The Nelly Boy: An Active Questioning of the Patriarchy

The Sedaris reading really hit home and his personal testimony on his childhood was something I could really relate to. A recurring theme throughout the first chapter was the idea of the nelly boy, the DMAB person who has an all too familiar attraction to everything feminine and whose eyes glaze over once someone mentions sports. Sedaris describes the symptoms usually associated with people who, like me, have childhoods with too many show tunes and unfortunately not enough AXE deodorant, “there was some connection between a sibilate s and a complete lack of interest in the State versus Carolina issue” (9). He goes onto say that usually see us in your neighborhoods, questioning all you thought “men” should do and, “baking scones and cupcakes for the school janitors, watching Guiding Light with our mothers, collecting rose petals for use in a fragrant potpourri: anything worth doing turned out to be a girl thing” (9-10). There is something inherently wrong about being a boy with “girly” tastes. Crane and Crane-Seeber articulate why nelly boys seems to make cishet people’s skin crawl in their essay, “The Four Boxes of Gendered Sexuality: Good Girl/Bad Girl and Tough Guy/Sweet Guy.” The nelly boy falls in the category of a sweet guy which they describe as queer, artistic, affectionate towards male friends, not obsessed with sports, colorfully dressed, emotional, and a good listener. In a straight context, “their wives may keep their own names because for these men, being in an equal partnership is more important than the patriarchal symbol of ‘owning’ their wives and children, having their name be the ‘family name'” (Crane and Crane-Seeber 212). As John D’Emilio articulates in Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Making of a Homosexual Minority in the United States, 1940-1970, gay men threaten the very fabric of American society because they do not adhere to the heteropatriarchal norms imposed upon them, they are not fulfilling their duty of controlling and oppressing women. (that’s not to say gay men cannot be oppressive). I think I should clarify that right now I am taking a bunch of communities and generalizing them as men with a more feminine gender expression, even though the readings may not see them as the same identity, they are policed and punished by society in very similar ways. Michael Warner comments on this, “nelly boys and butch girls can be f**bashed or taunted, and being heterosexual will not protect them very much” (37) (due to personal experience, I don’t like using the heterosexist f slur as I think using it inherently gives it power, no matter who says, a stance I am sure a lot of straight and LGBTQ+ identified people alike disagree with but (ain’t it funny what we see eye to eye on, ~oppressive language~) it’s just my personal preference). Sedgwick also references this connection between society and the regulation of gender expression, “the complicity of parents, of teachers, of clergy, even of the mental health professionals in invalidating and hounding kids who show gender-dissonant tastes, behavior, body language” (2). Sedaris’ speech teacher is an embodiment of said complicity, regulating the “gay lisp” experienced by David and his classmates. As he says, ” did they hope that by eliminating our lisps, they might set us on a different path, or were they trying to prepare us for future stage and choral careers?” (Sedaris 10-11). It’s no coincidence that all the boys in speech therapy probably later expressed a “deviant” gender or sexual identity. Their collective speech pattern brought conventional speech patterns (constructed by cishet rich white men) into question and ergo had to be eliminated. In summary, nelly boys are consistently persecuted and forcefully modified by social structures and community policing because they do not adhere to gendered norms and do not fill their designated role of dominance over women.