From: amz@cis.ohio-state.edu (Arnold M Zwicky)
Newsgroups: soc.motss
Subject: wearing symbols
Summary: hard to know how they'll be taken
Date: 13 Aug 92 17:25:10 GMT
Article-I.D.: cis.1992Aug13.172510.15048
Followup-To: soc.motss
Organization: outil, stanford, lsa, osu,...
Originator: amz@iguana.cis.ohio-state.edu

we all understand that our family symbols - pink triangles, lambdas,
rainbow flags - are effective in signaling to family and friends, but
often fail to communicate anything whatsoever to the rest of the
world, which tends to be incurious to start with and ignorant of what
these symbols mean anyway.  if your intention is to be a visible queer
for all the world, you're going to have be less subtle.  

(ok, a story.  you knew there was going to be a story.  i did my
office hours yesterday in my man-man READ MY LIPS t-shirt.  there is
no new information content here for my department, but then i was
visited by one of those slimes who buy examination copies of textbooks
from professors for resale, and i looked this glad-handing salesman in
the eye and told him i sent all my extra copies to colleagues and
libraries in mexico, africa, and china, which is the simple truth.
sensing the hostility in my glare he dropped his eyes from mine and
got the full effect of those guys kissing.  he backed off fast,
promising not to bother me again.  i don't usually like to scare
people away with Fearsome Faggotry, but sometimes it's nice to be 
able to.)

so we have this boarder/friend philip, who's a post-doc at osu and a
soc.motss muffin (but who will miss this posting because he's going
back to belgium for a conjugal visit <pant> <pant> with jean-paul),
who started small with the gay symbols.  at first, a modest enamel
pink triangle, roughly the same size as the rhodonite one elizabeth
gave me for christmas.  then, emboldened by the pink triangle button i
have permanently affixed to the eddie bauer bag that serves as my
briefcase (and let's face it, folks, purse) and goes everywhere
with me, a much larger button.  no one seemed to notice.

then he got an ear cuff - not particularly as a gay symbol (though he
bought it in the castro), but as a piece of pretty jewelry, because he
liked the way it looked (so do his friends).  people are reacting
*phenomenally* to the ear cuff.  it seems to be deeply disturbing to
many.  (philip surmises that they think it's affixed *though* his ear,
like a mega-piercing, and this makes them clutch themselves from
imagining the pain of having a metal strip rammed through an ear.)

on saturday philip and i and a woman friend (straight) and a man
friend (also straight) - ok, we were one faggot over and one dyke
short, but then life is not always symmetrical (anyway, for all you
know, i was going as a conceptual dyke; it's not out of the question)
- went to see _night on earth_ (fabulous movie, with one piece that
has marvelous, very touching performances by winona ryder and gena
rowlands, and another with rosie perez as a foul-mouthed and funny but
somehow vulnerable young woman, and robert benigni in an absolutely
hilarious piece involving non-standard sexual object-choices i would
like to describe in more detail, but then i'd ruin the effect for
those of you who haven't seen the movie) and on the way out a
(woman-man) couple in their fifties walked alongside us, until the man
noticed the ear cuff and shrank back several feet, nearly knocking the
woman over.  he then grumbled, loudly but for us incomprehensibly, at
her all the way to their car.

remarkable effect.  what *was* going through his head?  philip might
as well have worn a t-shirt with YOU CAN GET AIDS FROM BREATHING MY
AIR in big uncomfortable faggy-purple letters on it, the guy was so
threatened.

shucks, they don't understand the symbols you flash at them and
then come all unglued at minor bits of jewelry.  how *are* we
going to get them educated?

arnold