Sexuality

When talking about queerness and sexuality in music, people will commonly cite disco as a style of music that is clearly marked as “queer music.”   When asked elaborate on what it is that ties disco music to queer culture, people are often a bit more hard-pressed to answer.    They may point out that many disco artists such as Sylvester and the Village People were queer, so since the people producing the music were queer, the music itself must be queer.
Martin Stokes’ article on the music of Zeki Moren may be an argument against this logic.   Although Moren was a musical performer who was also queer, his music had no identifiable characteristics that marked it as queer and was mostly successful in non-queer communities.   Another argument would be that most of the artists producing disco music, especially in its earlier days, were not individuals who identified as queer.    So if not the performers, what is it about disco music that has marked it as a queer music in our culture?  In this blog post I will attempt to answer this question by looking at the history of disco as it relates to queer communities in America and by analyzing some of the actual musical characteristics of disco to see how this music can be read as queer.
Disco has its origins in the late 60s and early 70s as an evolution of Motown and soul music sounds, which was being cultivated throughout the 60s.   At that point, the music contained no overt messages to the queer community and none of its artists or producers were openly identifying as queer.   However, the music first found its fan-base in gay African-American and Latino men in the gay bars New York City during the early 70s.  It is important to make clear at this point that although the popularity of disco music found its genesis as a style popular only to gay men in New York, it soon spread to smaller cities across the United States and came to be associated not only with gay men but with all groups under the umbrella term of queer.

While this song by the Love Unlimited Orchestra contains no real meaningful message that would speak to the queer communities of the time, the tone of the work and the feelings it created had an impact on the queer culture of the 70s.   Since gay bars were one of the only places that queer individuals could be themselves without fear of harassment and criticism, being there was thought to be the ultimate cause for celebration.   The light tone of disco music and its joyful frivolity made it the perfect music for this kind of joyous celebration.

    This clip of Diana Ross performing “I’m Coming Out” represents a later era of disco music in the queer community.   As mentioned in the Halberstam article we read for this week, the disco queen, or diva, was an important figure in queer identity, especially during the late 70s and early 80s, and Diana Ross certainly fits within this category.   In this video, we see her in flamboyant and excessively feminine dress, but her voice and the music itself contrast this in various ways.   First of all the driving beat and virtuosic musicianship required for the instrumental accompaniment does not fit within conventional ideas about femininity.   The displays of instrumental skillfulness particularly in the guitar, drums, and bass fit within the ideas of masculine authenticity that was explored in our unit on gender.   Also Diana Ross’ voice on this song does not suggest any kind of heightened femininity.   She prefers to stay in her lower range and adds very few flourishes rather than trying to perform vocal acrobatics in her upper range.  This more pared down, natural style of singing fits more within our ideas of masculine authenticity than it does with femininity.   This combination of a feminine appearance and a more masculine performance challenges ideas about gender and sexuality.   This combined with the song’s less than subtle message about celebrating one’s identity are what made it an anthem in the queer community in the early 80s.

Since the class when we discussed the two feminist articles (Robertson’s “Power and Gender in the Musical Experiences of Women” and Aparicio’s “Towards a Feminist Genealogy of Salsa Music”) I’ve just finished Judith Ezekiel’s Feminism in the Heartland (which I read for an great class, CAST/HIST 342: Race, Gender and American Social Movements) that has affirmed my positive feelings for feminist ideas and feminism as a movement. The book traces the path of the feminist movement in Dayton, OH in the late 1960s and 1970s through it’s manifestations in different groups; Dayton Women’s Liberation led to the establishment of the Dayton Women’s Center, an offshoot of which was Dayton Women Working.

Even though all of these groups have the word “women” in the name, they were not writing, lobbying and working only with or on behalf of only one sex or one idea of equal rights. Though the movement involved more men as it grew throughout the seventies, even the first members of DWL, a conglomerate of “consciousness-raising groups” that encouraged women to speak freely in an all-women environment about discrimination and oppression they had experienced throughout their lives, were enthused by their personal contributions to forging a new political identity. The personal-political connection, the author argues, is what’s important to sustaining the feminist movement.

It was cool to realize that feminism is not only about promoting women’s equality on par with men, or establishing a new consciousness in women only – it’s about establishing a new consciousness in everybody to think about whether someone’s words or lack of words, or their action or inaction, contributes to discrimination or the promulgation of sexist attitudes. I think the power of the feminist movement of the past and present is about getting all kinds of people riled up by getting them to think, and being kind of loud about it sometimes…

…permitting the questioning of whether what you’ve always believed is something that you have to continue to believe. (This song is awesome…the music video’s kind of long but the illustration is good.)

A few weeks ago, in our class, I remember feeling extremely frustrated by our discussions of the concepts of masculinity and femininity and what we thought each of those two words implied (masculine = strong, tough, low-pitched, facial hair; feminine = weaker, delicate, high-pitched). We also expounded on the idea that these two words are alteritous – the concepts are defined “in opposition to what they are not”. Under my definition of the word “alteritous”, I wrote “musical codes are not so immutable that they only mean one thing”. I don’t know where exactly that came from, but I feel a similar way about my identity and maybe even about the concept of identity in general.

