By C.J. Pascoe and Tristan Bridges

Last week Bachelor star Juan Pablo Galavis broke my queer little heart (CJ’s heart to be exact. JP has yet to win Tristan over).  I—and judging from the interwebs, many others—had fallen for Juan Pablo Galavis.  Attractive, sensitive, a dedicated single father, not to mention a talented dancer, Juan Pablo had charmed his way into many of our hearts, gay and straight alike. While he may not have been right for last season’s bachelorette Desiree Hartsock, he certainly seduced the rest of us. That is, until his comments last week.

For those of you who missed it, Galavis had a thing or two to say about whether or not a season featuring a “gay bachelor” would or should ever happen.* As The Huffington Post reported, after claiming to have a gay friend, Galavis said, “No… I respect [gay people] but, honestly, I don’t think it’s a good example for kids… Two parents sleeping in the same bed and the kid going into bed… It is confusing in a sense” and that gay people are “more ‘pervert’ in a sense. And to me the show would be too strong… too hard to watch.” He later attempted to clarify these remarks apologizing to those he “may have offended” stating that he has “nothing but respect for gay people and their families.”

Gay blogs quickly denounced his comments, as did those at ABC. Even Bachelor host Chris Harrison said that he was “disappointed” and that Galavis’ views “obviously don’t reflect my feelings or my thoughts on the subject.” ABC released a statement saying, “Juan Pablo’s comments were careless, thoughtless and insensitive, and in no way reflect the views of the network, the show’s producers or studio.” Apart from some GLBT commentators calling for a stronger statement or some “make-up” activist work, the event seems to have passed relatively quietly.

These reactions seem quite tame when compared to responses to Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson’s recent comments on same sex behavior in an interview with GQ magazine.   Robertson said, among other things:

“Start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there. Bestiality, sleeping around with this woman and that woman and that woman and those men,” he says. Then he paraphrases Corinthians: “Don’t be deceived. Neither the adulterers, the idolaters, the male prostitutes, the homosexual offenders, the greedy, the drunkards, the slanderers, the swindlers—they won’t inherit the kingdom of God. Don’t deceive yourself. It’s not right. (here)

The outcry was tremendous – condemnation from multiple corners. Robertson was even suspended from his own show (though it was reversed under pressure from conservative groups accusing the network—A&E—of attacking free speech and Christian values).

Now, setting aside the question about the logistics of suspending the bachelor from the show of which he is THE star, the differing responses seem to have a lot to do with intersections of class, region, religion and masculine styles.  Certainly, Robertson’s sexual prejudice was more vehement, violent, graphic, and distasteful. Galavis—in fewer words and with a bit more caution—made some similar claims. But, Galavis failed to garner the backlash Robertson received (with a notable exception or two).

In an incredible piece about the reaction to Robertson, Mimi Schippers argues that the response reflected class bias and privilege:

“While I wholeheartedly and vociferously disagree with Robertson, I am also uncomfortable with how he is made to embody… the rural, poor, white redneck from the south that is racist, sexist, and homophobic. This isn’t just who he is; we’re getting a narrative told by the producers of Duck Dynasty and editors at GQ—extremely privileged people in key positions of power making decisions about what images are proliferated in the mainstream media…  We are getting a carefully crafted representation of the rural, white, Southern, manly man, regardless of whether or not the man, Phil Robertson, is a bigot (which, it seems, he is).”

Schippers suggests that the controversy over Robertson performs a cultural sleight of hand whereby our disdain for him distracts us from “the structures of inequality that systematically serve the interests of wealthy, white, straight, and urban men who ultimately are the main benefactors of racism, sexism, and homophobia” (here). It inhibits institutional understandings of sexism, racism, classism and homophobia and scapegoats the least advantaged as responsible for perpetuating forms of inequality whose real beneficiaries are higher up the food chain.

