The Economics of Being a Sodomite
The Economics of Being a Sodomite Since when did my being a "biological error" make me so profitable to Corporate America?
I'm a marketing professional by trade. I've been in gay-borhoods all over the country: Castro in San Francisco, WeHo in Los Angeles (which we all know is just begging for a pun. I mean...We...Ho..very approriate), Boys Town in Chicago, Oaklawn in Dallas, Montrose in Houston, Chelsea in New York, SoBe in Miami. Even Soho in London and the Marais in Paris. And I have to admit, that sometimes these areas drive me nuts! Over thirty years of building "gay neighborhoods" have resulted in building nothing more than a "gay marketing plan," helped along by the so-called gay press (The Advocate, GQ, Men's Fitness). These neighborhoods strike me as a sort of package tour aimed at one very strictly-defined type of gay (white) male who reads the right magazines, spends the required hours at the right gym, has the right job, and possesses the necessary cash (or plastic) to carry it off.
Read any mainstream gay magazine and you'll see what I'm saying. There are no blue collar queers, most certainly no under-employed ones, and (God forbid) no homeless ones. If you're in a band, it's dance-pop. If you work the midnight shift at a convenience store, don't know or care where the nearest gym is, or don't have a tasteful and well-furnished home, you can't be in the club.
Leatherfags and most dykes are not invited either, unless they're discreet and know their respective places. Discussion of having had sex with more than three people in the last year, or in any public place, is not permitted. As a matter of fact, any discussion of sex is frowned upon. Pretty ironic, isn't it, for a group whose only commonality IS sexual orientation?
I realize that I write from some sense of privilege myself. I'm a white boy, an educated, sharply dressed, 30-year-old over-achiever who does in fact go to the gym, earns over $80K annually, not including stock options, 401K plan and benefits, and I have a cute boyfriend, domestic partner benefits, a great pad, two dogs, two cats and pretty much everything I want and need. I'll admit that I could be seen by many as the poster boy of Gay America -- if I weren't still fat. Maybe it's liberal guilt, but I don't think I fit into this package either. I know I don't WANT to. I'll admit that it's a tad hypocritical, but I do read the gay press from time to time, and I'm often on gay.com or advocate.com, to see what's happening, or to chat with my fellow fudgepackers. But I'd like to think we are much more diverse than the images presented there.
Do not for a moment think that I'm on a "gay culture bores me...I want a straight acting and straight appearing lifestyle." That is most definitely NOT what I want. People who are obsessed with their "normalcy" and "masculinity" bore me to no end. Give me the choice between a date with a big butch football player and a date with a cute boy who may be a bit "effeminate" and I'll take the sissy any day, as long as he has a brain, a personality and self-will. But the currently media-packaged, corporate and retail-driven version of "gay culture" doesn't hold a lot of interest for me either.
My idea of a "gay community" does not involve a strip full of stores all my straight friends (hell, even my mother) would feel comfortable in. Frankly, even most of my straight friends in Dallas find Oaklawn a tad sanitized, and the same has been said for the Castro in San Francisco.
So just what is my point? I don't know for sure. I think I'm just a little disillusioned that decades of fighting for the right to be ourselves and to love as we see fit has evolved into such a de-sensualized party line of fitting into cute little assimilated pigeonholes, with the Banana Republic and Abercrombie & Fitch providing our role models. Maybe, as some suggest, this means our movement is "growing up" and I'm just lagging behind. Could be some truth in this. But if being grown up means becoming nothing more than a demographic profile, I want no part of it!
