay men as a group (encouraged
by, among others, mike hennahane, who when asked about his current
goals in life, listed several, ending with "and i want to really
*enjoy* being a young gay man!"), i think practice is important,
and should be encouraged.

and as some kind of social scientist, i'm astonished that anyone
thinks that behavior just "comes with the territory", whatever the
territory is.  it takes vast numbers of hours to learn to throw a
baseball "like a man".  (no little boy does it right at first, and
most men in most parts of the world never learn how; it's an american
thing, y'know.  and i, being a queer, though not gay, child, refused
to spend that much time on acquiring such a pointless ability, when i
could learn instead how to build and use ham radio equipment and to
play mozart and beethoven and bach on the piano and to cook simple
meals and to understand something about number theory.)

the amount of childhood that is spent practicing, implicitly or
explicitly, on the details of gender roles is staggering.  for
many men, this practice continues through adolescence and young
adulthood.

a story: i am working out at my gym in sunnyvale.  not far from me are
three undergrads at santa clara university, who come in together to
pump iron several times a week.  large, hunky, noisy guys.  while
working through my stretching exercises on a slant board, i listen in
on their constant chatter.  they are challenging one another about
tiny and fantastical bits of behavior that they label as "faggy" or
"feminine".  two of them rag on the third, telling him that the way he
holds his thumbs when he does curls is faggy.  he fights back, telling
them they're fulla shit, etc.  but he changes the way he holds his
thumbs on the next set.  they are working social control on one
another, helping each other eliminate any suggestion of imperfect
masculinity in behavior.  they are practicing their masculinity
together.

there is so much anxiety in this.  and so much thoughtless low-key
misogyny.  such a man i would never want to be, and never did.

but of course there were many admirable culturally-conventionally
"masculine" traits and behaviors i *did* practice as a child.  i think
very highly of independence, autonomy, loyalty, and taking
responsibility (so should everyone, but boys are particularly informed
that these are essential goals for them).  my speech style is much
like my father's.  i use plenty of wide, expansive, open gestures.
and so on.

this is all the result of socialization, not something that comes
automatically with my Y chromosome and my cock and balls and adam's
apple.

being socialized as a gay man is for almost all of us a second, later
socialization.  so is being socialized as a professor, a parent, etc.
we learn and practice the roles as we go along, and there are a lot of
them to learn.  some of the roles conflict - projecting a gay male
identity and projecting a perfectly "masculine" identity cannot always
be managed together - and you have to choose.  

what i'm trying to do is keep the "masculine" things that *any* person
should want to have, pick up some things that project a gay identity,
jettison "masculine" stuff that i see as pointless or actually bad,
and not bother about the rest of the stuff i'm carrying along from
childhood.  i also don't have to project a single identity all of the
time; there are many different, equally genuine, versions of me, and i
can shift from one to another in different contexts.

other guy's ideas about which things go on which of these lists
are not the same as mine, of course.  and other guys shift their
projected identities in different ways.  this is not a matter of
*prescription*.  each of us finds his own solution, and next week
a slighly different one,...

me, i don't feel more "masculine" when i'm working nautilus machines
near their top settings (and feeling the great bodily pleasure that
goes along with exerting strength) than when i'm camping outrageously
at crossposters with arne (and feeling the great emotional pleasure
that goes along with intense playfulness).  nor do i feel somehow
"gayer" in the second setting.  my senses of being a man and of being
gay pretty much run the same courses all through my life.  but i
do feel that i'm *projecting* a gay identity in the second situation,
and i like that.

arnold (still thinking it's worth practicing for,
   and once again quoting the ugol mantra, "honey, it's *all* drag!")

Xref: sparky soc.motss:35303 ba.motss:1423