This stands in contrast to an analysis of the Galavis controversy. He’s not a laughable, southern, rural, bigot; he’s a charming, sexy, doting father who we are supposed to adore, not laugh at. Indeed, even in his justification for why gay men shouldn’t be the stars of The Bachelor, he draws (in his revised statement) not on some sort of reactionary disgust for gay men, but on the welfare of children. He’s a dad, after all, and what he cares about is whether or not kids are being raised well. The questions he raises are ones raised by scholars and justices in recent court decisions about gay marriage: “Are the gays good parents/role models/caretakers for the kids?”  In that sense, Galavis is positioned as a responsibly masculine man, one who puts his family’s welfare before his own.

Indeed, Galavis might represent what Melanie Heath calls “soft-boiled masculinity.” Gender and sexual inequality in this form of masculinity are not about enforcing patriarchy through some violent Old Testament edict (a la Robertson), but through particular understandings of family and wholesomeness.  Similarly, Arlene Stein argues that there are new emergent forms of homophobia that might best be understood as reactions to feminist critiques of traditional masculinity.  As Stein writes, “new forms of homophobia have emerged that are compatible with conservatives’ quest to be seen as compassionate protectors of the family” (here).  While the style in which sexual prejudice is expressed and systems of inequality are perpetuated is dramatically different from Robertson’s brand of homophobia, perhaps the substance is not.

As such, Galavis’ homophobia is, perhaps, less easily recognized and more quickly forgiven because it is paired with being such an attentive father who cares so deeply about the wellbeing of his daughter.  Yet, this is consistent with what Stein refers to as “neopatriarchal politics”—espousing sexual inequality under the guise of what’s good for kids.

Finally, as Galavis makes clear, his comments can show how individual friendship or support for civil rights for gays and lesbians can exist alongside stereotypes that work to re-marginalize these groups. It illuminates emergent homophobias and forms of sexual prejudice that may operate more subtly than previous forms, but continue to bolster some of the same structures of power and inequality.

________________________________________

*As Funny or Die’s The First Gay Bachelor video so entertainingly points out, a gay bachelor (or a lesbian bachelorette) would panic particular assumptions about gender and sexual desire upon which the entire show is based…  But that’s a topic for another post.

by C.J. Pascoe and Tristan Bridges

As feminist parent-scholars we’d like to call for an end to (or at least a pause in) the seeming incessant focus on rejecting all that is pink, salmon, rose, coral, blush, and flush. As much of nation recovers from the frantic collective shopping spree that characterizes the end of the year, we’d like to make the case that the denunciation of all things pink should not really be our primary focus if we want to move toward a more gender equal world for girls and boys. Instead, we suggest that we begin to turn our attention to expanding the acceptable range of boys’ toys and their colors.

Many of us who think about gender and childhood toys are by now familiar with the debate about GoldieBlox, a toy company that sells products encouraging girls’ interest in engineering.   The company’s commercial depicting girls deploying a Rube Goldberg-type setup with the typical girl toys—princesses, dolls, teacups, and oh-so-much pink—was seen as both inspirational and problematic.  Commentators both celebrated the fact that girls were being encouraged to engage in engineering and critiqued the fact that that the products marketed by the company are still firmly framed in terms of girl culture.

The cultural process of “pinkification” (as Gwen Sharpe refers to it) is a way in which toys and forms of play which may have been historically associated with boys are rendered acceptably feminine.  Indeed many, us included, are concerned with toys marketed to girls that are a larger part of a socialization process that encourages girls to be nice, passive and relationship-oriented. As Ellen Seiter notes in her book Sold Separately, “advertisements for girls’ toys have undergone fewer changes than other toys in the past fifty years because they continue to depict girls’ play as a miniature version of their mothers’ domestic work” (74). Luckily Pottery Barn simply leads with this sort of gender stereotyping in its toy section (placing gender “neutral” toys at the bottom of its boys and girls pages), even as it divides up its offerings by gender.

We find it a little concerning, however, that this discussion is so focused on girls. What would this discussion look like if we examined boys’ toys? What might this conversation look like if we focused not on getting rid of pink, princesses, or housekeeping toys, but on making these toys acceptable for everyone to play with. After all, as others have pointed out, this “pink is for girls” thing is a relatively new development. In her book Pink and Blue, Jo Paoletti details the historic transformations involved in gendering these two colors.  While a brief look at JeongMee Yoon’s The Pink and Blue Project vividly illustrates the extent of this transformation, there’s no reason that color coding toys by gender couldn’t undergo future evolutions (especially with consumer pressure).  Indeed, organizations like Let Toys Be Toys are fighting to get retailers to stop promoting toys as “for girls” or “for boys” and some toy stores are starting to try to make changes.

