Only Straights Can Be Gay At Prom, Duh!

I wanted to share this picture with you again. Last time I posted it was 2 years ago in regard to a Queer Prom here in Chicago that the crazy Right was trying to cancel. This time I'm showing it to you so that you understand that it is not unusual for boys and girls to go to prom in non-gender-conforming clothing. This was my high school prom back in 1999. 11 years ago in mostly rural Kentucky, a boy put on a dress and makeup and a girl donned a tux and off to prom they went. And were there any issues? Nope. Not one.

Why is this relevant? Because today, in 2010, there are still kids in the South that are having severe issues with their high schools and with going to Prom. Constance McMillen was originally barred from going to her prom because she wanted to bring another girl and dress in a tux. After the ACLU put pressure on the school, the school cancelled the prom all together just so they would not have to tolerate a homogay in their midst. Finally, after a judge ruled against the school, the school decided to host the Prom and invite Constance after all. Hooooooooray… oh, wait, hunh? They actually held a fake prom for Constance and a few other kids that are differently abled while throwing a "secret prom" for all the Normal kids elsewhere???

Wow….

I lived in the South. I grow up there, and although I was never entrenched in Southern Culture, I did spend many, many years of my life down there. I went to schools that taught about the War of Northern Aggression (as the American Civil War is often known in southern states), I witnessed segregation efforts through school district lines, I've been privy to the social minutia of Southern Folk. Even with all that knowledge and experience, I think that this kind of trickery and deceitfulness is a very deep low for all Southerners, not just the folk in Constance's town.

Why? Because that is the culture of the South. This is a culture that enforces the power of old white men by forcing the silence of all dissenters through social ostracization, if not by other more aggressive means. This is a culture that firmly believes that a person should never rock the boat or cause a stir, and that anything varying from the norm is, obviously, Satanic. This is a culture that would make even the children that were supportive of Constance participate in this cruel act of torture because they were terrified of stirring things up and messing up their social standing.

And for what? What did these students get? Looks like every other prom to me, except they left out several students just because the mainstream did not want to bother thinking about things "not them" or "not normal." Certainly nothing at all that could be perceived as gay! Wait… what's that down there… is that two girls tonguing?!?!?


Oh, OK. Cleared that one up… those girls are straight, so it's totally ok that they tongue. And don't worry about that couple that looks like their getting ready to make unplanned baby #1 there, they're straight too, so it's totes cool. Plus they totally promised to not get an abortion, so God's OK with it too.

This whole ordeal with Constance and her classmates, and more importantly her community, is just sickening. Sadly this happens all the time, but Constance is lucky enough to be garnering help from all of the place. That doesn't happen most times, and these sort of societal shuns and vicious, vile mind games are what lead some gay teens to contemplate suicide. And the worst part of the whole ordeal to me is that the whole she-bang was planned by the parents of the other students, by adults who should know better, by adults who would likely do anything to defend their own brood from this kind of action and who would retaliate with force against anyone who would do such a thing to their kid.

It's sick. Pure and simple. Political differences are one thing. Disagreeing with people is a matter of discourse. But this… this is a matter of inducing trauma to serve one's own fear and bias, and this kind of behavior cannot continue.

I hope the ACLU takes action. I hope they name every single student and parent that attended the "straight prom" in a civil suit and out them to the national media as raging bigots and freaks born only of hatred. I hope that those parents feel the scorn and shame twenty times over what they've inflicted on Constance. Finally, I hope that Constance wins a civil suit and walks out of town laughing all the way to the big city bank, but even if she doesn't, I hope those parents realize that all they have done is given Constance everything she needs to succeed through this ordeal: college scholarship, nationwide support, donation fund designed to get her out of her small town… and all Itawamba is left with is shame and guilt.

Seasonally Sissy

I have a Hot then Cold relationship with reading. Usually, when it's Cold outside, I love to read, when it's Hot, I love to do just about anything other than. Being that it's Cold outside now, it's been reading season for me, and the first selection for this year's read-fest is Mississippi Sissy by Kevin Sessums. That's a hell of a lot of S's.

The book is a memoir of growing up queer and queeny as can be in the deep South. In Sessums' South, racism is still alive and "sissy boy" is the third worst insult, right behind "(insert racial slur here)" and "democrat." He spends his entire young life struggling with his introverted, feminine personality, and he later tries to deal with his homosexuality while still trying to maintain his Southern identity. It's an interesting concept, especially for a kid like me that spent most of his formative years in the South, but there's just something off about it.

The problem is I can't get into the book. It may be the voice or the material or the utterly conventional story-telling devices, but there's something there that I can't relate to. Well, actually, that probably is the biggest problem, I can't relate to the material. I feel like I should be able to: I'm gay, I grew up mostly in the South, I've always been fairly introverted. Yet the voice of the author just doesn't grab me.

It could also be that I'm getting a bit tired of the tragic queer-boy story. How many times do we really need to read about how bad another man's early childhood was? And as jaded as this will sound, I've read similar stories before. Sessums' story is absolutely tragic, and I don't fault him at all for being traumatized by what happened (I'm not going to say exactly what the story line is, in case you choose to read it), but I feel like I've read this sad tale before.

If you're going to give me another tragic queer-boy story, how about you give me that story in a new, intriguing style? Or tell me in such a way that I empathize and laugh with you about your horrors? Books like How I Learned To Snap and The Perks Of Being A Wallflower really brought something new and/or interesting to the table, at least in my opinion. Wallflower's story-telling device was completely enthralling to me (to be fair, it is fiction, so not in the same exact category) and Snap's characterization and charming disparity had me re-reading the book over and over again. Which is exactly why I believe that if you want to tell the tragic queer-boy story, you need to do it in such a way that the reader isn't bored with it.

I'm thinking I'm not going to finish Mississippi Sissy. I grabbed a few other books from Unabridged (my favorite bookstore here in Chicago) that I've been meaning to dig into, so I think I'll be diving into that. With that said, if you've read Mississippi Sissy and thought it was good or worth trodding through the last half of the book, let me know and I just might push through to the end.