Gay? Hahahah!

When I was little, I can remember there being a skit on MadTV that involved two 'heterosexual' men watching football. They were both very involved in the game, and whenever their team made a point, they went wild. At one point, they just started making out, and the audience laughed. My sister laughed, too. I didn't; I thought it was love at the time. In our society, and in other society's in the past, same-sex attraction has been seen as a threat to the norm(Two men cannot produce a child, two women cannot 'properly' consummate a marriage, etc.). Since this has been a problem for an ongoing period of time, there's only one way for homosexuality to be seen as 'acceptable' in the eyes of the heteronormative public: as a punchline in a homophobic joke. For example, in 'Twelfth Night', the situation Viola is in is comedic, rather than tragic. Most people see it as, 'oh, how funny! Olivia, a woman, loves Cesario, who is actually another woman! How funny!' I see this situation as tragic. Olivia has fallen for someone she can never have, both by law and Viola's wishes. I feel as if Shakespeare is using this 'joke' to get people to understand homosexual attraction, but they just don't get it. Nowadays, homosexuality is used as a punchline in too many heteronormative comedies. In the Kevin Hart movie that I refuse to look up because I do not want it to have any more attention than it deserves, he pretends to be the best man at a guy's wedding. In a scene, Kevin teaches the guy to ballroom dance, but they end up doing the Douggie instead. An older woman watching says to her friend, 'Oh, those gays are just so talented.' This is degrading to me as a homosexual man. It's a stereotype that is overused first of all and it's boiling down my sexuality to a joke. All in all, I'm just ranting about a problem that probably doesn't exist and I'm over it.

Lady MacBeth, Meet Grindr.

Whenever I (hesitantly) re-download the gay hook-up app Grindr, I am immediately and constantly plagued with the same question- over, and over, and over again.

“Are you masc, or fem?” 

This question may look easy to answer. But that’s where you’re wrong. It nags and gnaws at me with a ferocious appetite, one that I can never quite satisfy with the correct answer. 

Recently, I’ve discovered that I’m not the only one with this problem. Thousands of other users on Grindr complain that they, too, are harassed and pigeonholed daily by men who feel the overwhelming need to put a label on everything.

My personal problem with this is that I don’t identify as either masculine or feminine. There are things I do that are masculine, and there are some that are feminine. I don’t see a need to be put in a place where I don’t belong. In a perfect world, I would be able to embody both of these gender and sexuality roles seamlessly, but we do not live in a perfect world. This blend of masculinity and femininity has only been pulled off, successfully,  a few times in literature. One of those times was with William Shakespeare’s character Lady MacBeth in MacBeth.

In the play, Lady MacBeth is struggling to get one thing- the crown. She wants to be queen and see her husband become the king of Scotland so bad, that she’ll do anything in her power to do it. Sadly, she doesn’t have much power, because she is a woman. She is supposed to follow the unofficial female rules of that time period; keep your mouth shut and keep your husband happy while he fights for honor and works for glory. Most women abided by these rules at the time.

However, Lady MacBeth is not like most women. When she sees an opportunity to become the next queen, she takes matters into her own hands by throwing a party for the king and planning his assassination that night. She is not taken seriously by the men invited based on her gender, but little do they know of her masculine power hiding underneath. 

I identify a lot with Lady MacBeth’s struggle to break out of her assigned gender stigma. While she is trying to prove her masculine power trapped in her feminine confines, I am trying to prove to men that I am a balance of both. I find it funny that something so old can still be so relatable to men and women today.