Why is it easier to applaud the “traditionally masculine” male who comes out as gay or trans? Why not support all LGBTQ heroes?
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As a gay fiction writer, I often contemplate the nature of heroes. My personal heroes as a young adult were Harvey Milk and journalists Michelangelo Signerole and Urvashi Vaid, who were smart and eloquent and fearless. Later, working as a social worker for LGBT teens, I met countless kids who heroically stood up to homophobia in their families and at their schools. I found heroes while working with LGBT advocacy groups large and small, in all parts of the country, where men and women dedicated their careers to fighting regressive legislation and speaking out against defamation and violence.
You could say my sensibility is squarely Gen-X. I lean toward the political idealism of the generation before me with a slightly more pragmatic view, and I’m fascinated though a fair bit skeptical about the celebrity-worship culture of my younger counterparts.
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I admire anyone who stands up for the right for us to be ourselves. Still, I’ve been curious lately about why not all our community’s heroes feel equal.
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I think what unites our generations is our admiration of courage and calling out injustice. In the 90s, when I first started doing activist work, a lot of that happened out of the spotlight due to media ambivalence. I remember participating in Pride parades when we were lucky to garner a brief mention on the local news. Back then, the number of LGBT people who were out in the public arena was fairly small as well. Happily, that’s changed due to the success of our civil rights movement and new media that generates awareness with the sharing of a Facebook post or a retweet.
Coverage of LGBTs who do good in the world is beneficial to society, and incidentally quite helpful to writers doing research like myself. The quantity of those stories has gotten bigger, and the diversity has increased as well such that there are gay heroes in the media well beyond celebrities and politicians. We still have a ways to go, but there’s greater representation of LGBTs of color, transgenders, young people, old people, and the poor and working class.
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I admire anyone who stands up for the right for us to be ourselves. Still, I’ve been curious lately about why not all our community’s heroes feel equal. I’ll start by copping to my own hang-up, which I’m working on, and what I’ll call the “warm and fuzzy” factor.
The common theme is that gay men in traditional masculine roles garner extra admiration and respect.
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The warm and fuzzies hit me hard when the NFL’s Michael Sam came out, and I’ll reliably click open every article about gay soldiers getting married with a big grin spread on my face. There’s also something extra sweet about seeing single dad Ricky Martin gush about his twins to entertainment reporters.
It’s not just athletes, military men, or celebrities raising kids that bring out the warm and fuzzies. At Pride parades, I cheer a little louder when the gay cops and gay firefighters march by. An admiring phase passes over me when I see the gay dads pushing their strollers behind some banner like “Rainbow Families.” I’ve observed that I’m not alone in this based on the crowd’s reaction.
The common theme is that gay men in traditional masculine roles garner extra admiration and respect. I’m not saying they don’t deserve admiration and respect. We all do. But how much of their share is unearned, based on a false belief that masculinity and a “traditional” (read: heterosexual) lifestyle make being gay a little better? Even those of us who on reflection would say it’s no braver for a professional athlete to come out than your average guy who might be a flight attendant or a coffee barista, are easily seduced into the position that it’s better for our community when guys who challenge the gay stereotype are in the public eye.
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Larry Kramer portrayed this problem well in “The Normal Heart.” Kramer’s semi-autobiographical Ned Weeks pulls together New York City’s first AIDS organization, but when it comes time to select a leader, his colleagues unanimously choose Bruce Niles, who is more handsome, more diplomatic and more “straight-acting” than Ned. It’s a devastating moment on stage and on screen. But that story takes place in the early 1980s. Haven’t we come a long way since then? Aren’t we at a place where we can get behind a gay hero who challenges gender stereotypes?
Can we get behind our everyday heroes who aren’t so easily accepted by the mainstream with the same enthusiasm that made a viral story of ABC news reporter Gio Benitez’ proposal to his boyfriend Tommy DiDario and flooded Facebook and Twitter feeds with video of a straight high school student asking his gay best friend to the prom?
