gay clubs are so gay
I’m home in DC for the weekend, and last night I went to a gay club, Town, with my cousin and a few friends. i absolutely love how diverse the gay community is in DC– last night I met a deaf trans woman, and it was FANTASTIC talking to her (I’ve been involved in the deaf community for a few years, so I’m lucky to be proficient in ASL). Needless to say, Monika and I got into a conversation about gender, and I asked if she found it more difficult to be deaf or to be trans, if at all. She said (paraphrased from sign language), ‘I think trans. I’ve been deaf since I was born, so even if it seems like a struggle, thats how I’ve always lived. But theres not a big trans community here; there’s a gay community, and I go clubs to meet people…but the people in the clubs here are all just so gay.’ I asked if some people were “gayer” than others, and she agreed enthusiastically. I also asked, “has anyone ever said ‘you’re just so trans?” and Monika replied, ‘You can’t really be so trans because I don’t know if theres a stereotypical trans person..you’re kind of in the middle, you know?’
VERY cool conversation. (I have my deaf friend Marty to thank for the variety of ASL vocab that was necessary to get through that one)
in other news… the first male homecoming queen was crowned at George Mason, in my home town of Fairfax. Controversy ensues…
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Thanks for the link to the article about the first male homecoming queen — really interesting. It’s exciting that the school was accepting enough (of diversity, difference) to vote him as queen. It’s also a difficult issue for me. I’m not very into the homecoming queen/king thing, it often seems to get back to popularity and perhaps reinforcing gender stereotypes. Interesting how Ryan Allen was able to challenge those stereotypes. And yet — is he also enforcing them, too, by purporting to act “like a woman”, whatever that means? There is also some controversy over an idea that male cross-dressers’ imitations of women (sometimes?) make fun of women. (I think it was mentioned in Sandy Stone’s “The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto”, though not necessarily supporting this viewpoint.) Maybe no cross-dressers do this, or maybe some do. My level of comfort with the homecoming election depends on the reasons behind what Allen does — I see being able to express oneself as valuable but making fun of women not so.
To play devil’s advocate to Natasha:
Why shouldn’t a person be able to make fun of women if women are doing something ridiculous? I mean: “she should win because ‘I have pride in Mason to the point where my towels are green and gold.’ “??!!