Straight Acting

[Guest Thacher Cate]

http://www.salon.com/sex/feature/2001/08/01/nelly/print.html

 

"Effeminate gay man seeking other nelly queens for hot times. If a purse doesn't fall out of your mouth when you speak then keep moving. But if you're effeminate, have more dresses than shirts, and say "girl" every other sentence, then let's hook up. No butch guys please."

 

It's a pretty safe bet you're not going to see this kind of classified ad in the personals sections of gay newspapers and Web sites.

 

Even screaming queens don't want to torch their beds with the flames of other queens. And this sets up an interesting contradiction about gay life: The culture that celebrates effeminacy as a social ideal ridicules it as a sexual ideal.

 

Gay men encourage effeminacy by venerating drag and calling each other "girl." They love bitchy humor and consider camp an art form. But you'll never see effeminate men idealized as sexual partners.

 

Nobody has a more fascinating take on the subject than Tim Bergling in his new book, "Sissyphobia: Gay Men and Effeminate Behavior." Bergling analyzed the personals section of dozens of gay newspapers across the country. He looked at code words like "straight-acting/straight-looking," "military," "frat boy," "blue jeans and sweatshirt" and counted up all the ads.

 

"If I wanted a woman I'd be straight" was a typical phrase in the masculine-themed ads. So was "Femmes need not apply."

 

Then he did the opposite, counting ads that sought an effeminate partner or described the writer as effeminate. The results? Forty percent of all ads were masculine-themed while only 2 percent were feminine-themed. (The rest were neither.)

 

That masculine gay men prefer other masculine gay men as partners isn't a shock. What is surprising is how few effeminate men wanted other effeminate men as sexual partners. Bergling quotes a study published by the American Psychological Association showing that a substantial number of effeminate-identified men prefer masculine men as sexual partners.

 

Of all the questions Bergling raises about "sissyphobia" (and he raises many good ones), the most fascinating is the one he leaves unanswered: Why do so many effeminate men prefer in their partners the very masculinity they've bleached out of themselves?

 

The obvious answer is that they're attracted to their opposites. But that's only a partial answer, because the opposites they prefer do not like their opposites. In other words, effeminate men may lust for their opposites (masculine men), but masculine men don't lust for their opposites (effeminate men). Talk about painting yourself into a corner and throwing away the lube.

 

Effeminate men get hoisted on their own petards. The more they take on effeminate characteristics, the less able they are to attract the kind of guys they want to sleep with. This process of being (or becoming) that which drives away what you're trying to attract is a mating absurdity. Imagine birds trying to attract mates with red and white plumage when the suitors are attracted to yellow and green.

 

The absurdity brings up a great question. Even though effeminacy is counterproductive to attracting the kind of sexual partners they want, do "nelly" men act that way because they can't help it? In other words, is effeminacy a choice? Few gay men believe they're gay by choice. But what about effeminacy?

 

Nobody knows what fuels the gay flame, whether it's a function of nature or nurture. Some believe gay guys turn sissy because they're naturally nelly, and some think they do so because they're conforming to a culture that expects it.

 

If nelliness is natural, then why don't the nelly find the nelly sexually attractive? And if nelliness is learned, then why would you take on characteristics guaranteed to alienate the very people you want to seduce?

 

I've always maintained that effeminacy is like obesity. Sometimes it's glandular, but mostly it's cultural. There's an undeniable pansy vortex in gay life. You fall into it with baggy jeans and climb out of it with spandex up the crack of your ass.

 

How else can one explain my ex-boyfriend "Larry"? Closeted when I met him, he was popular, gorgeous, smart and athletic. He was the "be" to everyone's bop. Then he came out. Everybody he hung out with liked to do drag and camp it up. Suddenly, Larry started shaving his legs, wearing tight shorts and calling everyone "girl." He ripened into a fruit before my very eyes.

 

Larry slid into the pansy vortex and I couldn't do anything about it. I was 400 miles away and saw him maybe every couple of weekends. One day he made me close my eyes and sit at the foot of his bed for a surprise. He pulled out a long black wig and a slinky Bob Mackie knockoff. And that was the end of that.

 

Was Larry born with the desire to dress like Cher or did he just adapt to a culture that demanded it?

 

I'm not the only one who has lost boyfriends to the culture's pansy vortex. My friend Gary dated this really cool guy who spoke four languages. He got sucked into the vortex and never came out. Now he lisps in four languages.

 

On the one hand, there really are guys who come out of the womb complaining about the backlighting. But my feeling is that just as many learn to complain. Either way, nature or nurture, it's a puzzlement that nelly guys don't find other nelly guys sexy.