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I think so, and then I don’t think so. On one hand, we have androgynous celebrities like Adam Lambert and Chris Colfer coming out (or never being in) with lots of fan support, as well as transgender models and actors like Laverne Cox. In our age of instant celebrity, young gay men who are every bit the stereotype are becoming “YouTube sensations,” such as vogue artist Kemar Jewel and Brendan Jordan, “the dancing diva,” who did the daytime talk show circuit.
On the other hand, both within and outside of gay media, we continue to have a problem focusing on certain members of our community who we fear won’t pull in readers or viewers and sell ads. One recent example is Roland Emmerich’s controversial film Stonewall, of which Emmerich was quite candid about his choice to invent a conventionally-attractive, white, and I would say conventionally-masculine, lead character to champion the story so that the movie would have broader appeal.
Encouragingly, Emmerich was taken to task on that choice. Maybe that signals progress. While some in our community are wondering if achieving marriage equality means that the LGBT civil rights movement has reached a stage of irrelevance, I believe there are frontiers ahead of us. Breaking through those frontiers will require looking within, as it always has, from the time when we debated whether our leaders were palatable enough to straight folks to represent us.
Can we get behind our everyday heroes who aren’t so easily accepted by the mainstream with the same enthusiasm that made a viral story of ABC news reporter Gio Benitez’ proposal to his boyfriend Tommy DiDario and flooded Facebook and Twitter feeds with video of a straight high school student asking his gay best friend to the prom? They’re good, inspiring stories. But I can’t help feeling that there are other narratives that we’re missing.
Would you like to help us shatter stereotypes about men?
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Photo: Getty Images
My personal hero is a guy named Sam. Sam was an effeminate gay guy in high school. He wore glitter and he was always himself and sometimes that was not nice or what have you. Sam never hid who is he was or who he was attracted to.
Hi TFord – Thanks for taking the time to respond to my article. I actually had a similar experience in high school, being a closeted guy trying like hell to pass as straight. There was a kid in my school who was effeminate and couldn’t hide it. He was verbally and physically harassed mercilessly, and I don’t know how he had the strength to make it through. It was certainly a whole lot more than I possessed, and I’ll always consider him a role model for strength and courage.
I recently reached out to Sam to thank him for this via facebook of course. I am a straight, black female and he was a great role model and we weren’t even friends he was just the gay guy (though we mostly called him Sam) who was out and proud.
Yes, you’re right! My friend serves as a barista and had his leg blown off the other day and now is going to live the rest of his life with PTSD. Sarcasm aside, it is because serving as a soldier, cop, or even an athlete is a hell of a lot harder than serving coffee to a bunch of rich hipster kids who have it so incredibly easy that they believe they are as oppressed as people in Somalia. That is simply it and all it is. They are all around worth more praise than something that a high school… Read more »
Hi Metaluvr – Thanks for sharing your opinion. It certainly was not my intention to suggest that gay men in the military and other traditional masculine roles don’t deserve admiration and respect., and you will see that I made that statement a few times in my article. On a spectrum of masculinity-femininity, I consider myself more on the masculine side, so I assure you that I have no hostility toward those of us in the community who express and identify that way. I do believe that acts of courage and service to the community happen within and beyond the military… Read more »
Woah! I didn’t actually expect the author to respond, this is a first! Maybe I was a little short in saying that I apologize for that. But this article still seems to suggest that all gay men are equally worth merit simply for being gay and I just can’t think thats true. There are people out there who put they’re life out on the line every day for the sake of others and are thus worthy of more respect. Should we give all straight people equal honor simply for them being straight? I understand it takes courage to come clean… Read more »
Hi again Metaluvr, I don’t mind responding to anyone who takes the time to read and comment on something I write. It actually makes me quite happy. I’m glad the article provoked some thought. After reading your last comment, I think we actually agree on many things. Coming out takes courage. Courage is a good thing for both an individual and a community, and of course the greater society. My article was not intended to suggest that having personal heroes who are in the military or who are athletes is bad at all. They are heroes to me as well.… Read more »