Boondocks on "brokeback"

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Jan 25, 2006, at 8:54 AM, neil wrote:

> on 1/25/06 4:50 PM, David Bowie at db.list at PMPKN.NET wrote:
>
>> -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       David Bowie <db.list at PMPKN.NET>
>> Subject:      Re: Boondocks on "brokeback"
>>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> ------
>>
>> From:    RonButters at AOL.COM
>>> In a message dated 1/24/06 4:02:37 AM, db.list at PMPKN.NET writes:
>>
>>>> The Boondocks cartoon from Sunday 22 January contains a "new slang
>>>> alert", defining "brokeback" as "used to describe anything of
>>>> questionable masculinity" and giving its etymology as "believed to
>>>> have originated from 2005 motion picture 'Brokeback mountain'".
>>
>>>> It should be accessible through this link:
>>>> http://www.ucomics.com/boondocks/2006/01/22/
>>
>>>> The question: Has anyone witnessed this in the wild, or is this an
>>>> attempt by Aaron McGruder to create a new term?
>>
>>> I doubt that this will happen. There is nothing about the two men in
>>> the movie that suggests in any way that they are "of questionable
>>> masculinity."
>>
>> Except that for lots of people, male homosexual behavior (or
>> tendencies,
>> in fact) is prima facie evidence of questionable masculinity.
>>
> *questionable masculinity*? -- excuse me, have you ever been in a
> leather
> bar?
>
> --Neil Crawford

i think we're talking at cross-purposes here.  David Bowie's
observation is, i think, correct: for lots  of people, the
centerpiece of normative masculinity is desire for women (and not
men); as a result, for these people, any gay man, no matter how many
masculinity points he gets on all other counts, falls short of being
a "real man".

on the other hand, Neil Crawford is entirely correct in suggesting
that the world of gay men has plenty of men in it who score high on
all counts except for that object-of-desire thing.  they otherwise
seem like "regular guys".  some of them are very butch and tough, to
the point of being hyper-masculine in their presentation of self,
their behavior, their attitudes and interests, etc.  a leather bar is
a good place to find these fellows.

i am not a frequenter of leather bars, but i have a *lot* of friends
who are.  several of them have remarked that in addition to a good
game of pool, beer, cruising, sports to watch on the tv, a chance to
shoot the shit with your buddies, etc., you can almost always find
someone to talk to about cooking and opera.  probably not fashion
(men's *or* women's), and there's probably not going to be any
singing of show tunes around the piano (there's almost surely not a
piano, in fact) -- there are other kinds of bars for these things --
but we're still talking about gay men here, and certain interests are
more widespread across the gay male population than across the
straight.  i point this out because an interest in cooking or opera
loses you masculinity points; cooking is normatively a women's thing,
and opera is normatively an upper-class thing (you lose masculinity
points as you depart from a solidly blue-collar, working-class
identity), also dramatic and extravagant.  this is no big thing,
since there are hundreds of dimensions for assigning masculinity
points, and almost no man, gay or straight, comes out on top on all
of them.  still, i find it entertaining to exchange recipes with
leather guys, and to see guys in Serious Leather at the San Francisco
Opera.

and, finally, the whole Leather thing (in caps: it's a subculture) is
pretty much entirely for gay men.  so, being a Leather Man marks you
out as being gay and, paradoxically, probably loses you some
masculinity points (for being not-straight).

by the way, being a Leather Man involves a lot more than, say,
wearing a leather jacket and serious black boots.  a leather cap
takes you part of the way there.  so does a leather vest with no
shirt underneath it.  a leather harness, and you're home.  a leather
jockstrap, or leather pants with no seat, and you're a solid Leather
Man.  well, you also have to have the attitude.  clothes alone do not
make the Leather Man; they merely display him.

(i hope i don't have to point out, for this audience, just how
remarkably culture-specific all this stuff is, including everything i
say about masculinity points.)

arnold, who's been thinking and writing *a lot* about much of this
stuff recently

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