Tag: drag

Bros Before Mangoes: Queer Misogyny in “You’re the Only Friend I Need”

     In Alejandro Heredia’s “You’re the Only Friend I Need,” queer teens Fabio and Noel struggle to reconcile with their burgeoning identities. At multiple points in the text, this struggle manifests in a battle between femininity and masculinity, especially in the character of Fabio. By shedding light on the misogyny of gay men, Heredia interrogates the appropriation of femininity in the queer community. 

     Initially, Fabio demonstrates a vehement aversion to femininity. When a group of girls makes fun of him for eating a mango, for instance, he declares that he “fucking hate[s] girls” (Heredia 34). In Fabio’s mind, a few bullies come to represent every girl around the world. He judges using overgeneralizations, one of the many tools of the oppressor. Fabio also asserts his masculinity using the oppressive tool of violence. He gets into “a fist fight with one of the popular girls at school” after she calls him a slur (36). Taken symbolically, Fabio seems to spar with his own femininity. He attempts to quell rumors by pummeling the feminine energy inside himself just as he pummels his bully. However, his battle further exposes his queerness, solidifying him as a “girl-fighting maricon” (36). Similarly, when he “flips [the mango girls] a middle finger,” he only incites more laughter (34). With each struggle against femininity, Fabio further implicates himself in sissyhood. His fight is futile. He cannot dismantle patriarchal oppression using the tools of the patriarchy. 

     Fabio’s innate femininity blatantly contradicts his misogyny. When he and Noel start to “refer to each other in feminine pronouns,” the change “feels good” for both of them (36). According to Noel, “Fabio is unapologetic about his femininity” and “will throw it in anyone’s face” (36). Fabio even gets mad at Noel when his drag makeover does not look feminine enough. “You look like a boy. That’s not the point,” he says (39). These remarks and assertions seem discordant with Fabio’s earlier hatred of women. How can a boy who despises girls be “unapologetic about his femininity?” Fabio fails to recognize the hypocrisy of his views. He appropriates femininity and feminine culture, yet he despises women. In turn, Fabio harbors a deep-seated hatred for a fundamental part of himself.

     Though he fights against it, femininity fits Fabio like a glove. When he dresses in his aunt’s clothing, for instance, he looks “as if the blouse was made for his body exactly” (38). This is because it is. He is meant to embrace his feminine side, yet his misogyny prevents him from fully doing so. Even after Ren tells him to respect queer women’s gender identities, he refers to them using masculine pronouns. He refuses to immerse himself in femininity; he is not a girl, just something “adjacent” to one (40). Heredia suggests that Fabio can only achieve true happiness by placing himself in women’s shoes, both literally and figuratively. This is more than a radical form of empathy; it represents radical self-acceptance. Fabio can only settle into his identity when he discards the patriarchy’s rules. Queer self-acceptance hinges upon a new, more feminist way of being.

     Through the character of Fabio, Heredia suggests that gay men cannot comfortably reconcile with their femininity without first confronting their misogyny. By extension, his story implies that the liberation of the queer community cannot be wrought without the liberation of women, too. This intersectional approach to activism acknowledges the multiplicity of our own identities. We contain “multitudes,” and we must strive to accept each part of ourselves, whether masculine, feminine, or something in between (38).

Queerness, Mangoes, and Streetlights

“You’re the Only One I Need” by Alejandro Heredia, an exploration of drag, queerness, femininity versus masculinity, gayness, is deeply rooted in its setting and qualities of setting. The physical setting of Santo Domingo is very central to the story, of course; but what I’m getting at is the more physical and visual qualities of the world that the characters interact with, and the importance of them to the story’s queerness. For example, the physicality, and almost bodily description, of eating a mango:

“[Fabio] claws for his [yellow] mango and tears into it with his teeth, makes a small hole in the flesh of the fruit. He massages the pulp into juice and sucks from the fruit every last drop of sun. When they are done, the skin of the mango is taut, wrinkled and saggy. Only the pit remains” (34).

The action of eating a mango is always very intimate in that way. It’s just that kind of fruit: the ripeness of it and the juice and the skin. But this description is long and detailed, every word deliberate, with so much language of touch and fleshiness. “He massages the pulp into juice and sucks from the fruit every last drop of sun” — massaging, very specific touch; pulp, the flesh of the fruit (34). They are eating the mango in a way that men perhaps are not “supposed” to do it. There is too much intimacy and enjoyment in it, too much touch and sweetness. This assumption is proved when “the girls laugh” (34), watching the boys eat this fruit in this perhaps “girly” or “gay” way. The mango is thus a symbol of their perceived femininity.

Once again I want to return to this sentence: “He massages the pulp into juice and sucks from the fruit every last drop of sun” (34), but now looking at the ending of it, “every last drop of sun.” If the mango is seen as a symbol for the perception of queerness or femininity to the outside world, then the light, the sun, that they are extracting from the mango can be read as a space and a moment of time when they can have a safe space for their queerness. That is, before the girls look at them and laugh.

