"Gay" Coding, For And Against

[omorka]

Interesting take on some of the "queer coding" issues we were talking about earlier today, from someone who both uses them to the hilt - and suffered from them, choosing not to do theater because it threatened his closeting: here's the Sassy Gay Friend for the It Gets Better Project.

Comments

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

Anecdote for an anecdote: the swishiest guy I know is Jim S., who used to have the Bead Atelier store over on Shepherd. He's got the dialect, the mannerisms, the look -- and a wife and kids. Nor is he the only swishy straight guy I've ever known. YOU CAN'T TRUST THE CODING is the message we need to be teaching to the h8ers.

[omorka.livejournal.com]

Again, if I didn't already know this isn't what you're saying, my natural reading of your comment would be: Oh, no, the poor swishy straight guys are being PICKED ON by being associated with those AWFUL GAYS! We have to let the other straight guys know that not everyone who flames DESERVES to be beaten up!

A lot of the coding is about being gender-transgressive, and I think that's what really creeps out the haters, much more than the actual sex. And it doesn't strike me as terribly odd that there would be a correlation (not a one-to-one correspondence, but a positive correlation) between being queer and being gender-transgressive. Guilting gay guys who do flame, or dykes who butch it up, for conforming to the coding strikes me as unsympathetic - as does co-opting it.

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

And again, what I hear you saying here is that we MUST have some way of telling the difference between straights and non-straights or the poor gay kids are going to feel so LEFT OUT, which is bullshit in the other direction.

I don't think I mentioned over lunch that I also think it's important for people who are gay but don't code that way to come out when they can, to make it clear that just because someone doesn't look swishy doesn't mean they might not be gay. daemonnoire's "Guess Who's Gay" program up in College Station is more or less what I think should be going on everywhere.

[omorka.livejournal.com]

. . . An awful lot of queer kids do, in fact, feel "so left out." Can't imagine they'd be offing themselves at this rate if they didn't. Taking away the coded signals by which the closeted and semi-closeted often recognize each other, by co-opting those signals as straight, which it seems to me that you and quantumduck are arguing for, doesn't strike me as helpful. It would be awesome if the coding weren't necessary, if finding other queer people was simply a matter of asking. We're nowhere near there, and trying to yank the scaffolding out while there are still people standing on it seems actively hurtful to me.

Have you ever watched The Celluloid Closet? It's the story of gay visibility - and, for most of the film industry's existence, invisibility - in Hollywood. And a great deal of the middle of the story is about sneaking gay characters in under the censors' radar, and how much it meant to now-adults but gay teens at the time to finally see some representation of themselves on the silver screen. If you don't see other gay people, don't see queer characters in movies and on TV, you do feel alone. And in many cases, the hints of stereotypy were the only way that happened. Of course it would have been better if there were just out gay characters and actors, but that's not what happened, and it's still often not what happens - look at the rumor mills for Tom Cruise and Zachary Quinto.

Telling gay kids who use the coding, whether by nature or by having learned it, "stop flaming, you're hurting femmy straight guys" does nothing to solve the problem and pushes them aside once again in favor of the (apparently more important) straight guys.

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

And over and over again, I hear you saying that if non-queer kids happen to get caught in the trap of resembling something that their peers have been TAUGHT IT'S OKAY TO KILL, well, that's just tough and their own damn fault. That's exactly like telling rape victims that they could have prevented it by [insert standard victim-bashing here].

Forghodsake focus on the REAL PROBLEM, which is people thinking that beating up those who are different is in any way acceptable, instead of offering stopgap half-solutions which pretend that the victims are the ones in control of what's happening.

[quantumduck.livejournal.com]

You're demanding that all gay people conform to a hurtful stereotype that reenforces their rejection in mainstream society. You might as well be telling black kids to eat more watermelon because racism is here to stay.

I endured rejection and bullying for being weird. So did you. Let's concentrate on cutting THAT shit out instead of telling certain victims of discrimination they have to act a certain way.