/ 23 November 2018

The fear of the feminine is futile

'Gender-atypical children can be subject to negative attitudes from peers
'Gender-atypical children can be subject to negative attitudes from peers, family and teachers,' writes Zanta Nkumane. (Graphic: John McCann/M&G)

I was in grade six. My teacher softly suggested to my grandmother that I must be sent to a boy’s high school, to “man me up” because I played with the girls too much. My grades were great but my pronounced femininity was bothersome and needed pruning. Quickly.

Hearing this from my grandmother, I panicked. I didn’t want to be a girl. I was not a girl. I just liked other boys.

To “man up”, I began to defeminise myself. I practised restraint. I monitored my hand gestures, started spending my break times with the boys and took up sports I had no particular interest in. The further I was from being feminine, the closer I was to acceptance — or so I thought.

The main thematic issue with regard to the construction of gender and sexuality in my black childhood was mainly the conflation of homosexuality with becoming like the “opposite”’ gender (if you’re gay then you’re a girl; if you’re a lesbian then you’re a boy).

Gender-atypical children can be subject to negative attitudes from peers, family and teachers. I know this ridicule well. My own defeminisation stemmed from my desire to fit into the standardised concept of masculinity.

The standardised concept of masculinity, universally, is impregnated with a subjugation of the feminine. My femmephobia stemmed from this. Blogger Ozy Frantz defines femmephobia as “the devaluation, fear and hatred of the feminine: of softness, nurturance, dependence, emotions, passivity, sensitivity, grace, innocence and the colour pink”.

It is a phenomenon that excludes and discriminates feminine-presenting men in the gay community and favours straight-acting and masculine boys.

The defeminisation strategy is fuelled by the fear of becoming the “other” and leads to the perpetuation of patriarchy and misogyny among sexual minorities. Some have called this “queer patriarchy”, which is at the heart of gay-on-gay prejudice. It is patriarchy reimagined.

Log on to dating apps Grindr or Tinder and gay men’s bios are flagrantly embellished with their prejudices: #NoFats, #NoFemmes, #NoBlacks, #Masc4Masc, etcetera.

A potential hook-up will open a conversation with “are you fem?” and when you respond “yes”, they proceed to blue-tick you or respond with “what a shame, cause you’re cute”.

Many can argue that these are just preferences, not prejudices. But I call them prejudices because they are learned social ideals that dictate how some identity traits are more desirable than others.

This creates a hierarchical structure of desire in gay communities. Our allegiance to patriarchy and masculine phenotypes allows for certain queer identities to be invalidated and others to be glorified.

The partriarchal nature of society means the feminine exists to be suppressed by masculinity. It manifests as the macabre violence against women at the hands of men or in the disparities in salaries between men and women.

We can also then assume that femme gay men tend to experience a double ostracism because feminine gay men deviate from heterosexuality and masculinity, which tends to be anxious and defensive when threatened — and what can be more threatening than the feminine manifesting in a male body?

So maybe, when we call each other “good sis”, “sister” or “gurl”, we are reclaiming parts of ourselves that we had to kill off to appease masculine expectations.

Femmephobia is one of the many ways in which hegemonic practices permeate into marginalised populations and bloom in lived, internalised prejudices.

Gay communities continue to unknowingly-knowingly aspire to heteronormative standards, thus reproducing systems of exclusion and heteropatriarchy.

The irony of it all isn’t lost on me: How does an excluded group perpetuate the standards of the group that excludes them?

Because of an unaddressed desire or a twisted hope for proximity to the norm, which we have not completely unlearned.

Maybe embodying a marginalised identity causes many of us to over perform our privileged identity (male privilege, for example) to access its benefits or get a taste of belonging.

So, if you’re poor, you cling to nationalism (xenophobia); if you’re a white woman, you cling to your whiteness (racism); if you’re a black, straight woman, you cling to your heterosexuality (homophobia).

Ultimately, our reproduction of these norms serves to fortify the stronghold of heteronormativity and conjures the question: Can a pure queer identity exist without mirroring heterosexual ideals?

I am not sure about how to answer this question, but we are indoctrinated in a heterosexual world long before we even begin to experience queer realities.

The queer kaleidoscope continues to be dulled because we fail ourselves by spending so much time trying to be the same, to be normal, that our rainbow ends up being one colour.