do as i do + scrap yr fay ways...
Jan. 6th, 2005 03:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Right. I was gonna post There is something here which is inherently about the inability to approximate some ideal of masculinity; these words you reclaim and I taste on my tongue, these words we say clutching each other’s hands and feeling fierce. Sissy, fag, nancyboy---all ways of indicating a failure to properly be boys. For me these words are a liability, proof that I may never pass as a boy at all (and boy is, of course, the base upon which these terms depend. No girl is ever called a nancy.) I’m a little fucken nancyboy- I can’t throw a ball, I like poetry- you’d think I ask to get the shit kicked out of me (and, in fact, I do.)
These words are also a risk, a shaky step onto uncertain ground. I call myself a fag to assert a boy identity as someone attracted to other queer boys and butches. I call myself a fag to assert my effeminacy, to insist that my “feminine” qualities be read as limp-wristed and laddish rather than proof that I’m really not butch, that I’m really a girl.
See for a long time I struggled so hard with this idea of butchness, trying to find places in myself that measured up with that archetype of the slim-hipped musclebound butch, that tough masculine creature in leather who made me all weak in the knees. The cards seemed stacked against me, having no solid tomboy narrative, no predominant attraction to femmes, and certainly no signs of a chivalrous-yet-badass swaggering masculinity. Eventually, though, I differentiated between butch, the adjective, and butch-as-noun, and so claimed butch as a way of marking gender deviance as a not-very-masculine female-bodied queer. So I occupy and am occupied by ‘butch.’
But there is stuff here that demands new language, or old words recast. Like dandy (‘cept I’m not that fastidiously well-dressed.) Like fop (‘cept that sounds sorta skeezy and british.) I’ve started using ‘faygeleh,’ a Yiddish word that means bird and is used colloquially to denote a gay man. Bird, queer- it’s all in the flap, the jauntiness, the lightness in the loafers. “Well you know Mom, I’m just a little faygeleh,” I said, smiling as my heart pounded in my chest. “But Liv,” she replied, “you’re not a boy!” which is something I wrote in corresponding with Brendan, who also wrote some stuff. Eventually we're gonna edit it together and have what I guess amounts to an exploration of sissy identity, such that it is, from our different perspectives. Clearly this little thing isn't done yet but I'm sorta proud that I managed to articulate some things that are difficult for me. Like how butch doesn't always mean supertough, but again, how being wimpy doesn't mean yer not fierce + strong + tough in certain ways.
Yeah.
Fuck I have to be up in 3 hours.
These words are also a risk, a shaky step onto uncertain ground. I call myself a fag to assert a boy identity as someone attracted to other queer boys and butches. I call myself a fag to assert my effeminacy, to insist that my “feminine” qualities be read as limp-wristed and laddish rather than proof that I’m really not butch, that I’m really a girl.
See for a long time I struggled so hard with this idea of butchness, trying to find places in myself that measured up with that archetype of the slim-hipped musclebound butch, that tough masculine creature in leather who made me all weak in the knees. The cards seemed stacked against me, having no solid tomboy narrative, no predominant attraction to femmes, and certainly no signs of a chivalrous-yet-badass swaggering masculinity. Eventually, though, I differentiated between butch, the adjective, and butch-as-noun, and so claimed butch as a way of marking gender deviance as a not-very-masculine female-bodied queer. So I occupy and am occupied by ‘butch.’
But there is stuff here that demands new language, or old words recast. Like dandy (‘cept I’m not that fastidiously well-dressed.) Like fop (‘cept that sounds sorta skeezy and british.) I’ve started using ‘faygeleh,’ a Yiddish word that means bird and is used colloquially to denote a gay man. Bird, queer- it’s all in the flap, the jauntiness, the lightness in the loafers. “Well you know Mom, I’m just a little faygeleh,” I said, smiling as my heart pounded in my chest. “But Liv,” she replied, “you’re not a boy!” which is something I wrote in corresponding with Brendan, who also wrote some stuff. Eventually we're gonna edit it together and have what I guess amounts to an exploration of sissy identity, such that it is, from our different perspectives. Clearly this little thing isn't done yet but I'm sorta proud that I managed to articulate some things that are difficult for me. Like how butch doesn't always mean supertough, but again, how being wimpy doesn't mean yer not fierce + strong + tough in certain ways.
Yeah.
Fuck I have to be up in 3 hours.
no subject
Date: 2005-01-06 01:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-06 08:39 pm (UTC)anyway. i'd love to hear more of your thoughts on all of this stuff.
no subject
Date: 2005-01-07 07:29 am (UTC)Today at work I read an article about "The New Gender Gap," boys falling behind in the education system, a trend which had already been highlighted by the British press -- and they mentioned "laddism" as the tendency of boys to shirk scholastics.
So I thought of you. Haha. Not that you shirk so much, but y'know.
Random: I tried to dance with a girl today. I was leading, duh. I suck at it. It was distressing.