You can't pigeonhole that - we are as they are. Some of us are fat, some thin. Some tall, some short. Some effeminate, some not. You can't annex everything which any gay person has ever been or might ever be and claim it as a gay issue.
If he were discussing effeminacy by itself in a standard boy/girl competitive ballroom context, rather than in a same-sex context with a noticeably gay connotation, it would be a different thing. Yes,
I'd get angry, because I'm effeminate and I'm entirely unwilling to be pissed on for it, even if only indirectly... piss is piss whether it comes from above or from the side, whether it was aimed at you or not.
But that would by
my fight, and all you macho fags may be excused. However, the context of these comments, the statement that "the audience" wouldn't be comfortable with two men dancing ballroom, the all-too-familiar-to-us comment of "you should try it with a girl, you might like it"... and then the later references to
Brokeback Mountain as if it were a comedy rather than a serious drama about very real and painful issues... it certainly sounded dismissive and contemptuous of gays.
I will agree with Nigel that the perfomance in question was perfectly ghastly: it was poorly coreographed, making the worst use of both bodies, and didn't appear to have been rehearsed very thoroughly; the lifts were particularly clunky, the hips were erratic, the footwork unspeakable, and both dancers looked strangely heavy in their connections; these guys were clearly relying on the novelty of two men doing a ballroom dance to carry them through (it certainly got them a hell of a lot more attention than the rest of the contestants that night), and didn't put enough thought into making a great dance routine.
There, you see, I just rated their performance in more words than Nigel did, and I didn't once use any culturally weighted phrases or references that would get anybody angry (except maybe the dancers).
But here's the main issue I'm having: with the exception of one (completely graceless) bootie-bump toward the end of the routine, neither of those men were dancing in an effeminate manner. Those hip-twists and wrist-flicks were completely bog-standard samba movements, and I've seen them done much more flamboyantly by champion dancers. There was absolutely no reason to bring up effeminacy at all, and that's what makes me feel that "effeminate" was a barely-veiled euphemism for "gay."
I'm not sure you have too many grounds to complain about here - I've seen Americans vehemently deny that they support Republicans, say, and don't want to be associated with them and nobody bats an eyelid. But if anyone doesn't want to be perceived as gay we all have a meltdown. There's nothing wrong with being gay, fine. There's nothing wrong with being a Republican, either. On paper.
Well, I think there
is something wrong with being Republican, because the party has been hijacked by self-interested cadres who use misdirection and fear to distract their adherents from what's actually being done by their leaders. But that's
my opinion and one I wouldn't go on television and air, unless the context was political, and certainly not in an entertainment context.
And if I did, I
would expect to be jumped upon in cleats by the pundits of Fox News as well as a few members of my own family (because Republican-bashing does
indeed prompt eyelid-batting; just not so much in the gay quarters: one isn't expected to defend one's enemies, you know).
But you know what, a lot of people
do assume I'm a Republican because I collect elephants. I have shirts with elephants on them, jewelry with elephants, elephant figurines all over my desk at work and crowding the surfaces of my home. I just
love elephants.
And when people ask me if I'm a Republican, I say "It's not political, I just really like elephants." I'm not going to stop collecting elephants and displaying them because there's a Republican connotation. I'm not going to eschew elephants and start collecting donkeys. I'm not going to put a disclaimer sign on each of my elephants stating that I am in fact a Democrat with Progressive and Libertarian leanings. I'm not going to answer a question about my motive in collecting elephants with an impassioned "Oh,
God, no! I wouldn't be a Republican if you
paid me," in a tone implying that being a Republican is just about the
worst thing you
can be.
This is what some people are doing: they deplore people assuming they are gay because they're dancers; so they say "Oh, I'm
not gay, see? I'm dancing with a girl! I don't flick my wrists! I'm a manly man just like you, not one of those filthy faggots!" when what they should be saying is "Oh, grow up, you knuckle-dragging troglodyte, what the fuck business is it of yours?" Unless it's impinging in their ability to get laid, why does it
matter what random strangers think their sexual preference might be? Unless, of course, they think there's something
wrong with that assumed sexual preference.
I mean, do
you get pissy if someone assumes you're straight?
I don't (though I will admit to get a momentary shiver of
ick when a woman hits on me). What does it matter, unless I believe deep down that there was something wrong with it?
Nature is full of examples where this is the case. Most vertebrate animals which exist as a pack will have an alpha male; typically the big strong one. Do any species have an alpha female? Beyond that, the males are typically bigger and stronger than the females. You're challenging evolution, here, not people's perceptions.
Yeah, except for one problem: we're
not pack animals. We are
people. Yes, we still have many pack/tribe instincts, but on top of and (ideally) controlling our instincts are our ability to
reason, to imagine and to maintain abstract thought. We do not supress that which is genetically weak by eating the runts; we don't ostracize our elderly; we don't fight to the death for dominance of our pack; we don't stringently avoid other packs. We just aren't wolves, nor are we apes.
Yes, the alpha of a dog pack is always male; and though I'm fairly sure that some of the less sexually dimorphous primate species have alpha females, I'm not an expert so I can't really say. But in a realm where strength is less an issue than brain-power,
i.e., human society, there are alpha females: numerous ancient societies were purely matriarchal, women have been proven to make good academic and business and government leaders, and in Western society women are more often than not the alphas of their family units. And while the average man
is bigger and stronger than the average woman, this is not
always the case... there are
lots of men who are smaller and weaker than lots of women.
Furthermore, though nature has assigned certain roles to the separate genders, nature does not make one gender
better than another. A society that deplores feminine behavior in men but rewards masculine behavior in women is making a clear statement that it believes women are less valuable than men. Behind any depredation of effeminacy is a germ of misogyny, particularly if there isn't a balancing depredation of... what? There isn't even a
word for women portraying masculine attributes, certainly not a word that carries such a freight of derision.
As in nature, ballroom dancing and ballet assign separate roles for male and female based on physical differences; but those roles and the very form of the dance are more based in
social expectations. Men and women dance in pairs because that is the social paradigm, evolved out of ancient precivilized mating ritual dancing; because of this, the world of traditional dance is terribly sexist, putting more focus on the brighter, higher-flying females while the males tend to get treated as moving pedestals. This is not so much so in singles or group dancing, tap and hip-hop and whatnot, where men are actually allowed to shine more.
But while it would be silly to expect a small female to lift a much larger male, it is
only the social expectation that says that two men don't dance together or two women don't dance together or a larger woman and a smaller man don't dance together.
My question is: who the hell
wants to live in a world where social expectation is considered written in stone, unchangeable and unchanged? We
don't live in any such world, and society can only grow and change when the assumptions and expectations are challenged.
People aren't used to seeing two men dance in a manner that is usually danced by a man and a woman. Well, so the fuck what? Thirty years ago we weren't used to eating food out of a microwave, twenty years ago we weren't used to talking on phones while walking down the street, ten years ago we weren't used to endless internet access. Yes, people adapt to technology fast than to new social paradigms; but people do adapt, if you challenge them to adapt, and don't take their bullshit recidivism as legitimate caution.
These challenges are issued by people standing up and saying "That was an asshole thing to say/do, maybe you ought to examine your thinking and consider if you really want to be that kind of person." That's why GLAAD exists, it's why the NAACP exists, it's why a lot of other such organizations exist. Without organizations like this, we would have no progress and our civil liberties would be eroded right out from under us.