The focus on the push back against pink and, by extension, princess culture is especially surprising when one looks at what is for sale in the boys’ aisle. Take the first category of offerings for boys at the Toys R Us website for example – action figures laden with a variety of weapons who are designed to defeat the bad guys.  The closest offering for girls is a dolls category – featuring Barbies, the Little Mermaid, and Strawberry Shortcake. None of them are warriors.  None of them have weapons. We see a similar difference even when looking at the exact same category: Girl’s Building Sets vs. Boy’s Building Sets. Girls apparently build houses, salons… and the occasional bridge. Boys? They build Super Star Destroyers and Monster Fighter Vampyre Castle… and the occasional bridge.  To be clear, the “pink aisle” of toy stores is deeply problematic. It encourages a narrow range of passive, primarily family-oriented and appearance-obsessed femininities.  But, as the toys on the (digital and physical) shelves indicate, we are encouraging equally restrictive and arguably more dangerous masculinities –  warriors, space fighters, and ninjas.

So why isn’t the gunnification of boys culture the locus of discussion?  It has a lot to do with our fear of boys’ gender transgressive behavior. Emily Kane gives us important insight about the power of this fear. In interviewing parents about their responses to their children’ gender nonconformity she finds many parents actively support some atypical behaviors in their sons.  But, this acceptance and support is usually tempered by efforts to ensure that he conforms to masculine ideals in other ways. Importantly, parents of young children express more concern that gender nonconformity in their sons (but not necessarily daughters) is an indicator of a future non-heterosexual identity. A rejection of femininity is part of socializing boys to be acceptably masculine. As Kane writes, “Most parents made efforts to accomplish, and either endorsed or felt accountable to, an ideal of masculinity that was defined by limited emotionality, activity rather than passivity, and rejection of material markers of femininity.”  Thankfully, some have begun to imagine what gender progressive parenting practices would actually look like.

Gloria Steinem is quoted as having said, “We’ve begun to raise daughters more like sons… but few have the courage to raise our sons more like our daughters.”  Maybe the war on pinkification isn’t the one we should be fighting.  Or at least we need to add to it a focus on the toys that we market to boys. The fact that boys are being socialized into violence and dominance is at least as problematic as the domestic and relational roles that are being marketed to girls.  Rather than focusing so much energy on pink, perhaps we should be working on opening up rainbows of every color and toy for ALL children.

By: Tristan Bridges and CJ Pascoe

Coco Layne got a haircut.  She shaved both sides of her head, but left the top at a length that falls roughly to the bottom of her face.  As a feminist fashion, art, and lifestyle blogger, she was quick to recognize the ways that she could subtly re-style her hair and dramatically alter her presentation of gender (here).   So, in classic feminist art blogger style, she produced an art project depicting her experience.  Coco’s project—“Warpaint”—comes on the heels of several other photographic projects dealing critically with gender: JJ Levine’s series of photographs—“Alone Time”—depicting one person posing as both a man and a woman in a single photograph (digitally altered to include both images); the media frenzy over Casey Legler, a woman who garnered attention, recognition and contracts modeling as a man; the Japanese lingerie company that recently went viral by using a man’s body to sell a push-up bra, just to name a few.

Along with these other photographic projects on gender, Warpaint is critical commentary on what gender is, where it comes from, how flexible it is, what this flexibility means, and what gender (non)conformity has to do with sexuality.  Coco’s work provides important lessons about how gender is produced just below the radar of most people most of the time.  These projects all point out the extensive work that goes into doing gender in a way that is recognizable by others. Indeed, recognition by others is key to doing gender “correctly.” It is what scholar Judith Butler calls performativity or the way in which people are compelled to engage in an identifiably gendered performance. When people fail to do this, Butler argues that they are abject, not culturally decipherable and thus subject to all sorts of social sanctions. Butler points out that the performance of gender itself produces a belief that something, someone, or some authentic, inalienable gendered self lies behind the performance.  These photographic projects lay bear the fiction that there is this sort of inevitably gendered self behind the performance of gender.  This is precisely why these projects produce such discussion and, for some, discomfort.  It makes (some of) us uncomfortable by challenging our investments in and folk theories surrounding certain ways of thinking about gender and sexuality.