Or, maybe I'm just pissed off and am in a bad mood because I picked up the latest issue of Out magazine and I look nothing like the guys in there. Sure, I work out, but I have some flab here and there, I don't have big pecs or arms or washboard abs. It's never good enough, and I could most certainly never attend a circuit party. Guess this means I need to head over to the gym and pump some more iron, and maybe stop at Starbucks on my way back home, and pick something up at Pottery Barn or Williams-Sonoma to ease the pain. Oh, does it ever end?
milf married but looking
I'm a marketing professional by trade. I've been in gay-borhoods all over the country: Castro in San Francisco, WeHo in Los Angeles (which we all know is just begging for a pun. I mean...We...Ho..very approriate), Boys Town in Chicago, Oaklawn in Dallas, Montrose in Houston, Chelsea in New York, SoBe in Miami. Even Soho in London and the Marais in Paris. And I have to admit, that sometimes these areas drive me nuts! Over thirty years of building "gay neighborhoods" have resulted in building nothing more than a "gay marketing plan," helped along by the so-called gay press (The Advocate, GQ, Men's Fitness). These neighborhoods strike me as a sort of package tour aimed at one very strictly-defined type of gay (white) male who reads the right magazines, spends the required hours at the right gym, has the right job, and possesses the necessary cash (or plastic) to carry it off.
Read any mainstream gay magazine and you'll see what I'm saying. There are no blue collar queers, most certainly no under-employed ones, and (God forbid) no homeless ones. If you're in a band, it's dance-pop. If you work the midnight shift at a convenience store, don't know or care where the nearest gym is, or don't have a tasteful and well-furnished home, you can't be in the club.
Leatherfags and most dykes are not invited either, unless they're discreet and know their respective places. Discussion of having had sex with more than three people in the last year, or in any public place, is not permitted. As a matter of fact, any discussion of sex is frowned upon. Pretty ironic, isn't it, for a group whose only commonality IS sexual orientation?
I realize that I write from some sense of privilege myself. I'm a white boy, an educated, sharply dressed, 30-year-old over-achiever who does in fact go to the gym, earns over $80K annually, not including stock options, 401K plan and benefits, and I have a cute boyfriend, domestic partner benefits, a great pad, two dogs, two cats and pretty much everything I want and need. I'll admit that I could be seen by many as the poster boy of Gay America -- if I weren't still fat. Maybe it's liberal guilt, but I don't think I fit into this package either. I know I don't WANT to. I'll admit that it's a tad hypocritical, but I do read the gay press from time to time, and I'm often on gay.com or advocate.com, to see what's happening, or to chat with my fellow fudgepackers. But I'd like to think we are much more diverse than the images presented there.
Do not for a moment think that I'm on a "gay culture bores me...I want a straight acting and straight appearing lifestyle." That is most definitely NOT what I want. People who are obsessed with their "normalcy" and "masculinity" bore me to no end. Give me the choice between a date with a big butch football player and a date with a cute boy who may be a bit "effeminate" and I'll take the sissy any day, as long as he has a brain, a personality and self-will. But the currently media-packaged, corporate and retail-driven version of "gay culture" doesn't hold a lot of interest for me either.
My idea of a "gay community" does not involve a strip full of stores all my straight friends (hell, even my mother) would feel comfortable in. Frankly, even most of my straight friends in Dallas find Oaklawn a tad sanitized, and the same has been said for the Castro in San Francisco.
So just what is my point? I don't know for sure. I think I'm just a little disillusioned that decades of fighting for the right to be ourselves and to love as we see fit has evolved into such a de-sensualized party line of fitting into cute little assimilated pigeonholes, with the Banana Republic and Abercrombie & Fitch providing our role models. Maybe, as some suggest, this means our movement is "growing up" and I'm just lagging behind. Could be some truth in this. But if being grown up means becoming nothing more than a demographic profile, I want no part of it!
Or, maybe I'm just pissed off and am in a bad mood because I picked up the latest issue of Out magazine and I look nothing like the guys in there. Sure, I work out, but I have some flab here and there, I don't have big pecs or arms or washboard abs. It's never good enough, and I could most certainly never attend a circuit party. Guess this means I need to head over to the gym and pump some more iron, and maybe stop at Starbucks on my way back home, and pick something up at Pottery Barn or Williams-Sonoma to ease the pain. Oh, does it ever end?
milf married but looking
posted by navin at 9:34 PM
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