Tom McGeveran names himself a “shmomosexual” and frets over the work of the Fab Five becoming more prominent in public consciousness than that of the supreme nine.
The stories of chiseled hotties on Boy Meets Boy labor under the weight of a mediocre production which drowns its audience in repetitive pathos. (If you missed it, you can get the same effect by spending a week chanting, “This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done” – while facing no life-or-death issues – and obsessing about whether each person in your life is good or bad, sincere or manipulative, gay or straight.)
So, are gay men in America represented by Carson Kressley or leading man James? Barney Frank or Harvey Fierstein? RuPaul or Bishop Gene Robinson? As flavors of description (shmomosexual, metrosexual, post-gay, on the down-low) are added to the existing mix (lesbian, transgender, gay, bisexual, questioning), the hand-wringing by pundits often accelerates.
Language is coming full circle. No effort was required to sustain anti-gay sentiments, laws, and faith traditions when gay love dared not speak its name. As lesbian and gay people named their love and shunned shame by identifying themselves, their adversaries escalated their shaming, blaming, and name-calling. As glbt folks’ lives proved to be as simple, ordinary, and dull as their neighbors’ , the lives of ex-gays were touted as reason enough to continue demeaning and marginalizing gays. With the gelling of streetwise awareness that lesbians and gays defy stereotypes and the Supreme Court awareness of them as simply human, anti-gay leaders (after getting no traction from using ex-gays to lead offensive strikes) are marshalling their defensive forces in a last-ditch effort to horde one of their favorite words for themselves: Marriage.
From not naming ourselves out of fear, we’re on our way back to not naming ourselves for a profoundly different reason: Labeling itself is insufficient. Inflammatory anti-gay rhetoric is increasingly fanned, not by the naming of glbt folks, but by the assimilation of glbt stereotype-busting families into Americana’s melting pot – ordinary relationships and families that label themselves with the same words anti-gay families use to describe themselves.
I simply am. Homo-shmomo-metro-hetero-libero-orthodox-alterna-judeo-islamic-traditional-shmitional labels be damned.
I love another who simply is. We are present for each other in ordinary moments as well as crises, like any other committed couple. Each of us wants the other to thrive, like other engaged folks. Our hopes, dreams, frustrations, and failures – not to mention our financial well-being – are intertwined just like my grandparents’ were for 62 years.
The labels that mark the differences between types of people and relationships are losing their bite in the face of the universal ones: Love, commitment, relationship, marriage, and family. That trend will continue as diverse lives become familiar in the media, in our neighborhoods, in our workplaces, and in our faith communities.
It’s still essential to work for just, fair, compassionate treatment of all people. Some labeling is necessary and helpful in those efforts.
You just won’t find me wringing my hands over – or investing myself heavily in – new labels.
Reality TV joins cell phones, hip-hop, SUVs, Thomas Kinkade paintings, and FoxNews as one of the things I have come to despise in my advancing years. Shows like Survivor, The Bachelor, Big Brother, and Temptation Island disgust me in that they entice people to delight vicariously in the suffering and humiliation of our fellow human beings.
Now along comes “Boy Meets Boy.” Just a Gay version of “The Bachelor,” right? Not quite. There’s a cruel joke being played on the Gay man looking for companionship, in that secretly Straight men are scattered amongst the contestants to sabotage his quest for love. If this is your idea of entertainment, you can have it.
On the other hand, my husbear & I love “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.” Sure, the Fab Five tease and even occasionally get semi-flirtatious with their culture-challenged Straight Guy, but it’s never over-the-top or in any way threatening. And it was actually rather touching on one episode in which the Straight Guy, on the verge of proposing marriage to his girlfriend, actually got a bit misty-eyed upon realizing how much the Fab Five had helped him and were rooting for him.
This is not to say, of course, that ALL Gay men have impeccable fashion sense. Greg & I, having settled in amongst the “bears,” suffice to find our clothing at Wal-Mart and our furniture at Value City. But we still manage to keep things looking good with the resources we have, and the Fab Five would never find a porn collection in OUR home!
I share a lot of your sensibilities, Chuck.
Boy Meets Boy didn’t just play the cruel joke on the leading man, it did so on all of the gay men. The straight guys were given a crucial piece of information about the character of the show, but were forced to lie throughout their participation. Ultimately, the multi-layered deceptions left everyone questioning the authenticity of their experience.
It seems clear that the producers of the show were coaching the participants on how to make more TV-worthy scenes, and they disclosed that they coached James on his selections without specifically directing him.
There is no sign that the show’s producers ever coached the gay guys to temper their naivete, though, by reminding them that it was a game with surprises in store.
That is unfortunate, in my mind. It would have been a better show if the guys had a chance to discuss the realities of gay, straight — not to mention various flavors of bisexuality — perceptions and stereotypes along the way.
It would also have been better, in my opinion, BMB had looked a bit more into the souls of the participants.
What churches or temples did these guys go to? Where did they do volunteer work? What social issues do they care about?
Instead we were treated to several weeks of contrived editing that left us with equally little information about many of the key participants.
I love reality shows, and my g/f and I want to be the first two-woman couple on the Amazing Race, but I can’t stand the way “relationship” shows of any kind play with peoples’ feelings. I think that shows like the Amazing Race and Survivor are good for sexual minorities because they show queer participants doing non-sexual things and being competent when faced with a challenge.
I hope that with all the new labels comes an increased understanding of the diversity of our community. I hope we keep piling on label after label until the labels are completely unnecessary. I hope that one day, I will see a time when the only label any of us use is our name.