 

Why don't we have pornographic magazines and videos showing two hot nelly queens going at it? Is it even grammatically correct to describe "nelly queens" as "hot"?

 

This is an absurd cruelty that gay culture plays on itself. We encourage effeminacy with one bejeweled, manicured hand but slap it down with the callused, unjeweled other. Few of us want to have sex with guys in dresses. Especially the guys in the dresses.

 

Many gay men have either heard of or taken the "Straight Acting Guy Quiz" on StraightActing.com. The subtext of the "test" is that the higher you score, the more desirable you'll be.

 

If effeminate men found other effeminate men attractive, wouldn't there be a Nelly-acting.com? Why don't we have an "Effeminacy Quiz" on which nelly guys could boast about their scores like the butch ones do on StraightActing.com?

 

It's a shame that even a nelly doesn't equate nelliness with sexiness, because there's something self-negating about taking on characteristics you don't want your partners to have. There are lots of ironies in gay life, but perhaps none greater than this: Sissies are often the biggest sissyphobes of all.

[RM]

I'm not sure all of that is true. I have lots of friends who do drag, and many of them have been followed around by guys who are attracted to men in drag.

 

Most of those who do drag, though, prefer to have their sex out of drag.

[+ Charlie]

Just two quick comments on your fascinating post.

1) Apparently there are a good number of "straight-acting" gay men who are attracted to effeminate gay men (I've known a few myself), so effeminacy isn't a totally self-defeating behavior. Also, there seem to be a surprising number of "straight" men who are attracted to drag queens and trannies, as witnessed by the number who are successful hustlers (or hustlerettes).

2) As for the nature vs. nurture question, I'll bet there are far more natural effeminates who have been drawn into the butch vortex by the influence of current gay culture than vice versa.

[Guest Thacher Cate]

I believe the term "straight acting" reveals internalized homophobia. It reminds me of Toni Morrison's "The Bluest Eye".

[Guest CZ]

Thach, you & Bergling are digging deep into a subject that the 'gay community' (as opposed to unaffiliated homosexuals) would prefer not to confront. I don't think the regulars here (with the exception of some thoughtful and brainy guys like Will and Bilbo) are going to be eager to contribute to this thread. Too bad, though: it is topic of immense fascination in what it may reveal about the sociology and psychology of the homosexual enigma.

[Bilbo]

Thatch, I thought all during my workout yesterday at the gym just what I would like to say to you about this. Now I come here and see that some quarters might already be waiting for it. Well, what I feel that you have done here is to narrowly and negatively define one end of a continuum and then define everyone else as being "not that". This another of those games at which two can play.

 

What are the characteristics of the totally butch, or, as we might say, hypermasculine male? He is usually thought of as having a lot of body hair. For one thing, if he had it, he certainly wouldn't shave it, especially not his cock hair. No shaved balls, no shaped crotch hair and absolutely no shaved pubes (such as is so sexy on Joey Ciconne). He would probably take a bath once or twice a week whether he needed it or not. And as for taking an enema before a session, just to make sure he was "clean up there.", don't count on it. He regularly washes his hands with something like Comet/Ajax/Boraxo when he leaves the garage, though he most often still has dirty motor oil in his cuticles. And of course the abrasive soap has made his heavily callused hands quite rough, too.

 

(We aren't going to discuss whether he is versatile or not, but not for the reason you might assume. Most of the on-stage drags I've known not only wouldn't have sex in their drag, they are also mostly tops in bed. While most of the bisexual men I've known are exponentially more likely to want to bottom. I once had a very handsome young Navy Seal crawling on his all fours in my dungeon, paying for it and loving it.)

 

Tatalbutch is also a bit paunchy, due to his beer habit. (You want to try to take his beer from him? Be my guest. Where does a 500 pound gorilla sleep?) He might be a bit punchy, too, and have a loud mouth. If he is at your house and feels like you cheated him, will he kick in your expensive looking speakers? If you are at his house, is there a loaded gun within easy reach of his pillow? (Play it his way. Let the wookie win.)

 

Will he be a twink? Nah, we treasure those guys because they're boyish, not manly. And some posters have admitted the fantasy that they are easily dominatable, which Totalbutch certainly isn't.

 

Will he be someone whom you want to take to dinner, or travelling? Yeah, sure. More likely, as soon as you walk in the door, he'll toss you onto the bed and start right at it. More of a whammer, not a romancer.

