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I'm posting my paper, because I think a few of you might wish to read it. It's in response to the question: "How did the region you grew up in effect your identity as a sexual person". I didn't really tackle the sexual aspect of it, but that wasn't the big part of the topic. I stretched the truth a teeeeeny bit, because I've never been as butch as I say in here that I was, but I wanted to make a point.
Anyway, here it is.
Sissy, nelly, queeny, campy, girly, swishy; these are all things that constituted being gay in rural Illinois, where I grew up. There were other names and words, of course, too crass to be listed here. Suffice it to say, these words, and the attitudes with which they were spoken, shaped my idea of what it meant to be “queer.” A whole set of societal norms and social constructs influenced how I identified myself, most of which were specific to the rural region where I was born and raised.
Coal Valley, Illinois, is a very small town with a population of just over 3,000 residents. It lies a few miles east of Moline, one of the four “major” cities that make up the Quad Cities. It’s a community made up of primarily farmers and industrial workers from the factories scattered around the region. Everyone knows each other, and to say that it’s a heavily religious area would be an understatement, and though my parents weren’t very religious themselves, both of their families were.
I spent about half of my childhood on my grandparents’ farm out in the country, gallivanting around the countryside on a tractor with my grandfather, or helping my grandmother when something went awry with the house. I learned at a very young age what it meant to be a man: never show your emotions, you must always be strong and reliable, independent, and above all live your life according to God. I was able to fulfill most of these requirements, but it was that last one that eventually tripped me up.
The other half of my childhood was spent being a shy, quiet, “odd” kid that didn’t have many friends. I didn’t get along with the other boys in my neighborhood, and because my parents worked so much and my older brother was always in trouble, there weren’t many male role models for me to observe. All I knew of social interaction, including the idea of a sexual identity, was what I’d learned on the farm, seen at school, or knew from television.
Back then, there still wasn’t much positive exposure of gay role models on television. No one I knew, or anyone knew for that matter, was that way. I remember once or twice while I was growing up, some man or woman would be labeled, “one of them,” but I never asked what that meant, and I was never told. Of course, my mom always joked about Randy, her hair dresser, and about he was a “man’s man” or that he had more diamonds than she did. It wasn’t until I was in high school that I really understood what she was talking about.
As the story usually goes, it was around Jr. High School that I started to feel extremely out of place amongst the other boys in my classes. They were talking about sex, as all adolescent boys do. But nothing they were saying made sense to me. For a while, I thought maybe there was something wrong with me. But one day, when someone called me a “fag,” and I found out what it meant, everything clicked into place. There wasn’t any soul searching or “testing” that needed to be done. This was what I was. A year or two later, while I was in high school, I came out. But I resigned that I wouldn’t be like those “sissy’s” that the other guys made fun of. After all, I wasn’t a girl, and I didn’t want to be one, so I shouldn’t act like one!
It was with this in mind, that I “butched” myself up to overcompensate. Sure, I was gay, but I was still a man. I quit singing in Boy’s Choir, which I’d always loved, because of the connotation that came along with it. I tried getting into sports that I hated, I let my grades slip because “real men” didn’t need good grades. None of it seemed to work, though, because I was still ostracized by nearly every clique in school, save for a few close friends. I spent more and more time alone, having no clue who I was or who I wanted to be.
Eventually, someone told me about a group in the Quad Cities called QCAD, who had a special teen drop-in night on Sundays and Tuesdays. It was a place that LGBT kids aged 14-21 could gather and be themselves and not worry about what others thought of them. It was a “Safe Zone.” I attended only sporadically for a few weeks, not knowing anyone there and not knowing exactly how I should act. Here there were only guys acting and dressing like women, and vice versa. Is that what a gay guy is supposed to act, look, and sound like? After I made friends, I started identifying myself as part of this community more than trying to fit in at school. It wasn’t long before my “butchdom” wore off and I slowly slid into the femme stereotype, where I mostly stayed until I graduated and moved away. I graduated from MHS in 2002, with honors, and the only thing most of my classmates remember about me is that I was “that gay kid.”
I moved to Chicago in June of 2005, right into the heart of the famous “Boystown,” the gay district that I’d heard of – sort of like my Oz. Here, there existed all kinds of people that exemplified every spectrum of gender and sexuality there could possibly be. Being a “queen” was like being a needle in a haystack, here, and it didn’t mean anything. Being “butch” just meant that you weren’t flamboyant about your gayness. For the first time in my life, I could be whoever – whatever – I wanted, with no one to tell me yes or no.
It’s because of this that I’ve come to look so fondly on Chicago. It’s become the liberator of my identity. I don’t consider myself on either end of the “ideal” spectrum. I don’t have to, anymore, because it’s not expected that I should have to fit into one stereotype or another. I can have my campy days, or my gruff “farmer Joe” days, and no one can or will tell me, “You can’t do that, say that, or act that way.” There’s a certain choice of fluidity, that I never had before, and this has enabled me to actually realize my identity as a proud gay man who doesn’t fit into a specific mold of how gay men “should” be. The earlier version of me – the farm boy within, as I call it – is still there, and it still influences me, and always will. But now that I’ve moved to a more open community, where I now understand that anyone can be anything they want, and no one can say anything against it.
Anyway, here it is.