Heredia plays with darkness and light, shadows and color all throughout the piece. When Ren and the two boys change into drag, they “turn to a dark alleyway, away from the light” — this is their private space, where they can be with themselves and their bodies. However, Ren then “continues the rest of his transformation before them, in the soft orange streetlight” (37). The description of light reminds me somehow of the mango: soft, orange or yellow, again light. The darkness may be their private space — but yellow, orange, soft flesh of the mango, the sun and the streetlight is the safe space for their queerness. Heredia’s work is thus thinking about queer spaces within a world where queerness is perhaps laughed at or hidden.

Gender Trouble Butterfly

Within Gender Trouble, written by Judith Butler, Newton gives a powerful message:

At its most complex, [drag] is a double inversion that says, “appearance is an illusion.” Drag says [Newtons curious personification] “my ‘outside’ appearance is feminine, but my essence ‘inside’ [the body] is masculine.” At the same time it symbolizes the opposite inversion; “my appearance ‘outside’ [my body, my gender] is masculine but my essence ‘inside’ [myself] is feminine” (Butler, 137).

From this, a very troubling and complex statement arises from the works of David Henry Wang in his play M. Butterfly, with Song stating that:

Like, I think the reason we fight wars is because we wear clothes (Wang, 55).

The “double inversion” proposed in Butler’s work stings true to the heart when Song gives the ultimate reason for gender/identity mayhem. Newton, through Butler, introduces the idea and separation between appearance and feeling along the lines of respective gender femininity and/or masculinity. The relation between Song’s position in M. Butterfly and the words of Newton within Butler’s work is that Song ‘plays’ the gender role of female, while standing as a biological male. In this situation, Newton would classify her as the first portion of his writing: “[her] ‘outside’ appearance is feminine, but [her] essence ‘inside’ [the body] is masculine.” Song believes that it is this binary between sex and gender that she encompasses as a whole, that creates issues in the world. It is this mere contradiction of appearance and biology that allow for disagreement, argument and ultimately disapproval of ‘differences.’

The very evident similarities between these two works and the gender binaries that exist and are explained within the words of the text suggest important, relevant as well as controversial binaries such as femininity versus masculinity, sex versus gender, male versus female and appearance versus feelings/emotions (‘inside’ versus ‘outside’). These binaries exposed in Gender Trouble allow one to clearly identify the important aspects of sexuality as well as gender identity within M. Butterfly and ultimately relate them to real world issues as a whole.

The suggestive material stating, “appearance is an illusion” in M. Butterfly needs the unambiguous explanation given in Gender Trouble. Gender Trouble is ultimately used as a lens to better understand the allusions, suggestions and binaries within M. Butterfly. These two texts are linked and intertwined ever so perfectly through meaning, connotation and annotation that they need one to understand the other. Allusion and illusion need definition to make things clear, yet definition needs allusion and illusion to make things interesting.

Alison in Drag

What Alison Bechdel and her father have in common goes beyond genetics. They share a common sexuality and confusion over their gender expression. Alison explains this confusion over her gender expression several times in the novel, once even begging her brothers to call her Albert instead of Alison in the cab of a tractor, “As the man showed us around, it seemed imperative that he not know I was a girl.” (113). Alison is acutely aware from a young age that this man objectifies women and that perhaps it was not safe to identify as one in his presence. Likewise, her father tells her he wanted to be a girl, recalling not only the time he dressed in a woman’s bathing suit in college (120) but also how he dressed in girl’s clothes as a child. (221). This scene is where both of them admit to having done drag and made love to people of the same gender is the closest to a mutual coming-out that they share. Face to face, this interaction is awkward, with Alison constantly looking wide-eyed and straight-ahead, communicating that she was uncomfortable during this conversation, yet intrigued by its openness.

When Alison first finds the photo of her father in the woman’s bathing suit, she assumes it is a fraternity prank as the singer from The Magnetic Fields bemoans, “I’ll never see that girl again, he did it as a gag, I’ll pine away forevermore for Andrew in drag.” in the song “Andrew in drag”. The lead singer of The Magnetic Fields, Stephin Merritt, sings about how he’ll only love Andrew in drag and how he is not attracted to other men or women, just Andrew in drag. Alison and her father never discuss being attracted to someone in drag or how much their sexualities have in common, but both reveal they have dressed in drag and wanted to be another gender, hypothetically so their sexual desires would feel more “normal”. Stephin Merritt identifies himself as male in the song but unlike Alison’s father, he is proud of his sexuality and this gives him the confidence to sing about it so openly.

 

Video for “Andrew in Drag” by The Magnetic Fields. Warning: video contains brief nudity and homophobic slurs.