The Gender Spectrum

Chauncey describes how, in the twentieth-century, ones sexual identity was not determined based on the sex he or she had relations with, but rather it was based on their gender expression. Men who expressed themselves through typical feminine behavior were known as “fairies”, and were expected to take the women’s roll during sexual acts. On the flip side, men who portrayed typical masculine behavior were still considered “normal” even if they were engaging in sexual acts with other men. Thus, heterosexual men in the working class were able to engage in sexual acts with “fairies” (as long as they took the dominate roll) and maintain their masculinity as they held jobs that society associated with manly men. However, the highly public “fairies” posed a threat to middle class men. This is because the jobs that middle class men held were thought to not be as masculine as those that the working class men held because of the increasing presence of women in the workplace, and that led to a crisis in regards to middle class men maintaining their masculinity. As a result, they began to place greater emphasis on their heterosexuality because they believed that it was a way to prove that they were “real men”.  Thus, no matter how much their gender expression was challenged, they were still be considered “normal” men because of the simple fact that they were heterosexuals and not homosexuals.

This focus on male dominant heterosexuality, I believe, is still a predominant part of our society. For example, the term “fairy” still exists in the modern day gay community, except these individuals are now known as “twinks”.  A “twink” is typically considered a young homosexual male between the ages of 18-22, who plays the subordinate roll in sexual acts.  Most are slender and often do not have body hair or facial hair.  They also most closely represent the stereotype of being effeminate, just like the “fairies”. The only times that I have heard someone refer to another individual as a twink, is when that individual themselves are gay.  They also typically use the term in a derogatory way. To me, that is rather interesting considering they are placing members of their own community, a community that is fighting for equality in many aspects of life, into those binary gender boxes and think negatively if that individual is not as masculine as those boxes say they should be based on their biological sex. I personally believe that some members in the gay community do this because of the fact that being gay in today’s society still means that you are somehow less of a man. Thus, to compensate for that personal struggle, they do what middle class queer men did back in the twentieth-century; they look down upon and criticize members of their community who express themselves in more feminine ways as they are contributing to society’s already established ideas of what being a gay man means.  It is sad that this occurs, but it demonstrates how strong our society’s need for categorizing people into binary gender boxes is. Personally, I do not understand the need to categorize people, especially based on their gender expression. Most individuals are neither completely masculine nor feminine, instead they fall somewhere in-between. Does that make them any less of a man or a woman? I don’t think so.