A bathroom view of two side-by-side urinals is the book jacket graphic for Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore's new anthology, Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots? In a femme and fearless metaphor, one of the urinals is stuffed full of jewelry, flowers, and other colorful, queer-looking flotsam -- a nod to the book's anthological content, featuring "flaming challenges to masculinity, objectification, and the desire to conform," as the subtitle reads.
In anticipation of the book's official launch -- slated to take place, appropriately, on Valentine's Day -- Ms. Sycamore spoke with me while on her West Coast book tour.
"The book is dedicated to exposing hierarchies wherever they exist," said Ms. Sycamore of Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots? The book was born, she said, out of frustrations with the "gay male" sex scene that she inhabits, and the hierarchies within it: internet cruising, sexual commoditization, and assimilationist culture.
"It's about flaming challenges to all of that," she said. "Flaming as in flamboyant and queenie and outside the conventional binary, but also in the sense of lighting things on fire." She paused. We laughed.
Since her first book, Tricks and Treats: Sex Workers Write About Their Clients, published in 2000, Ms. Sycamore's work has lit lots of us on fire. Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots? is her fifth anthology in a string of wildly popular works -- at least, in the queer scene -- including her much-acclaimed Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity (2007) and That's Revolting! Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation (2008).
"Like always with my anthologies, the idea for this one stemmed from a question that's coming from my own life experience and the cultures I'm involved in," she said. "In my life, I feel really inspired by trans/genderqueer and gender-nonconforming communities that I inhabit. But in a very personal way, I feel less and less hopeful in the sexual spaces I find myself. Gay male space often mimics the grossest norms of everything I hate."
Ms. Sycamore and I discussed cyber cruising scenarios, including the use of Grindr, a gay cruising app for the iPhone. (For further reading, visit a new website called "Douchebags of Grinder," aimed at exposing extreme examples of racist, ableist, classist, and other stereotypical gay male sexual exclusivity, as illustrated by profiles on Grinder.)
"'No femmes or fatties' is practically the mantra of gay cruising culture on the Web," she said. "This gross kind of hierarchical regimentation has become so normalized, to such an extent that most gays don't take the time to say, 'Oh, that's fucked up.'"
Ms. Sycamore described an experience she had attempting to say "that's fucked up" to a random cruiser.
"Someone had one of those standard posts with all the 'don'ts,' and this one was 'no Asians,'" she said. "I wrote, 'I'd prefer no racists,' and the person responded by saying, 'Don't be sore just because you're Asian.'"
Ms. Sycamore is not Asian, and she was appalled at the expectation she shouldn't be offended by a racist comment if she is not member of the race the comment is perpetrated against.
"I wonder whatever happened to our dream of a world of sexual splendor?" she said. "The dream of a sexually inclusive utopia. Today, instead of imagination, we just have regimentation. The gay culture started out so we'd have a place to express ourselves sexually. Where's all the glamor and joy and sustainability now?"
The stories of 31 different authors were compiled in Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots? in an attempt to answer this question. And according to Ms. Sycamore, the authors and their subjects are as varied as the alternatives to sexual assimilation.
"For example, there's a piece by a straight, female prison guard about the interaction between homophobia and male-on-male desire in prison," she said. "And there's another story about how drag king culture sometimes takes on the same kinds of prioritization of masculinity as in the gay male and heteronormative communities. Even in a performance that is based on gender fluidity, still there's a hierarchy. It's amazing!"
Mostly, said Sycamore, she is impressed by the honesty of her authors and their willingness to write openly about desire in a way that isn't pathologized or limited to a right-and-wrong dichotomy.
"There's another piece by an author who writes about wondering whether he deliberately approaches highly educated, upwardly mobile Asian men for bearback sex because that demographic might pose less of an HIV risk," she said.
Ms. Sycamore described another author who writes of living in a master-slave relationship as a docile Asian slave, the limitations of that relationship, and living in post-9/11 New York among the racist terrorizing of people of color, especially South Asian queer, genderqueer, and trans immigrants.
"So, you can see, Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots? goes in a lot of different directions," she said.
Equally interesting is the confusion some readers have around Ms. Sycamore's gender identity and the appropriateness of her authorship.
"People look at the title and at my name and think, 'Who is this lesbian, and why is she so worried about faggots?'" said Ms. Sycamore. "People decide what they think I am and judge what type of sex I should be concerned with. It's fascinating. They should be more concerned with their own misogyny."
As a female-identified faggot, Ms. Sycamore feels perfectly suited to anthologize stories about thwarting the pottery-barn, rainbow Hummer mainstream of straight-acting gays.
