The Gay Uncle was on the radio for the first time last night, peppered with questions for the sake of the “listeners” of OUT-Q, Gay Satellite Radio. He was quite certain how to respond to campy remarks about Liz Taylor’s knee replacements, and the near-successful stealth gay takeover of network television programming in the ’70’s, when everyone was either unaware or just too high to care. But he was less certain of how to react to the idea–presented by one of his interviewers–that a gay uncle’s job, when dealing with his butch lesbian friend’s kids, is to provide education in things “pink and girlie”. Now G.U. can swish with the best of them, but he’s also a gender constructivist of sorts (he’s been working on a new book about the subject called “Beyond Pink and Blue”) and thinks that part of the fun of being gay comes from questioning gendered stereotypes–gay, straight, or otherwise. He thus sees a role for himself in the life of his nieces and nephews beyond simply Hair and Makeup. He loves old trucks and gardening; attends drag acts and drag strips; collects 19th century English transferware and 21st century indie-rock. He sees life and gender as multivalent, in part because his lifelong work with kids has shown him that we all start out thinking that way.
3 Replies to “Beyond Pink and Blue”
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Bravo, Gay Uncle! Somehow it seems even less forgivable for gay folks to gender-stereotype — like, shouldn’t we know better? — and yet it’s remarkably pervasive in prevailing attitudes about anything from toys to sex. I think it raises challenging questions of conformity and self-acceptance that go even deeper than sexual orientation; sometimes I think we need a new wave of “Free To Be You and Me” style of consciousness raising (or maybe that’s Chris Crocker, who basically does the same thing from where I sit…)
Gay Uncle, I love your blog and you’re getting blog-rolled, buddy. What an excellent description of challenging those restrictive gender pigeonholes. It’s not fair to anyone, really, gay, straight, or otherwise.
I second TheGayRecluse’s comment about needing a new wave of “Free to Be…” Seems like today’s culture is getting farther and farther from that mentality, and it’s already affecting our kids in the biggest and scariest ways.
“…we all start out thinking that way.”
When he was a preschooler, my now 6 y.o. son used to love all things pink and purple. Now he shuns them, because there “for girls.” How fast we are acclimated to expected gender roles!