 

Does anybody want to go to bed with someone who has slipped into the totalbutch vortex? Yes, a lot of us fantasize about them. Though they are a bit beyond even bears, we honor them. We take less butch pornstars and dress them up like these guys and even sometimes smear them with makeup to fake the dirty motor oil look. But as far as actually bedding them? Or at least bedding them for pay? No, we do not. If we did, there would be more reviews of men who even approach this end of the spectrum. If you confine yourself to a search for those very close to this, (now I haven't actually counted, but going from the number of times guys like this show up in the newest reviews), you will find less than 5% of the reviews on this site.

[Bilbo]

Oops, forgot a bit.

 

If you were to look for that totalbutch type amongst the most famous, successful of our escortsd, you'd find even fewer. Perhaps only, (and please don't feel offended by my saying this, since we've never met), Rick Munroe comes anywhere close. Though Jeff of OH might slide that way, too.

 

Perhapse one test for this would be - Does he shove you out of the way when you are about to do something mechanical, absolutely sure of his prowess in this area, or does he let you try and then get angry at you for not knowing how? (Yes, I know I'm a bit hungup on car mechanics, but little old me who has done drag does change his own tires. I was quite surprised when my more practical lover only knew one way - call AAA. LOL)

[Guest pickwick]

I don't see the contradiction that the thread author alleges, because I think his statement that gay men encourage effeminacy by venerating drag and calling each other "girl" is false. I think that such antics are largely confined to gay ghettos in some major cities and that the media have chosen to focus on the men who congregate there as if they are representative of all gay men. They aren't. They are a small subset of the gay population who have chosen to live in a milieu in which that sort of behavior is prominent. They get far more than their share of media attention because of their bizarre customs, not because anyone elected them to define or represent the gay population of this country.

[Bilbo]

And does totalbutch go to the gym? What, use an artificial way to make his chest look like something that belongs in a double D cup?

 

And is he actually more often found in the countryside? And if he is did he choose to live there or is that just a few miles from where he was born?

[Guest jizzdepapi]

i'm really really really enjoying reading this thread. and in the back of my mind i'm thinking, that like masters & johnson have proposed, most of us are probably not 100% gay or 100% straight. so totalbutch and totaldrag meet somewhere in the middle i guess.

 

and i'm coming out of the now-i-dress-in-mostly-crumpled-jeans-but-when-i-was-a-kid-i-used-to-dress-up-in-my-sister's-fanciest-panties-with-a-little-lipstick closet!!

[Bilbo]

I so often get everyone confused, Jizz. That was my point. It is a continuum. And I doubt if anyone spends much time in any one place on the line, but rather slides back and forth. I know I get off of sliding back and forth.

[Guest jizzdepapi]

Bilbo does it again!! NO PIC

 

oh you always do that, bilbo--segue right into the carnal from the ethereal.

 

wassup with that anyway?

[Guest Thacher Cate]

In my earlier post, I mentioned Toni Morrison’s first book “The Bluest Eye”. It involves a young and attractive girl of African-American descent whose physical ideal is this unattainable: piercing blue eyes. Only someone of fair blond hair and blue eyes could possess this mythical bluish color. The quest for this epitome leads her to madness in the end.

 

Long before Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement, blacks had something known as a “paper bag test”. A brown paper bag was set outside of clubs and other establishments. If an African-American man or woman was of the same hue or lighter than the bag, you were allowed to pass. When a person’s skin was darker than the back you were declined. Some blacks passed themselves off as Creoles and declined mixing with darker skin blacks.

 

I think the self-segregation among racial minorities parallels postmodern homosexuality. Bouncers and promoters won’t let some club-goers go in if they were cologne or seen as “too WeHo/Village/(fill in the gay neighborhood here”. Even the terms “gay ghetto” and “fag rag” reeks of this ability to be militantly accepted by heterosexuals at large.

 

One of the most prominent depictions of homosexuality is the televised “Will & Grace”. I frankly feel Will is tolerated by middle America. He’s the straight acting homosexual whose sexuality is nil. The man is a butch eunuch. He isn’t the camp, hypermasculinity of Tom of Finland but the contemporary equivalent of what is supposed to be acceptable. Will is thought of what heterosexuals want in a homosexual: a gay man of supposed style and wit without the discomforting fact of what actually makes him a minority which is sex itself.

 

Gone for now are the militant fags. Those who dragged it up in Stonewall and 80s Act-Up members are currently in decline. The in-your-face tactics have suburbanized most gay men and see the Castro, Village, and West Hollywood as nice place to visits but wouldn’t live there. They’ve become as boring as 50s housewives with the Pottery Barn replacing Tupperware parties and post-AIDS soft-core eroticism of supposedly straight college ideals of Abercrombie & Fitch.

