The highlight of my last Tuesday was finding a few cute tee shirts at Target for far cheaper than they should have been. I actually spend at least a small amount of time every morning blow drying my hair and styling it with gel. I probably spend more than is consistent with my goal of practicing temperance on good hair stylists and optional treatments like highlights.
Fifteen year old Alcibiades is rolling in his grave.
In high school, following fashion and practicing personal grooming beyond what was necessary for hygiene seemed like a pointless shell game. It was, as I conceived it, a transaction: if I were willing to put the time, effort, and money into looking good, you might give me the time of day in a social situation. Since even in the darkest days of my most strident utilitarianism I was leery of placing the sacred value of friendship into the crass hands of commerce, I considered that I was better off not playing the game. At least then I knew that my relations and friends were interested in something more important than superficialities.
There's at least a grain of truth in that narrative to my 180 degree turn. My migration from a social context where a 120-pound guy with a boyish face and a curvy body was apt to be treated like a scrawny weakling to one where such a one was more likely to be treated as a sterling example of queer submissive sexuality certainly helped start the transition. I've found a milieu where such care is far more likely to produce results in getting people to be friendly and in finding sexual partners.
Yet I have also found a milieu where such an appearance is more likely to be appreciated and validated by my peers. While this may superficially seem to resemble the transaction model I outlined above, and would have probably seemed so to my 15-year old self, it is not necessarily so. While the notion of the atomistic man, drawing a conception of self wholly from within, admitting of no social influence, may be attractive, it's simply not an accurate depiction of reality. The formation of an identity is necessarily a social endeavor, whether one defines oneself in contrast to or in accordance with dominant paradigms. Examples of others and esteem of peers point in fruitful directions for self-actualization, and there's nothing wrong with that. While one shouldn't allow the collective to run roughshod over any trace of personal expression, one shouldn't turn down the help a group of peers offers guidance towards how one wants to present oneself.
Which isn't to say that there is no authentic expression of the self involved, and that all is social influence. Part of my continued interest in fashion can be attributed finding models that can exemplify and peers that appreciate, not simply the looks that I can pull off, but the looks that personally appeal to me. Once I got around the latent homophobia preventing me from exploring the girl's section of clothing stores, with their tighter jeans that showed off more and their tee shirts that had a color palette broader than gray and white, I found a lot more worth spending money on.
When I walked into a gay bar for the first time, soon after my 21st birthday, I was blown away. Here was a group, finally, that appreciated the gender expression I'd been struggling towards for years, with a huge selection of attractive looks that I wanted to emulate, not out of a desire for social return, but as a means to be comfortable in my own skin and become the person I want to be. And even though I had some highly unorthodox selections of accessories, my collar and cuffs (laid over the most colorful tee shirt and the tightest jeans I had), everyone there was friendly and sociable. I never felt compelled to dress like them for acceptance.
That isn't a transaction model, where I expend the time and money on looking good for an expected social return. It's a performance model, where I take the examples given to me as an opportunity to express myself and create something I personally find valuable. It's a model that I think is far healthier and, frankly, allows me to have a lot more fun.
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4 comments:
Apologies for hijacking the comment section of your blog, Amibguous Cad, but I wanted to reply re: post #8318 from the Queer GAF thread.
Half way through I change from addressing you to addressing your friend. Apologies once again. :P
My response is in the next reply cause I slightly exceeded the character limit for a single comment.
- Tntnnbltn
In response to the first paragraph, your friend states that "There is no white, yellow, or black. There is only green. Racists are ostracized like lightning". I would propose that this should be no different to sexual orientation. There should be no gay, straight or bisexual. There should only be people willing to serve their country, with homophobes ostracized like racists would be.
Throughout the third point (and I haven't had a chance of reading the other points), your friend argues that everyone in the army should be the same. Well DADT enforces a policy which is the very antithesis to this idea. Right now you have one group of people who can be open about their personal life, who can discuss their significant other. On the other hand, you have a small minority who are forced to effectively lead a double life and lie to other people in the army.
He argues that "we all have to be the same", yet doesn't see the fact that DADT is the exact opposite of this. 90% of the army are allowed to be open about their personal life when appropriate, but the other 10% are persecuted and discharged if they were to do the same. It's a disjunction where people are not treated equally. The heterosexual majority may not put much thought into this, and nor would you expect them to; it doesn't affect them. But to the gay and lesbian people forced to lead a double life amongst their peers, it only serves to re-enforce internal views that they are *not* the same as their peers.
Your friend makes the following point: "If I ask you to describe yourself, and the word 'gay' comes out of your mouth before the word 'Soldier' something is wrong. If any freaking word comes out of your mouth before 'Soldier' there is a problem."
