aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Friday, April 07, 2006

No fun with fairy

I expected the Commercial Closet rating for the Dodge Caliber ad featuring the fairy would be ”stereotype." Augusto writes to inform me that the verdict is in and I was wrong. The ad is rated ”negative." Why?

The ad earns a Negative rating because it directly finds humor with the term “fairy”—referring not just to the type that flies around with a magic wand, but also to the universally recognizable gay stereotype of an effeminate gay man.

Augusto agrees; I stand by my original assessment: it was not meant to appeal to gay people and it risks offending them by using a stereotype. So, yes, it is questionable but no, I’m not among those who take negative offense.

As my etymology of the word gay suggests, I certainly agree that language matters. Yet I find that I am less and less inclined to busy myself ferreting out homophobia, preferring instead to give the benefit of the doubt and encourage all forms of visibility. The more out and visible we are the better.

It’s easy to take offense at the ad. It does make me curious, though, about gay male denial and rejection of the effeminate among us. What’s that about? I’m gay but not gay that way? We’re happy to take back the word “queer” but offended by “finding humor” in “fairy.” Could that be our own, dare I wonder, internalized homophobia?

It’s worth remembering that in the days of “passing” it was the effeminate gay male who could not. They were visible before it was easy or fashionable. Perhaps as a consequence, those effeminate gays were among the first to push back, stand up and fight for gay rights.

I have some bona fides here, having played a minor role in the making of the film “Before Stonewall,” as producer of the “Stonewall Minute” segment in an early gay TV show with Vito Russo and later as producer of the cover story for PBS’s “Out In America.”

I believe being gay is a choice; that there is a gay culture and that that gay culture is rooted in the collective experience of those who have gone through the difficult process of making the choice to be gay; the choice to embrace, rather than deny, their proclivity. A choice that is still too difficult for many where I live.

As with the word “queer,” I’d like to see us not cower at the word “fairy” and instead embrace that part of our culture. Andrew Sullivan recently responded to a young reader who said he’d “be happier once drag shows and camp goes out the window:”

[T]here’s nothing to my mind in any way wrong with drag, cross-dressing or other gender-bending activities. They do not define gay life, or many gay men; but they are surely one part of gay culture and are genuine expressions of some gay men’s identity. In the past, drag queens helped forge the small space in which today’s 21-year-old Ivy Leaguers can now breathe. The lesson to me is that gay men should do less judging of one another. We should rather try and become the future we want to forge. And let our example, however imperfect, lead others

That would be my goal.

RELATED: Similarly I didn’t have a problem with the 60 Minutes segment that featured a study that found people could pick out the sexual orientation of a person “based on physical movement and gestures.”