Document Type
Response or Comment
Publication Title
Harvard Journal of Law & Gender
Publication Date
2010
Volume
33
First Page
59
Abstract
(Excerpt)
Dear Adrienne and Bob:
First, thanks for including me in this written conversation. For those who don't know you both, I should say that your conversation is actually very queer. Bob, your resistance to saying you're straight means more when one can see how you present yourself. Few men in the U.S. come across as ambiguously as you do, so your refusal to claim straight privilege really means something. Adrienne, for someone who doesn't know you, your shopping-talk may seem more Kim Kardashian-consumerist than it is—I think it's more about your incessant fabulousness. Now, to connect who you are to who I am. I suspect that you asked me to join the conversation because, well, I'm a big girl myself. Like many gay men, I'm effeminate. Unlike many effeminate gay men, I'm rarely seen "butching it up" or overcompensating for my femininity.
Drag has always been an inspiration, a distortion, and resistance to mainstream life rather than a reification of it. On paper, I'm a nice Jewish lawyer from Long Island, but I began to find myself through the friends I met at Gay and Lesbian Youth of New York (GLYNY) in the mid-1980s. Almost all were working and middle class black and Latino gay boys, and several participated in the ball culture profiled in Jennie Livingston's 1990 film Paris is Burning. Lacking the class privileges, or even family support from which I benefited, they nonetheless evinced an indomitable instinct for thriving amidst adversity. Since my weekdays were filled with bullying, Saturdays were a lifeline that nourished in me an appreciation for my little queer self. After meetings at the LGBT Community Center, some of the kids would practice walking with the late Willi Ninja, and then we'd go out to dinner or to hang out on the Christopher Street pier.
It's this part of me that comes out when I read your piece. I think about who I really am and how I perform in the classroom. Like anyone who grew up as an outcast queer kid, I experience gender identity in a regularly contested fashion. I think it, and rethink it, with every outfit.
Comments
Available at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1576945