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Do Gay Males Hate Feminine males? |
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Rofes, Eric (1995). Making our schools safe for sissies. In Gerald Unks, Ed. The Gay Teen: Educational Practice and Theory for Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Adolescents, pp. 79-84. New York: Routledge. Also published in The High School Journal, 77(1/2), 1994, 37-40.
"I
knew I was queer when I was a small child. My voice was gently and sweet.
I avoided sports and all roughness. I played with the girls... Heresy was
a boy who cried a lot when he got hurt..., a boy who couldn't throw a baseball...,
a boy putting on girls' clothing. Heresy was me. As I got older, and fully
entered the society of children, I met the key enforcer of social roles
among children... He was... like an evil spirit entering different bodies
in different occasions... In any group of three of more boys, the bully
was present. I know a lot about bullies. I know they have a specific social
function: they define the limits of acceptable conduct, appearance, and
activities for children. They enforce rigid expectations. They are masters
of the art of humiliation and technicians of the science of terrorism.
They wreaked havoc on my entire childhood. To this day, their handprints,
like a slap on the face, remain stark and defined on my soul...
As I entered adolescence... I saw other sissy boys become neighborhood toughs. They formed gangs of bullies that tormented us... Watching the powerless take on the trappings of power, I would shake my head and withdraw into deeper isolation... The abuse I suffered in American public schools, from kindergarten to my senior year of high school, created deep psychic scars with which I have struggled throughout my lifetime. These same scars are shared by many others. We will never forget that we were tortured and publicly humiliated because we refused to be real boys, acted "girlish," or were simply different. This was the price we paid for being queer" (pp. 79-80).
Rofes
(1995) was most troubled about the "sissy boy" reality being ignored not
only in mainstream society but also by gay and lesbian individuals advocating
for an end to the wholesale abuse of their adolescent counterparts. In
this respect, he emphasized that "to say sissies = gay male youth
is considered offensive by many in the gay community" and suggested "that
little attention has focused on the plight of the sissy [because] gay male
activists and educators alike carry unresolved feelings about their own
sissy pasts... These barriers must be examined, challenged, and overcome
because - regardless of future sexual orientation - sissy boys have become
contemporary youth's primary exposure to gay identity" (p. 81).
"...[I]nterviews
with gay men of all classes, races, and educational backgrounds reveal
a strikingly large percentage who acknowledge a sissy past when asked.
This is true of gay men who exemplify American ideals of masculinity, as
well as hypermasculine men in the gay ghetto. Some sissy boys grow up to
be nontraditional adult men - androgynous, "effeminate," transgendered,
or simply gentle - while others transform themselves into traditional versions
of masculinity... Some gay men have talked and written candidly about their
struggles as sissy boy" [with many example of this fact of life supplied]
(Rofes, 1995, p. 81-2).
The inability to "be" who one "is" also results from external pressures which, for all boys manifesting a "feminine" self, is operating via "the bully" and his allies: average adolescents, teachers and other adults who, though their silence, tacitly give their approval to the "masters of the art of humiliation and technicians of the science of terrorism" (Rofes, 1995, p. 80).
For a discussion of femininity
in gay and bisexual males, the over-representation of femininity in these
males, anti-femininity attitudes in and outside gay communities, and related
negative consequences (such as incidences of attempting suicide for the
most feminine gay/bisexual male youth compared to their most masculine
counterparts: 48% vs. 11%) see the section on femininity by Tremblay (2000).
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