"I found the cutest dress today" & other musings on gender.

I found the cutest dress today. I tried it on and fortunately nobody once called me a faggot or tried to hit me with sticks. In fact, nearby shoppers made helpful suggestions for footwear and accessories: "Those pumps might fit." "I recommend a beige shoe. "I just love your tiara." Granted, I was at Philly AIDS Thrift with hipsters, hippies, queers and just good old fashioned American liberals. I won't wear this costume from my house to the party I bought it for because I'm not entirely sure that I'd make it there in one piece. I mean, people have leaned out of car windows or stopped mid stride on the sidewalk to point out that I am, in fact, a faggot. However, unless I'm holding hands with or kissing a guy at the time, I'm a pretty average looking, gender conforming white male who generally rarely gets pulled out of his bubble of privilege, even for being queer. But what if I wore a dress in public? Would I get mocked? Jeered? Beaten to death outside the subway station? I'm not sure, and I don't aim to find out when I'm wearing four inch wedges and can't run away very quickly.

Wearing a dress for the first time was really liberating. Not, mind you, because I have longed to express a suppressed aspect of my gender of sexuality. It's just that my ass really enjoyed the breeze. I was also wearing it in a very safe place - the home of a queer friend where everybody, male, female or otherwise, was raiding her closet and trying on all of her (unbelievably fabulous) clothes. In fact, the outfit I bought today is for a party at her house as well. I can't say that I'd necessarily be comfortable wearing it anywhere else, even most queer spaces.

Now I ask you, what the fuck is that? I mean, yes, some of that is probably self-censorship and a lack of daring, but as much as I wouldn't be ostracized (too much or loudly) in a gay bar for that, I bet I wouldn't get picked up either. Let me tell you, though, I may look even hotter in a dress than whatever gender-role-conforming clothing I'd usually wear. For example, my chest hair is shown of beautifully in a strapless halter, and as nice as my legs look in cargo shorts, I think that a tulle skirt provides a lovely contrast to my super cut calf muscles. So the question is, if dresses are comfotable and look good on me, why don't I generally want to wear them? Well for one thing, a lot of the times we forget the whole blessing of being queer men and instead of challenging gender binary, partriarcy, misogyny and instead think of ourselves basically as the same as straight guys only we put our dicks elsewhere and are somewhat more likely, on average, to have a substantial knowledge of musical theater.

However much I reject gender binary in actions and am as happy to tell people that I bake cupcakes as I am to say I played rugby is college, dressing outside of gender normitive clothing takes examining my gender and my gender in relation to a society one layer deeper, to a place that's finally a little bit edgy for me. Possibly it's because I don't have any role models for men in dresses. I don't want to be a drag queen, it's not a sexual fetish as in transvestism, and I'm not doing it as part of a skit or pagent. I'd be one of the only guys out there saying, yep, I'm a dude, "I'm not trans, not a drag queen, don't get off on this (sidenote: all lovely and legit reasons for a man to wear a dress, just not my reason); I'm just a hot guy who wants to wear a dress today because after a number of decades I'm simply over pants at the moment."

However, I think the question is much bigger than me wearing a dress or not. The fact that doing so would, indeed, incite some level of discomfort, mocking and possible assault means that we are still, as a culture, so locked into a strict binary gender with assigned roles and costumes that our reaction to obvious deviations is tends to be swift and negative. So while I'm not so worried that I will be inconvenienced changing into my dress once I arrive at the party, I do worry for kids and people of all ages, queer and not queer, who are hiding pieces of their soul and failing to reach their full potential becuase some dream of theirs is gender nonconformist. I want to wear my dress right down Market Street at noon (OK, maybe 3 when the school buses are out) just so more girls will end up in engineering programs and boys will take up ballet. I want to. But it's fucking scary.

Second Generation Faggot

I've been kicking around this theory lately that being queer today is a little bit like being a child of immigrant parents.  The way that immigration often plays out in America is that the first generation gets here and does an unbelievable amount of grunt work. They scrimp, save, and work two jobs, often  while facing considerable racial, ethnic or religious bigotry while they're at it.  They are the first generation in America and they do all of this because they believe it will create greater opportunities and better lives for their children.  Often these children are supported by not only their nuclear family in achieving their dreams but an entire generation of immigrants who are looking after one another as a sort of extended family.

Gay men and women who came out in the 70s and 80s (ie those old enough, largely, to be my biological parents) are not unlike those first generation immigrants.  This summer will mark the 40th anniversary of the riots at Stonewall and the birth of the modern gay rights movement.  Many steps forward were met with violent pushes back.  Harvey Milk was murdered and justice was not carried out in the ensuing trial.  Silence = death and the Regan administration allowed the laissez-faire genocide of queer men.  In spite of these individual and collective tragedies (and often because of them) we are lucky today to have a community that are unbelievable advocates  for our safety, well being, happiness and success.

40 and 50 something gay men and women often take me under their wing in a way that is so unconditionally loving and supportive that to think of the enormity of it is almost overwhelming. I simply put it out to my Twitter community that I'd really like to learn about photography and there was a Radical Faerie asking me what weekend works for me.  I told a producer about my work with Project Twenty1 and he told me wants my help run a film project that he's starting.  Today I was scheduling a lesbian patient for surgery and when I told her I intended to study American Sign Language this summer at Philly Community she gave me the name and phone number of the exact person I should get in touch with.  She gave me her business card, invited me to the Equality Forum and made a point of teaching me a few signs as well before she left.  I have an entire extended family rooting for my success because they have worked so hard to gain dignity and rights in their lifetime and they want it to be even better for me.  This is just one reason that every day I am thankful not just for having friends and a job  and a dog but also for being born queer and thus into this unbelievable community of surrogate moms and dads, aunts, uncles and advocates.

@weeklyblogpost - Dream Job

Here goes my @weeklyblogpost on dream jobs.  (I think I still owe a blog on education and I'm excited to see what the new blog for this week will be.)

Since I can't tell you exactly what I want to do, here's some of the things I'd like to see out of my dream job or, since I have diverse interests and abilities, dream jobs that I would weave together the way that actors now all have clothing lines and such.

-Be creative and entrepreneurial.

-Be able to work from home sometimes and/or be able to have my dog at my workplace with me.

-Have vacation time in the quantity that Europeans get it.  (I know that my two weeks vacation is pretty decent for America but everybody else in the Western world probably finds it justifiably laughable.)

-Have a flexible (non 9-5) work schedule.  This could look like writing from home with breaks for yoga classes and going to my (future) kids' games and recitals or working a number of weeks or months on a film or theatrical production and then having time off.  

Part of the problem is that it's hard to know what jobs exist.  It would be great if there were some system where you input your talents and interests and it listed all sorts of jobs that maybe you never heard of but would love to have.  This doesn't exist at the moment and the one test like this I took in high school included mortician and grain elevator operator in things I might like.  I've seen Cosmo quizzes that were more relevant.  One thing that definitely appeals to me is movie producer because it involves a creative industry and would be served by my joy of networking and bringing people together on a team.  I don't think it's an exact fit or, if it's something I did that I'd do exclusively but it's something I'm considering and would probably fill a lot of my criteria.