No. 3/No. 13 (Magenta, Black, Green on Orange)

Current Mood: Indifferent
Current Music: Tori Amos (re)mixed by BT
Current Like: punk covers of cheesy 80's pop (esp. "99 Red Balloons" by Goldfinger)
Current Object of Lust: Chad Michael Murray
Current Book: The NeoCon Reader, having just finished DisneyWar, which JB had kindly lent
Level of Apathy: Moderately High


The weather is getting warmer and more spring-like, and I can feel myself becoming more open to happiness as an option. Well, the warmth of the sun is nice to feel again; I was actually too warm on the el platform this morning. I had a fairly quiet and chill weekend, which was exactly what I was in the mood for, after quite a tough week at the office. I had a nice dinner with JB and RG on Saturday night, along with a friend of JB’s; somehow I managed to avoid eating a big bowl of raw chicken, which is always my fear in any Mongolian BBBQ-type setting...um, that extra B stands for BYOBB, and that extra B is a typo ;)

Anyway, during dinner on Saturday, JB's friend made a few somewhat snide comments about the Louis Vuitton denim jacket and Chanel sunglasses that I had chosen, after much closet-based angst, as something I was comfortable in wearing. I opted for a rather nice confluence of dark denims, between the jacket and the dirty-style jeans, completing the outfit with a rather snug-fitting pink t-shirt and my new silver/blue Prada dress sneakers. I did not particularly appreciate his hating, and was further surprised, since I had been nothing but pleasant and affable. Perhaps there is a lesson in that, and I should have put him in his place, but somehow that seemed unnecessarily cruel, and not particularly challenging.

More interestingly, JB, RG, and I had a, at times drawn-out, conversation about the use/appropriation of slang in our "special club." JB used, although not I fear coined, the phrase "gay ghetto"; the intent being to describe a manner of speech and attendant vocabulary: using "girls" to refer to a group of guys, replacing boy with "boi", creating oddly-chosen and frankly pointless abbreviations…erm…plus others but you get the idea. To me, it conveys a sense of a identifying, and constructed, patois which on the surface may seen at first to be a bit of a low common-denominator and sexually-crude vernacular. It can also be used defiantly, perhaps in conjunction with an exaggeration of effeminate behavior, and at times may be paired with appropriated former words of hate that are now stripped of the negative. How about queer? That’s pretty much been taken in, like an ill-tempered neighborhood dog, revivified, and sent on its merry gay way, festooned with rainbow streamers and obligatory pink triangles. Hmm, what other words, formerly chosen by the majority to label and separate our little clique...well "fag" I guess, and “fairy” just seems silly nowadays. But clearly the use of certain words is defiance, and the banter of gay ghetto between two individuals can represent a sense of understanding and mutual comfort, which might go so far as to establish a feeling of "safe space" in which to have such a conversation.

People over-hearing such a conversation may make gendered assumptions about the speakers; this could play into the idea of defiance, refusing to be silenced or to fall in line for more acceptable speech choices, as obviously one could chose to self-select a pattern of speech that does not draw attention to one’s self and presumed gender orientation. As, historically, that attention has had a tendency to be negative, the use of a manner of speech that engages that attention would seem to be counterintuitive, but ultimately rather confrontational. Hmm…I don’t really know why I started down this path.

Well, there is certainly a litany of appropriated words across our culture; Queer, Nigger, and so forth. The original use of those 2 words was to dehumanize the “other”, but oppression of that form has actually created a radicalized other, who have snatched that wobbly moral compass, and co-opted the language of prejudice. Obviously these words need to be thoroughly contextualized; a white person using the word “nigger” must clearly broadcast the intent. So the use of slangy “gay speech” has the effect of identifying the user as specifically not “straight”, but does that include the desire for a black-and-white world view of gay/straight? Seems like the rather mythological binary of Church/State, creating an unnecessarily underlined polarity, implicit vs explicit, de jure vs de facto, etc. Is that word choice indicative of behavior designed to entice a radical response and counter-response, of the “we’re here, we’re queer, get used to it” trope?

Personally, I have tended to avoid confrontation in most aspects of my life, except in explicitly sanctioned conditions (the office, athletics). Hence, that is likely one reason that I do not pepper my speech with “gay ghetto” terms. Recently, however, I was shopping on a very crowded Michigan Ave with MAB, and for some reason I decided to reach for his hand. We ended up walking down the street, and into stores, holding hands, and I admit to getting a visceral thrill out of possibly shocking some tourists ;)

Peace to all,

PBS