Drag Queen Barbie or Fashionable Farmer?

Positive Space sessions are continuing right up to the end of this week and the dialogue is expanding with more people asking "what is a positive space anyway?" and "how do I actually be an ally?" Over 800 students and employees have participated on 3 campuses this year. Thanks for all the support! This week's post is in honour of Day of Pink, Wednesday April 10th.


www.dayofpink.org

I've shared stories in past posts about how I've learned about diversity issues. The story I'm about to share lies deeper, in my family story and shows how our culture operates, conditoning how we see the world. When PARN educator Peter Williams talks about the cultural competency model in Level One, this is what he means - the deep heterosexual programming we all are immersed in like fish in water - invisible until we examine it from someone else's point of view.

I talked in my opening post for this blog about the rural, British-descent culture I come from, a cultural heritage many share here. The farming people I come from are practical, hard-working, and not very supportive of behaviour that seems overly expressive, loud, or emotional. They are conservative, yes, but not necessarily in the political sense. They are emotionally reserved. And they are actually startled and somewhat uneasy around people who express feelings or who have ideas that are beyond their direct experience. I meet people every day who come from this culture. Deep culture changes very slowly.

One of my brothers came out as a gay man in his late teens. He was an out-of-the-box guy, and he loved to challenge that rural culture with punk clothing (it was the 80's!), a pink mohawk, and lots of noise! It was hard to come out here, and he coped by being larger than life.

 

"Drag Queen Barbie" 2012
http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/08/20/drag-queen-barbie-is-finally-here-no-its-not-ken-in-heels/

"No-nonsense" cultural programming has formed me and I remember struggling with his behaviour. I told him repeatedly that I had no problem with him being gay, all the while thinking in my head "But why do you have to be such a flamer?!" In my university women's studies class I started to see how I had been programmed to regard stereotypical male qualities as the best way to be human. Independent. Rational. Serious. Unemotional. And certainly not dressed like "Drag Queen Barbie" - not me and not my brother either! You'd never catch me in pink back then :-)

I had been treating stereotypically feminine behaviours as less valuable. I was unpacking the gender boxes and this was telling me part of the story of why "flamer" was raging in my head, all the while I was saying I accepted my brother being gay.

This is why we consider 'flamer' to be derogatory, as it says feminine or extroverted behaviour is not how a man should behave. This is the deep-culture pattern of thinking that is "homonegative", and it is actually way more prominent than homophobia. Even though I loved and accepted my brother, I still carried homonegative ideas. So if I don't stay conscious of my programming, I may be participating in reinforcing stereotypes without realizing it.

Do you have a story of a time you were challenged to rethink what it is to be a man or woman in the world? Feel free to comment. Or tell me what you think about Drag Queen Barbie.

And get your pink on!