Much of the commentary the Warpaint project focused on Coco’s ability to get a retail job when she displayed her body in ways depicted on the bottom row.  Indeed her experience reflects research indicates that different workplaces reward particular gender appearances and practices. Kristen Schilt’s research on transmen at work, for instance, highlights the way that performances of masculinity get translated into workplace acceptance for these men. Yet doing gender in a way that calls into question its naturalness can put people (including those who do not identify as gender queer or tans) at risk. In Jespersen v Harrah, the 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals held that female employees can be required to wear makeup as a condition of employment (in a workplace where men are not required to wear it).  While recent decisions have been more favorable to trans identified employees, most states do not have employment law or school policies protecting gender non-conforming individuals.  Simply put, most states do not have laws addressing —to use Coco’s language—gender expression.

For Coco, however, Warpaint is not just a project highlighting workplace gender bias, it was also about queer visibility.  Coco identifies as a queer femme woman.  On a typical day, she claims to fall somewhere on the third of fourth row of the set of images here (above). She artistically explores the ways that subtle changes in hairstyle, makeup, and clothing cause dramatic transformations in how others perceive her.  And while Coco’s more “femme” presentations helped her get a job, she also discusses the ways that those same presentations of her body worked against queer visibility.  As Coco put it: “I struggle with femme visibility and find it a little challenging to have the queer community recognize me to be ‘as queer as they are’ because of how femme I look sometimes” (here).

While gender identity and performance and sexual identity are not the same, gendered practices and presentations also signal membership in sexual communities, as Coco points out.  Often gender nonconformity is socially interpreted as a declaration of gay identity.  And, conversely, gender conformity is often “read” as straight.  So, gender conforming gay men and women and gender nonconforming straight men and women might struggle with visibility.  Mignon Moore’s research on Black lesbian communities addresses a similar set of struggles with gender expression and queer visibility.  Moore finds that the gender performances of the women she studied were strongly associated with sexual desires as her participants discussed finding gender expressions that elicited recognition and attention from desired audiences.  Moore’s research is concerned with these women’s experiences in spaces where queer recognition is desired and provides them with status and a sense of community and belonging.   However, queer visibility—as Coco’s experience looking for work attests—affords a different set of consequences in different kinds of contexts.

As Coco highlights, the movement between masculinity and femininity, as well as the grey area in between, can be accomplished regardless of the sex of one’s body. The story of Warpaint is not just artistic; it is also about the way that gendered performances signify belonging to (or being excluded from) a community.

by Tristan Bridges and C.J. Pascoe

Every year, since 2009, the men of England’s Warwick University’s Rowing Team pose nude together in a series of photos that can be purchased individually or collectively as a calendar. The sales from this calendar go toward supporting their team and to raise awareness about bullying and homophobia among youth. This year, however, the team received international attention (prompting the development of a twitter account, a website, and a store to sell the photos and other team paraphernalia—like their 2013 film, “Brokeback Boathouse”). At first glance it may seem surprising that (presumably) straight men would pose naked with one another to raise money. But, when looking at other straight, young, white men’s stances on homophobia it becomes clear that, ironically, part of what is happening here is a shoring up of a particular form of heterosexual masculinity. Indeed the Warwick Women’s Rowing Team produced a similar calendar without the same amount of media attention (significantly, however, the attention they did receive was more often condemnatory).