 

Frankly, I find the people most intolerant of the more feminized gay man to be homosexuals themselves and not heterosexuals. There is a bitchness among us that parallels the competition among attractive women. That fact that one sleeps with the same sex is not a common enough bond apparently today with a common enemy disapproving. What is known as the gay community is merely a contemporary collection of bars, circuits, and clubs.

 

What I believe to be is straight acting is direct-acting which is the whole self-acceptance strong enough to be honest and loyal to even the closest of family, friends, and even coworkers. Those little scared boys still inside us and especially those younger generation out there need to recognize that one isn’t defined a man simply because he throws or runs like a girl. Despite the slight wrist or lisp, being a true man is strength from within one’s character.

[Will]

Just as I have to leave town to attend the funeral of an unlamented aunt, this terrific thread shows up. Somebody was right when they said that Will would like to jump in. If this thread is still active by Sunday -- most of our threads seem to have a half-life of less than forty-eight hours -- I'll chime right in on the larger issue at hand. I've thought a lot about it.

 

For the moment, however, I want to spring to the defense, although that's not quite the right word because nobody attacked them, of two of the truly great working boys, Rick Munroe and JeffOH. By Bilbo's definition, they are definitely not Totalbutch. For one thing, they bathe, regularly. For another, they have beautiful and well-kept hands, clean breaths, beautiful skin. For yet another, they can talk about anything -- Rick is a brilliant raconteur and Jeff is a deeply thoughtful and sensitive conversationalist about serious matters. Continuing on this glorious theme, neither man is blemished by anything resembling Totalbutch paraphernalia, such as tattoos and stainless-steel things stuck in soft body parts; both walk like human beings not semi-apes; both dress well, appropriately, and stylishly; both have naturally good manners, sweet temperaments. Both love their work.

 

OK, but if they aren't Totalbutch, are they still Totalhunks? You bet. Rick and Jeff are Very Hot / Caldissimi / Tres Chauds / Sehr Heissen -- pick your language. So is Gino Mancuso, by the way, another of the very few All-Stars in my scrapbook. But not one of these men is the kind of goon that I think of when I think of Totalbutch. Nobody in his right mind would ever mistake one of these wet-dreams incarnate for a straight man, which is the highest compliment I know how to pay.

[Guest pickwick]

None of us has any business saying "Most gay men in America think this or that," since no reliable opinion surveys exist to support such statements. We can only generalize from our own observations, a risky procedure at best.

 

Mine tell me that many of us are weary of being informed by the P.C. Police that there is something wrong with us because we don't express approval of habits and customs that we actually find distasteful. After being informed of exactly that on a few occasions I now understand the annoyance some blacks express when they are called "traitors to their race" because they disagree with some element of liberal orthodoxy. Many of us who were raised in normal, unremarkable home environments didn't reject all of the values and habits we were taught there simply because we found that we preferred the company of men.

 

Neither straight men nor effeminate gay men are my enemies. I simply do not want either group to tell me that I am required to accept their way of life in place of the one I prefer.

[Guest WetDream]

Thanks for one of the most thought-provoking topics to be raised on this board for quite some time. It has certainly been on my mind for several days now. I think that I would have to weigh in with the "continuum" position. Also I think that it is important to consider what is "straight" or "nelly" from both a cultural and a historical prospective. Things are fluid when it comes to human behavior. And even the word "homosexual" is a relatively new one. Several queer academics have pointed out that it is a fairly recent phenomenon for "butch" or straight-acting men to consider themselves to be homosexual. Even as late as the 40s and 50s many men that exclusively slept with other guys didn't consider themselves to be homosexual (much less the even newer term "gay") if they didn't act in an obvious effeminate manner.

 

And I think it is a basic characteristic of human beings to define unacceptable behavior by their own perception of their own limits. "This person is an asshole for driving faster/slower than I do." "That guy is giving homosexuals a bad name because he acts nellier than I do (at least in public)."

 

Vocabulary in describing homosexual behavior is also subject to change. Look at the word "queer." for instance. In San Francisco the most recent Gay Pride festivities adopted the word "Queerific" as a motto. For weeks the "letters to the editor" in the Bay Area Reporter were filled with comments both pro (from mostly younger men) and con (mostly older). Not to mention the world fo fashion: yesterday's butch lumberjack look is today's probably signifier that someone in a plaid, flannel shirt is a fag (or maybe a butch lesbian).

