Assigned Adorable At Transition
Dec. 22nd, 2022 11:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
strixalbaAt some point I want to really investigate the mechanisms by which I manage to effortlessly, near-instantly, endear myself to every female colleague older than me, regardless of race or ethnicity, to a degree that I truly do not think is proportional to how competent or charming I am.
(This isn’t modesty, it’s honestly a little weird and uncomfortable. It feels unearned, and therefore easy to have taken away at any time. If it doesn’t feel based in reality and in my actions, then it’s not something I can control or maintain. I could be caught out at any minute.) I suspect it has to do with the whole thing where I’m polite and listen to them and treat women like they’re people, but like. Those are the baseline standards for all women as coworkers. I did not used to be treated like this as a girl. It feels related to the way that men are applauded for performing the routine childcare and household chores that women are expected to do invisibly.
(It also feels related to a conversation that I was next to shortly after college, the kind where I wasn’t really part of it but I was close enough that I was still expected to be overhearing it. I was in a working group with six or seven female classmates and one male classmate, and a couple of them were talking amongst themselves about how Brian and I were both friendly and liked hanging out with girls, but I was different because I treated them like people, and Brian, ehhhhhh, treated them like Girls. It STUCK with me because the bar was so goddamn low that I didn’t even realize I was walking over it, and it felt weird to discover there was a bar at all.)
I also inhabit Fruity Canyon vocally & in my mannerisms, and smile/emote a more traditionally-feminine amount, which I think means that I end up firmly placed in the “extremely gay and therefore not a sexual threat” category. I wonder if that’s something that effeminate white gay men experience, too — if that’s what they’re talking about when they talk about the harm of the neutered “gay best friend” stereotype. I really just haven’t interacted much with the experiences of gay men in that way. The gay men I know, I see them in spaces that are overwhelmingly queer and mostly-male.
New Job has me interacting with a variety of different new people for the first time in a long time — it’s several orders of magnitude larger than my previous 20-person company — and I have a lot of time to think about what it all means.
I want to read more about queer white masculinity so I can better think about the way it informs what I think of as being and acting male. I guess ideally I’d want another genderqueer white man to reflect on it already, but I could write the thing myself if I need to. I think that looking at critical whiteness theorists and queer theorists of color would be a good place to start? Get a sense of what’s out there. I can triangulate myself by investigating the absence and assumptions of normativity that I don’t realize are racialized. Because all of the shit that I’m talking about in the above paragraph is heavily informed by race. I 100% could behave in exactly the same way as I do now and if I was Black I can guarantee that my mannerisms wouldn’t be perceived the same way, but like. I don’t know the exact ways, or the exact mechanisms, or even what the experiences of genderqueer Black men are informed by … let alone the experiences of other people of color. And how am I supposed to understand what makes me so appealing and trustworthy if I don’t understand what I’m being compared against?
ETA: I'm also wondering if this is in any way structurally similar to the way that South/East Asian men in America, particularly gay men, are desexualized and seen as unmasculine/non-threatening. Obviously this isn't the same thing, as I am extremely white. But there are some similar structural pathways I can see in the way that white and light-skinned trans men are seen as smol soft beans uwu amongst the tenderqueers, and the way that South/East Asian men are seen in broader society. So many lines of thought to look into for the new year, I guess?
(This isn’t modesty, it’s honestly a little weird and uncomfortable. It feels unearned, and therefore easy to have taken away at any time. If it doesn’t feel based in reality and in my actions, then it’s not something I can control or maintain. I could be caught out at any minute.) I suspect it has to do with the whole thing where I’m polite and listen to them and treat women like they’re people, but like. Those are the baseline standards for all women as coworkers. I did not used to be treated like this as a girl. It feels related to the way that men are applauded for performing the routine childcare and household chores that women are expected to do invisibly.
(It also feels related to a conversation that I was next to shortly after college, the kind where I wasn’t really part of it but I was close enough that I was still expected to be overhearing it. I was in a working group with six or seven female classmates and one male classmate, and a couple of them were talking amongst themselves about how Brian and I were both friendly and liked hanging out with girls, but I was different because I treated them like people, and Brian, ehhhhhh, treated them like Girls. It STUCK with me because the bar was so goddamn low that I didn’t even realize I was walking over it, and it felt weird to discover there was a bar at all.)
I also inhabit Fruity Canyon vocally & in my mannerisms, and smile/emote a more traditionally-feminine amount, which I think means that I end up firmly placed in the “extremely gay and therefore not a sexual threat” category. I wonder if that’s something that effeminate white gay men experience, too — if that’s what they’re talking about when they talk about the harm of the neutered “gay best friend” stereotype. I really just haven’t interacted much with the experiences of gay men in that way. The gay men I know, I see them in spaces that are overwhelmingly queer and mostly-male.
New Job has me interacting with a variety of different new people for the first time in a long time — it’s several orders of magnitude larger than my previous 20-person company — and I have a lot of time to think about what it all means.
I want to read more about queer white masculinity so I can better think about the way it informs what I think of as being and acting male. I guess ideally I’d want another genderqueer white man to reflect on it already, but I could write the thing myself if I need to. I think that looking at critical whiteness theorists and queer theorists of color would be a good place to start? Get a sense of what’s out there. I can triangulate myself by investigating the absence and assumptions of normativity that I don’t realize are racialized. Because all of the shit that I’m talking about in the above paragraph is heavily informed by race. I 100% could behave in exactly the same way as I do now and if I was Black I can guarantee that my mannerisms wouldn’t be perceived the same way, but like. I don’t know the exact ways, or the exact mechanisms, or even what the experiences of genderqueer Black men are informed by … let alone the experiences of other people of color. And how am I supposed to understand what makes me so appealing and trustworthy if I don’t understand what I’m being compared against?
ETA: I'm also wondering if this is in any way structurally similar to the way that South/East Asian men in America, particularly gay men, are desexualized and seen as unmasculine/non-threatening. Obviously this isn't the same thing, as I am extremely white. But there are some similar structural pathways I can see in the way that white and light-skinned trans men are seen as smol soft beans uwu amongst the tenderqueers, and the way that South/East Asian men are seen in broader society. So many lines of thought to look into for the new year, I guess?
