From: amz@iguana.cis.ohio-state.edu (Arnold M Zwicky)
Newsgroups: soc.motss
Subject: Re: a queer card from the state of ohio
Summary: read those pronouns!
Keywords: cops, masculinity
Date: 20 Aug 92 22:37:05 GMT
Followup-To: soc.motss
Organization: out in linguistics, etc.

in article <86686@netnews.upenn.edu> foye@unagi.cis.upenn.edu (outilist rob
foye) quotes my saying

    |no matter what i do here, you can't take that away
    |from me.

and observes, correctly:

 >Well, if you get caught speeding, a nice man with a square jaw, mustache,
 >short dark hair, wearing reflective sunglasses, a tight uniform, leather
 >boots, leather gloves, and a belt with nifty gadgets like handcuffs and a
 >night stick might be able to talk you out of it.

but rob, i didn't say (as ira gershwin wrote) "*they* can't take that
away from me", but "*you* can't" - you, the readers of what i wrote,
that is, you motssers.  (perhaps i should have lined this out by
writing "here in soc.motss" rather than just "here", which is
notoriously vague as to its denotation.)  

my queer card is called into question in these (motssish) precincts
quite frequently, for various reasons, but now i have one *you* can't
take away from me.  [oh, dear, you can still retract my *conceptual*
queer card?  and cast me into the hell of alt.politics.homosexuality?
please, NO!  it's a big part of my *identity* <whimper> <whimper>.]

as for cops, i have extremely mixed emotions about them - including
admiration and fear, at least - but sexual attraction is not one of
them.  (there is this one cop-finds-kid-cruising-for-dick-in-
men's-room piece in a porn flick that would for me have several whole
anerotic minutes at the beginning if i didn't recognize that cop as
the divine slut joey stefano.  even in a *porn flick* i care!)  maybe
the element of fear is too strong.  maybe it's the guns; i've used
guns [i'm sorry, nelson, i've killed furry and feathery creatures with
guns and then eaten them; it's part of rural life - can you still love
me?]  and am very serious about what they can do, so that i find their
appearance in sexual contexts truly *scary*, and not in any
pleasurable way.  (there is pleasurable scariness, too, i know; i've
been there and i *loved* it.  but this is something else.)

probably it's just that i'm not especially moved erotically by
displays of conventional hypermasculinity - the sort of thing that the
village people took over the top with their burlesques of it.  for me,
these are a lot like drag: i really admire the show when it's well
done, but the show is not in itself sexually arousing.  the particular
men might be, for other reasons.  aspects of the show might be; there
are lots of great things about leather [oh dear, more apologies,
nelson], for instance, starting with its *smell* (i really am a smell
person), and the invitation to submit is a powerful fantasy for me.
but the whole package has no special resonance for me, as it obviously
does for a great many gay men (or else the people who make porn are
really bad at gauging their audience).  i can go along and get along
with the package if there are other things to interest me, but
motorcyclists or construction workers or cowboys, say, are not
attractive to me just because they are motorcyclists or construction
workers or cowboys.  for cops, i guess this means that there are no
positive pulls to counteract the negative ones, so the result is a
loss.

[please note all those occurrences of "for me" here.  don't post
*just* to say you're different.  we all know that sexual attraction is
amazingly variable.]

i seem to have wandered back onto some piece of the dreaded
masculinity thread.  dangerous territory.  it's all rob foye's
fault; *he* brought the cop to the party...

arnold (who just now realizes that he both conceptualizes gay sex
  as a partaking of or sharing in the other man's maleness and
  also gets no special twinge from icons of masculinity, which
  ought to indicate that he can't be accused of using gay sex to
  fill some felt lack in himself, but who hesitates to say this in
  public, lest some idjit say that means he's not like the other
  sick, acting-out faggots, because in the most important ways he's
  *just* like all the other faggots, except that very few of us are
  sick and he doesn't understand what "acting out" is supposed
  to *mean*, anyway)
Newsgroups: soc.motss