{"id":656,"date":"2022-09-13T17:30:55","date_gmt":"2022-09-13T21:30:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/?p=656"},"modified":"2022-09-13T17:18:18","modified_gmt":"2022-09-13T21:18:18","slug":"drag","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/2022\/09\/13\/drag\/","title":{"rendered":"Drag"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cIf he wraps his arms around me, \/ it will be the rest of his life. \/ I don\u2019t even know what I am\u00a0 \/in this dress; I just sway with\/ my arms open and wait.\u201d (Jones 29)<\/span><\/p>\n

There is a sense of helplessness here. The speaker feels empty, he lacks self. He feels uneasy at this selfless-ness and is willing to give himself to a man just for a role, a part in someone\u2019s life. \u201cIf he wraps his arms around me\u201d signifies an ownership, a feeling that you have a right to touch someone. But it is not just a touch of the arm, a hand at the waist. The arms are wrapped around, enveloping the speaker. <\/span>If <\/span><\/i>the speaker is encircled, then he will become this other man\u2019s. \u201cI don\u2019t even know what I am\u201d he says, and he feels an intense discomfort with that, with the dress, with the situation which has, in fact, been in part caused by the power (known to us not only by his financial status, but also the speaker\u2019s belief that he can simple be taken by him) of this other man. So, the speaker sways; he has considered his lack of self, his emptiness, the dress enveloping him. To be stationary is to think, and he will no longer be stationary. He is dressed up as something he does not want to be. But what does not wanting matter when you are no one to begin with? He opens his arms and waits, feeling as though the decision is better left up to fate, to the other man in the room, perhaps to greater powers\u2014whether that be a cosmological will or simply a man with higher status than he. However, the speaker is done thinking about it. Instead, he watches\u2014not willingly nor unwillingly\u2014but without a choice in the matter, his identity hang in the balance.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cIf he wraps his arms around me, \/ it will be the rest of his life. \/ I don\u2019t even know what I am\u00a0 \/in this dress; I just sway with\/ my arms open and wait.\u201d (Jones 29) There is a sense of helplessness here. The speaker feels empty, he lacks self. He feels uneasy … Continue reading Drag<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4984,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[344620],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall-2022"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4984"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}