"I certainly don't fit in that paradigm," she said. "And I guess, for me, this book is like an attempt not to lose hope. It's a means of finding something that could make me feel hopeless, and discovering possibilities for transformation by expanding intimacy and trust, and challenging dominate norms, whatever they may be."
On Valentines Day, Tuesday, Feb. 14 at 6 p.m., Ms. Sycamore will host the Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots? book launch at the San Francisco Main Library in San Francisco, Calif. She'll be accompanied by contributors Jaime Cortez, Tommi Avicolli Mecca, Debanuj DasGupta, Booh Edouardo, Eric Stanley, Harris Kornstein, Gina de Vries, Horehound Stillpoint, and Matthew D. Blanchard. Ms. Sycamore is also currently at work on a new anthology called We Are Not Just the 99%: Queering the Occupy Movement, Reimagining Resistance and has recently finished a memoir called The End of San Francisco. For more information on her book tour, submitting an entry to her newest anthology, or the release date of her newest memoir, visit her website.
This article was originally published on Wild Gender.
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The point that I wished to make was that the equation of "masculinity, objectification, and the desire to conform", does not, in fact, present a fearless challenge to the gay community, but reiterates a tired orthodoxy that masculine homosexuals are traitorous or inauthentic. Being male and masculine has the same potential of being mere conformity that being attracted to males and feminine does; certainly there is some cultural encouragement for all men, including gay men, to act masculine to conform to heteronormative gender identity, just as there is some cultural encouragement for all partners of men, including gay men, to act feminine to conform to heteronormative relationship roles. It's a wash. We won't be free until we accept that gender and sexuality are separate, and until we honor every possible combination of expressions.
From my reading of the anthology, I don't think there was a claim the contributors that masculinity was inherently negative, but rather that it is too often enforced in a hierarchy where its performance is at the top.
It's the enforcement and hierarchicalization that want challenged, in my view.
How would you prefer she present her radicalism to you?
Moreover, it is out there in public for everyone to see, and I don't want anyone to think that this word is acceptable in the gay community.
With such a deeply etched message, those who vary from those norms increasingly do not have a place at the big LBGT table (which, let's face it, is primarily LG.) Stonewall drag queens were left in the cold while gay male culture shifted to "clones" and circuit boys and graceless Wills. Today, we compliment with phrases like straight (or STR8) acting. I do not see Ms. Sycamore's anthology as an extended moan because "ATXBry" rejected a Grindr overture, but as carving out a niche for the people Grindr left behind.
Regarding your example of high heels, one potent narrative is indeed objectification...the image of a supplicant tabula rasa posing in a bikini and heels. Men wearing heels in imitation of that paradigm can rightly be viewed as a reinforcement of patriarchy. The act of wearing heels, however, does not have to conform to that narrative. Consider Monique wearing heels with unshaven legs at the Oscars, a direct challenge to the plasticized idea of what a female body should look like. The wearing of heels can be about power in BDSM scenes or whimsy when worn as a Schiaparelli hat. Men wearing heels are similarly not beholden to one meaning.
Society can honor femininity and masculinity by letting the person define for themselves what those concepts mean. I'm not going to argue that patriarchy does not play a large role in that self-definition. I just find more power in the ability to subvert enforced elements, an ability hampered by an outright rejection of them as essentialist symbols.
sounds similar to the behavior of a Christian-fundamentalist to me.
Isn't this exactly what Ms. Sycamore is doing? This entire interview soundes extremely judgmental to me.
Men like the men they like - get over it.
Although it may be hurtful and discouraging, it is really best that people are honest about what they are looking for, if they are not looking for you, drop it and move on. Although lots of these gay guys are present their wants in a really rude way and could do the same with out being offensive, it is kinda cool that they show their true colors because it shows a lot about them and even if you might be the kind of person they are looking for you know they are jerks and to stay away. It would be really cool if more people were brutally honest like that, for example people who cheat, do drugs, are users, and so on.
It seems like almost all gays are into masculine men. Both fem and masculine men are into masculine men. You don't really see this with lesbians, there are lots of lesbians couples where one of them is butch and the other fem. Are there any truly masculine guys who are into feminine guys? And if there are, where are they?
But attitude and personality matter a lot, both in love and also in friendship. I hate guys who are rude, mean, or think and act like they are better than other people. I wouldn't date a guy like that even if he were masculine, I wouldn't even be his friend. But I think it is great that they show their true colors, and I don't take anything personally, let them have each other, I deserve better.