From: amz@iguana.cis.ohio-state.edu (Arnold M Zwicky)
Subject: re: redefining masculinity
Followup-To: soc.motss
Summary: single-factor reductionist alert!!
Keywords: drag
Organization: queers in mourning
Date: Sat, 15 Aug 1992 15:02:50 GMT

ever one to disagree with my friends, i respond to article
<4576@news.duke.edu>, in which dblakele@acpub.duke.edu (the m.dean)
writes:

 >I marched as a leatherman when I should have been there in my lab coat
 >and stethoscope.  We have to show ourselves to the world as ourselves.
 >Marching in drag, leather or G-strings doesn't help us out a bit.

and

 >...Drag, in my opinion, is a means to cover up perceived deficiencies in
 >one's own character by portrying a fantasy.  I want to emphasize 
 >perceived here because with a little help there is probably a good
 >person down there that has been taught to act the way he does by
 >forces he can't understand at times.

let me be try to be the first to remind dean that pride parades are
not intended as educational events for the populace in general; the
spectators are mostly family and friends, plus a sprinkling of the
inalterably hostile, and the marchers are mostly there to celebrate.
for some, this is the only time when they feel safe and comfortable in
exhibiting their versions of gay drag (leather, cross-dressing,
wearing in-your-face stickers and buttons, whatever) *in public*.
(and i don't know about you, dean, but when i was halfway down the
incline on high street and there were marchers as far as i could see
in front of me and looked back over my shoulder and there were
marchers as far as i could see in back of me, i was filled with
shivery *delight*.)  for my taste, there weren't *enough* dykes on
bikes, barely clothed hunks, people in full leathers, drag queens, and
so on.  why have a parade to celebrate *ordinariness*?

i do my bit for general education: i live my life very much out in the
open.  no one who knows me at all - this includes all my students and
most of the membership of the linguistic society of america - can say
they don't know any gay people; no one who knows me well can say they
know only a couple of gay people, since they will have met jacques and
a lot of my lesbigay friends.  i think i am a decent and responsible
person, and that people see those qualities in me and can therefore
learn that those qualities are perfectly compatible with gayness.  i
also call my acquaintances on their attitudes, when the need arises
(almost never with my straight friends, every so often with my
students).

so people see me "in my lab coat" (well, professorial tweed) as
a gay person all the time.  i don't go to parades for that.

now, about drag, dean.  i see two problems with what you say.  the
first is that you're looking to reduce some complex bit of behavior to
a single explanatory factor - drag IS a cover-up for perceived
deficiencies, period, every time, for everybody - which, moreover, you
judge to be "bad".  the second is that you're projecting your own
experiences and feelings onto everybody else; from your postings, and
even more from our talks together, i know that anxieties about your
own worth were connected, in your mind anyway, with some of your gay
sexual behavior (you felt you were punishing yourself by doing
unspeakably "dirty" things) and with your self-presentation as a
faggot in gay contexts.

this kind of thinking won't wash.  people's motives for engaging
in *any* kind of behavior (even something so everyday as eating)
and the pleasures they derive from it are multiple, and different
for different people.  what you say about guys doing drag is what
a lot of loonies say about being gay - that it is "acting out"
feelings of worthlessness - and it's just as hopeless because it's
a single-cause account (and not a very plausible one at that).

ok, let's grant that covering up such anxieties is *sometimes* *one*
motive for *some* guys who do drag.  so what?  what's bad about that?
if it gives you a sense of power and control in your own life, who not
do it?  i understand perfectly well that such anxieties are part of my
motives for doing my professor-performances (i keep demonstrating to
myself that i *am* competent in this role).  hell, there are millions
of guys who can't feel really competent in their jobs unless they're
wearing suits and ties; the costume gives them a bit more confidence.
talk to some military men about their feelings about their uniforms,
if they're willing to open up to you; for a lot of them, that costume
is bound up with their feelings about themselves as good, strong,
powerful men.

[this is where harry ugol breaks in and says, "honey, it's *all*
drag!"]

as for projecting your experience onto other people's, dean, you
should know just from reading this newsgroup that different
people mentally configure the same behavior in very different
ways.  i, at least, keep saying that over and over again in 
different words: you can't tell from looking at what they're
doing what it means to the participants.  you might understand
the springs of your own behavior quite well, but that doesn't
make you an authority on the minds of other people.  

some guys do quickie sex in parks, say, in part because they want to
punish themselves for being bad boys, nasty faggots.  for other guys,
this seems to be the only way to experience gay sex at all, so they
take what they can get.  some guys do it in part because they are
risk-takers (the sky-diving mentality); they get a kick out of certain
levels of danger.  some guys do it in part because they are
variety-seekers (as i am with food; i am an extraordinarily
promiscuous cuisine-sampler). i'm sure there are many more
contributing motives.  these are just samples.  you get the idea.

arnold