A question for your friend: These days in the army, do you describe yourself as either a 'White soldier' or a 'Black soldier'? Or do you just describe yourself as a 'Soldier', with the colour of your skin being incidental. If you chose the latter option, why do you think repealing DADT would suddenly make 'Gay soldiers' and 'Straight soldiers', rather than just a 'Soldier' whose sexual orientation is incidental?
If anything, DADT only serves to reinforce the idea of a 'Gay soldier' (as your phrased it) as being something 'different'. If there were no persecution based on sexual orientation, and people of all sexual orientation were considered equal, then there would be no such thing as 'Gay soldiers' or 'Straight soldiers'. There would just be soldiers dedicated to serving their country, with their sexual orientation being something incidental just like race or eye colour.
Finally, you made a point that the 'gay community' would happy if DADT laws were repealed. As a civilian who happens to be gay, I am happy whenever laws that discriminate based on sexual orientation are repealed. But the fact that I, as a civilian in Western Australia, would be pleased if there were no discrimination is no reason to keep discriminatory policies in place.
You yourself made the point that people are not part of the gay community when they put on the uniform -- they are part of the army. Soldiers in the army who happen to be gay or lesbian did not join in order to 'crack[] the big, mean Army machine'. They joined because they wanted to serve their country, just like everyone else who joined the army. To believe anyone in the army who is gay or lesbian has an ulterior motive would be (in my belief) disrespectful to those men and women.
In summation, DADT only serves to enforce a difference. You say the main policy of the army is that everyone is the same, yet you support a policy which forces people to be different. If DADT were repealed, there would no longer be a large disjunction between the way people are treated based on sexual orientation. There would no longer be 'soliders' and 'soldiers forced to hide aspects of themselves for fear of persecution', there would just be soldiers who are all the same, which is something you made clear is very important in the army.
And here's a follow-up response to post #8382 @ GAF.
I would really appeciate it if you could pass these on to your army friend. I would be really interested in hearing any response he has.
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A point from your original post was: "You can be gay and be in the Army. I just don't want to officially know. Your chain of command doesn't want to officially know." After I wrote my original reply, this line stuck in my head. And the more I thought about it, the more it bugged me...
By the same token, I assume that you or the chain of command wouldn't want to officially know if someone is heterosexual either. Does that mean that soldiers should be discharged in any of the following circumstances? (Assume I'm referring to a male soldier in the following cases.)
• A soldier comments to his friends that he has a new girlfriend. Should he be discharged?
• A soldier is seen in public by someone else in the army holding hands with a girl. Should he be discharged?
• A soldier has a photo of his girlfriend in his wallet and it is seen by someone else. Should he be discharged?
• A soldier's wife and child come to bid him farewell before deployment. Should he be discharged?
• A soldier applies for a marriage license from the state. Should he be discharged?
• A male and female soldier, both in the army, apply for the Married Army Couples Program. Should they both be discharged?
• A soldier is falsely accused of raping a woman, and in order to clear his name he has to admit to the police that it was actually consensual sex. Should he be discharged -- and not for the false rape accusation, but rather because he admitted to having consensual sex with a woman? (Note that the gay version of this scenario actually occurred; see: Lt Col Victor Fehrenbach)
These are all circumstances which -- in the case of same-sex activity -- would require a soldier being discharged. Don't Ask, Don't Tell as a policy means that one group of people are treated under one set of rules, while another set of people are treated under another set of rules. Once again, this is the complete opposite of your assertion that "the Army is predicated on one big idea: we are all the same."
You comment that "In a military setting, you don't want to be reminded how different the next guy over is. You want to think he's just like you." In those regards, DADT works absolutely fine if you are part of the 90-95% heterosexual majority. But for the 5-10% of people in the army who are gay,* a policy like Don't Ask Don't Tell CONSTANTLY makes them feel like they are different to the guy next to them. And that may not necessarily be a problem for you, but then again like I said, you aren't part of the minority group who is affected.
You said that you view a repeal of DADT as meaning "We're different than you, and you're going to accept it." I would argue that that is a very skewed and biased perspective. If anything, I would argue it's the exact opposite. DADT is the one saying that gay & lesbian people are different.
A repeal of DADT doesn't say "We are different and you're going to accept it." A repeal of DADT instead is saying "We are the same. What we do in our private social life does not affect our ability to serve in the US army. When we put on our uniform, we are the same as everyone else and expect to be treated the same as anyone else and subject to the same rules as everyone else."
I hope that if you try to look at DADT repeal from this perspective. I honestly feel that a repeal of DADT fits in with many of the things you have been saying about everyone having to be the same.
* I estimated this figure based on the general population. In reality, this figure could be less due to number of people who have been discharged under DADT, plus gays & lesbians might be discouraged from enrolling in the first place while DADT is in place.
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