The attention the Warwick boys received echoes that directed at Seattle-based hip-hop artist Ben Haggerty (Macklemore) upon the release of his hit song “Same Love” in 2012.  The song, a ballad of support for gay and lesbian rights, was recorded during the 2012 campaign in Washington state to legalize same-sex marriage. It reached 11 on Billboard’s “Hot 100” list in the U.S., and hit number 1 in both New Zealand and Australia.  The single cover art features an image of Ben’s uncle and his partner, Sean. Macklemore, who “outs” himself as straight in the song’s opening, claims that the song grew out of his frustration with hip-hop’s endemic homophobia.*

What do the Warwick University men’s rowing team and Macklemore have in common?  They are all young, straight, attractive, white men taking a public stance against homophobia and receiving a lot of credit for it. This development seems to contradict a great deal of theory and research on masculinity (as well as conventional wisdom) which has consistently shown homophobia to be an important way in which young men prove to themselves and others that they are truly masculine (see here, here and here for instance). Upon first glance it seems that Macklemore and the Warwick University Rowers are harbingers of change – young, straight, white men for whom homophobia is unimportant and undesirable. That is, homophobia is no longer a building block of contemporary forms of masculinity.  Indeed, such a reading may be part of the story.

There is, however, another way to read this transformation. These young men may be doing what sociologist Laura Hamilton calls, “trading on heterosexuality.” In analyzing the popular phenomenon of same-sex kissing among young women at college parties, Hamilton found that this popular practice of same-sex eroticism is, ironically, consistent with a kind of homophobia. Young women who identified as lesbian (and thus would presumably kiss other women) found these party environments to be unwelcoming and hostile. The explanation for this seeming contradiction, Hamilton argues, lay in the meaning of the act, not the act itself. When heterosexual-identified women kissed, they did so for men’s pleasure. These women “traded on heterosexuality,” strategically relying on their ability to symbolically and performatively indicate their own heterosexual identities (in spite of these same-sex practices) to garner attention, status, and better treatment than other groups of women (such as lesbian women). Other scholars argue that pornographic representations of same-sex sex between women have a similar effect – undergirding the naturalness of heterosexuality by positioning this eroticism for men’s pleasure rather than challenging its inevitability.

Could the Warwick men be doing something analogous? That is, could posing provocatively and sensually to fight homophobia work to undergird their own heterosexuality?  Their heterosexuality is so overpowering that any notion they might actually sexually desire one another is laughable. Similarly, Macklemore’s support of GLB rights and recognition in “Same Love” actually bolsters his heterosexuality rather than calling it into question. C.J. Pascoe refers to this as a form of “jock insurance.” That is, young men who have (in whatever way) “proven” their (heterosexual) masculine credentials can engage in this sort of gender transgression and remain beyond reproach (see also here). These young men not only “get away” with gender transgressive behavior; their transgressions work in ways that prove exactly how heterosexual they are.

Sociologist Pepper Schwartz argues that for heterosexuality to be successful, it needs to be applauded and celebrated by others (here). The reactions to the Warwick men’s rowing team and Macklemore illustrate a sort of digital “applause.” From twitter, to facebook, to news media, the internet was alive with celebration of good looking, talented straight men’s authentic support for GLB rights. Indeed, for the Warwick team’s and Macklemore’s anti-homophobia to be consistent with heterosexual masculine identities, they need to be interpreted in this way by others.

Public proclamations of support on the part of heterosexual men to end homophobia are significant and important in changing opinion about GLB identities. But, asking what these men are getting out of the performance complicates such an easy analysis. This sort of “bro-ing” of anti-homophobic stances does not necessarily have the effect of challenging the naturalness and inevitability of sexual and gender categories. Much like the anti-Chick-Fil-A video made by two straight, white men to protest the restaurant’s homophobic policies, Macklemore and the Warwick Rowing Team’s gender and sexual practices and proclamations reinscribe their heterosexuality as so powerful and inevitable that even an anti-homophobic stance can’t call them into question.

While important steps forward, both Macklemore’s “Same Love” and the Warwick men’s rowing team fundraiser work to individualize a much more complex issue.  They ignore the ways their performances of protest are – in some ways – produced by the same heteronormative ideals that help us make sense of their anti-homophobia as a heterosexual performance of masculinity.  In the end, they’re actually strategically relying on the very discourse they claim to oppose.

________________________________

* This assertion has been critiqued as a narrow and racist reading of what constitutes hip-hop.