 

I agree with Bilbo's comments that you have concentrated on one end of the spectrum. Some of toughest men I've ever known (physically and mentally) have been drag queens. The butchest-looking boy I ever went home with (he was a truck driver, another masculine "cliche" occupation) proceeded to dress up in cheap Woolworth drag. It also seems to me that self-defined straight-acting men are the ones most often attracted to drag/transexual hookers. Perhaps bedding one of these guys/gals is the only way they can deal with their homosexual feelings. And I recall putting down a friend of mine for picking up an extremely effiminate man in a bar. He said, "She may be nelly but I'll bet she's a tigress in bed!"

 

P.S. Thanks for directing me to the quiz on the "straight acting" website. I took it and got a 2, which means that I am apparently almost undetectable to outsiders as being gay. About six months ago, I took a test on another site that claimed to have a high degree of accuracy in detecting the sex of the testee. On that one, I was determined to be a woman. So much for pop psychology.

[Guest delhi]

>None of us has any business

>saying "Most gay men in

>America think this or that,"

>since no reliable opinion surveys

>exist to support such statements.

> We can only generalize

>from our own observations, a

>risky procedure at best.

>

 

Thanks for saying that. I am tired of hearing people say most gay men are this or that. If you define "gay" as sexually attracted to other men then a lot of "gay" men probably don't even think of themselves as gay and have nothing to do with the bar or club scene. It's a shame those who are in that scene get to define "gay culture" for everybody else.

[Bilbo]

RE: Bilbo does it again!! NO PIC

 

Just how great is the difference in your mind, Jizz? Remember, in ancient Greece, Apollo and Dionysius were both gods. To me the ethereal and the carnal are very closely tied and there is a spot in Heaven where my first husband spent a happy year or two rolling on the grass with other very handsome, very hung studs before he got down to some other more important Heavenly business and I lost track of him.

[Guest Thacher Cate]

Akin to author Gore Vidal, your responses indictate that the term "homosexual" is no longer a now but merely an adjective. Having sex with a woman doesn't make you straight nor does having sex with a man make on gay. There is no straight or gays but merely sex. The partner with whom orgasm is achieved (or in women faked) is so unimportant in defining one's self during our postmodern times. Like in the classical sense then, masculinity and feminity are then defined as who is the passive or active or better yet top and bottom. The less "straight acting" or one who indentifies himself as gay means that he is more likely to be a bottom. This is what I'm lead to believe by your responses.

[Bilbo]

I am almost agreeing with you on a couple of your points, Thacher. However, I personally believe I stated, (or tried to - everyone knows the heat of a Texas summer fries my brain), that in my experience, the more straight appearing a man, especially a bi-sexual, was the more likely he was to want to be a bottom when he hired me. (Of course, this is a somewhat limited field to examine in that I made it clear in my advertising that I was not a bottom.)

[Bilbo]

And, to my mind, linguisticaly, just being homosexual has never been enough to make one gay. To be gay you have to accept your homosexuality and become proud of yourself and, hopefully, of most of your gay brothers and sisters.

[Guest jizzdepapi]

they used to write brilliant scripts... ah, preston!

 

and liking old black and white movies doesn't hurt, either!

 

http://www.filmsite.org/posters/ladye.jpg

[Guest jizzdepapi]

Bilbo's lucky first husband!

 

[body][body bgcolor=FF6347]>oh you always do that, bilbo--segue right into the carnal from the ethereal. [/font color=ff63471]

 

oops, i meant the carnal from the cerebral. you are quite right about the ethereal.... and what more important heavenly activities did your first husband find? sounds like he had found le nes plus ultra!

 

p.s.: how's my french, it's been 30-something years?

p.p.s.: how's my html, it's been 2 days?

[Bilbo]

RE: Bilbo's lucky first husband!

 

Hot html, baby!

 

Like I said, I lost track of John. I don't think that he was reincarnated, like my fourth was after about two three years.

 

A pun may be about sex, and may be a belly laugh (which I am the first to admit that one wasn't), but not be cerebral? Ah, mais non ... (And you know one of those real French speaking escorts will probably be down our thoats in just a few more posts - don't you just wish?)... since it's based on language skills, how could it not be cerebral?

[Bilbo]

RE: they used to write brilliant scripts... ah, preston!

 

Jizz, maybe we are getting a little too lighthearted. I've been hanging around this thread today, hoping that Will would leave something wise on it. I don't think that over-frivolity would distance him, but I may be wrong.