Sissy, nelly, queeny, campy, girly, swishy; these are all things that constituted being gay in rural Illinois, where I grew up. There were other names and words, of course, too crass to be listed here. Suffice it to say, these words, and the attitudes with which they were spoken, shaped my idea of what it meant to be “queer.” A whole set of societal norms and social constructs influenced how I identified myself, most of which were specific to the rural region where I was born and raised.
Coal Valley, Illinois, is a very small town with a population of just over 3,000 residents. It lies a few miles east of Moline, one of the four “major” cities that make up the Quad Cities. It’s a community made up of primarily farmers and industrial workers from the factories scattered around the region. Everyone knows each other, and to say that it’s a heavily religious area would be an understatement, and though my parents weren’t very religious themselves, both of their families were.
I spent about half of my childhood on my grandparents’ farm out in the country, gallivanting around the countryside on a tractor with my grandfather, or helping my grandmother when something went awry with the house. I learned at a very young age what it meant to be a man: never show your emotions, you must always be strong and reliable, independent, and above all live your life according to God. I was able to fulfill most of these requirements, but it was that last one that eventually tripped me up.
The other half of my childhood was spent being a shy, quiet, “odd” kid that didn’t have many friends. I didn’t get along with the other boys in my neighborhood, and because my parents worked so much and my older brother was always in trouble, there weren’t many male role models for me to observe. All I knew of social interaction, including the idea of a sexual identity, was what I’d learned on the farm, seen at school, or knew from television.
Back then, there still wasn’t much positive exposure of gay role models on television. No one I knew, or anyone knew for that matter, was that way. I remember once or twice while I was growing up, some man or woman would be labeled, “one of them,” but I never asked what that meant, and I was never told. Of course, my mom always joked about Randy, her hair dresser, and about he was a “man’s man” or that he had more diamonds than she did. It wasn’t until I was in high school that I really understood what she was talking about.
As the story usually goes, it was around Jr. High School that I started to feel extremely out of place amongst the other boys in my classes. They were talking about sex, as all adolescent boys do. But nothing they were saying made sense to me. For a while, I thought maybe there was something wrong with me. But one day, when someone called me a “fag,” and I found out what it meant, everything clicked into place. There wasn’t any soul searching or “testing” that needed to be done. This was what I was. A year or two later, while I was in high school, I came out. But I resigned that I wouldn’t be like those “sissy’s” that the other guys made fun of. After all, I wasn’t a girl, and I didn’t want to be one, so I shouldn’t act like one!
It was with this in mind, that I “butched” myself up to overcompensate. Sure, I was gay, but I was still a man. I quit singing in Boy’s Choir, which I’d always loved, because of the connotation that came along with it. I tried getting into sports that I hated, I let my grades slip because “real men” didn’t need good grades. None of it seemed to work, though, because I was still ostracized by nearly every clique in school, save for a few close friends. I spent more and more time alone, having no clue who I was or who I wanted to be.
Eventually, someone told me about a group in the Quad Cities called QCAD, who had a special teen drop-in night on Sundays and Tuesdays. It was a place that LGBT kids aged 14-21 could gather and be themselves and not worry about what others thought of them. It was a “Safe Zone.” I attended only sporadically for a few weeks, not knowing anyone there and not knowing exactly how I should act. Here there were only guys acting and dressing like women, and vice versa. Is that what a gay guy is supposed to act, look, and sound like? After I made friends, I started identifying myself as part of this community more than trying to fit in at school. It wasn’t long before my “butchdom” wore off and I slowly slid into the femme stereotype, where I mostly stayed until I graduated and moved away. I graduated from MHS in 2002, with honors, and the only thing most of my classmates remember about me is that I was “that gay kid.”
I moved to Chicago in June of 2005, right into the heart of the famous “Boystown,” the gay district that I’d heard of – sort of like my Oz. Here, there existed all kinds of people that exemplified every spectrum of gender and sexuality there could possibly be. Being a “queen” was like being a needle in a haystack, here, and it didn’t mean anything. Being “butch” just meant that you weren’t flamboyant about your gayness. For the first time in my life, I could be whoever – whatever – I wanted, with no one to tell me yes or no.
It’s because of this that I’ve come to look so fondly on Chicago. It’s become the liberator of my identity. I don’t consider myself on either end of the “ideal” spectrum. I don’t have to, anymore, because it’s not expected that I should have to fit into one stereotype or another. I can have my campy days, or my gruff “farmer Joe” days, and no one can or will tell me, “You can’t do that, say that, or act that way.” There’s a certain choice of fluidity, that I never had before, and this has enabled me to actually realize my identity as a proud gay man who doesn’t fit into a specific mold of how gay men “should” be. The earlier version of me – the farm boy within, as I call it – is still there, and it still influences me, and always will. But now that I’ve moved to a more open community, where I now understand that anyone can be anything they want, and no one can say anything against it.
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*hugs hard back*
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From:
your paper
I still wonder what's become of the friends I had there who either came out or who I suspect probably did after they'd moved to a safer place than the small FL town.
And it's funny to think about "still wasn’t much positive exposure of gay role models on television" in comparision to when I was in highschool. I don't think there was *any* then. The first person who I knew, who would actually say he was gay was someone from highschool, who was filling me in about his life on his first trip home from college. Then there was the one and only guy who was out at the college I went to - either that or I was simply oblivious about anyone else who was out, which is also possible.
Stuff like this always makes me thing. I hope you do well with the paper, and the class. It's interesting to read about!
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Re: your paper
Thanks:) I wound up getting an A on it:)
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