I don’t think I am living in a feminine or masculine world or body. I am living in my world and my body. Yeah, everyone else’s world and body is there too, but why should they affect my view of myself? Is an idea of a world without some kinds of labels REALLY that naive? I understand why you might want to know the difference between apple and cranberry juice, but humans are all people.

That question – some variation of “What would the world be like without people-labels?” – is a question that’s been nagging at me all semester. I think labels come inevitably from the borders (visible or not) that our families, the physical characteristics of our neighborhoods, cities, countries, and our governments put on us not always by choice. I think I accept a lot of these labels – like daughter, redhead, or upper-middle class – either because I don’t want to reject them or because I don’t think it’s productive to do so. But I think the question of sexuality is very personal, that no government can tell us who we love or who we should love (they haven’t really invented machines to read your mind yet), and that the most productive way to think about your sexuality is to be happy with whoever you choose to love and however you choose to love yourself. AND to accept whoever other people want to love and the ways they want to love themselves, provided that there is love involved.

Feminism in music is about getting the questioning and the loving in there. There’s lots of ways to do that. Love your country and cultural heritage, like La Lupe, La India and Celia did. Love your neighbor. Love your work. Love your play.

“Love yourself cause everything is gonna be alright.”

“I got gloss on my hips, a man on my hips,” she lip-syncs, gyrating her pelvis to the delight of her enraptured, inebriated audience.  The tinted lights bounce in psychedelic patterns across the stage, illuminating her jaw line as she forms the provocative “oh, oh, oh” of the refrain.  Long, silky black locks fly across her chiseled profile, catching seductively on the sticky lipstick about which she boasts.  In this moment, Scott is no longer the 6’3” star swimmer who towers over his teammates as he dives agilely into the Carr pool.  In this moment, sans stubble, dressed to the nines in a sexy slinky number that clings to her thighs, Scott barely resembles her everyday male counterpart.  In this moment, Scott is a saucy “single lady,” Oberlin College’s own Beyoncé Knowles, a glam drag queen who can’t help but entice nearly every Drag Ball attendee screeching uncontrollably for her from below the catwalk.

This is Drag Ball 2009.

In recent years, Drag Ball has been criticized for veering from its original goal of educating Oberlin’s non-transgender/transsexual (and even non-queer) population of the challenges some members of the LGBTQQIA community face every day.  According to one online blogger, “what used to be a celebration of genderfuck and ‘subversive’ lifestyles is now a bunch of really drunk straight boys running around in their girlfriends’ dresses” with little interest in developing a more profound understanding of non-traditional gender/sex identities.  Others insist that in providing a forum for casual cross-dressing, Drag Ball allows those too timid to test the trans waters in everyday life to do so without pressure.  In their article “Learning from Drag Queens,” Verta Taylor and Leila Rupp argue that even though “drag shows may be entertaining, and diverse people may flock to them to have a good time,” these facts do “not belie the impact that a night of fun can have” (247).  Application of this theory to last weekend’s festivities would indicate that these oblivious “straight boys…in their girlfriend’s dresses” are unknowingly receiving a social education from performers like Scott.  Taylor and Rupp explain that drag queens, by flaunting their heightened sex appeal and remaining completely honest with the audience, encourage viewers to question their own gender profiles and sexual preferences.

Is this true for Oberlin’s Drag Ball?  Perhaps.  Undoubtedly, some Obies in attendance may have found themselves questioning their attraction to ambiguously gendered drag performers or their friends in drag.  Others may have been too drunk to appreciate the significance of this confusion.  Interestingly enough, even though the majority of male attendees were scantily clad in hip hugging, figure-fitting frocks, their individual interpretations of being women did not go much further.  Few of my friends truly took the time to delve into the complexities of performing another gender beyond the obvious attire change.  None of us attended the workshop on Saturday due to prior conflicts (not that we would have gone had we been free), and there were no other publicized events last week to inform on queer culture.  This, as Taylor and Rupp suggest, does not mean that we were not able to digest any educational value from Scott’s performance, other drag performances, or from witnessing a “troubling” (249) of gender among the student population.  What is does mean is that at a school that prides itself on being inclusive, explorative, and progressive, our token queer campus-wide event remains shrouded in negativity, leaving a lot to be desired.

I’ve already reached the word limit for this assignment, but I would like to dedicate a few sentences to another issue we discussed in class during this unit.  As a singer I take particular interest in the special attention Anno Mungen pays to the closeness of the voice to “human existence” in “‘Anders als die anderen,’ or Queering the Song” (68).  Our class ultimately decided that Mungen’s attachment of sentimentality to what comes from within – meaning, the voice – was a far stretch.  At the time I agreed, but in retrospect, after having thought more from the perspective of a singer, I can see where Mungen is coming from.  It may indeed be unrealistic, but the timbre of the voice, as an entity that is intrinsically connected to our core, does manipulate gender in a way that mere visual alterations do not.

Whether through visual and physical transformations in drag performance or through inner, more intimate vocal alterations, the performative troubling of gender is essential to expanding our current binary conceptions of gender and sexuality.

This clip is from an episode of Dawson’s Creek in which Jen throws an anti-homecoming dinner featuring drag queens instead of homecoming queens.  Although she is attempting to upset the norms, she clearly lacks in depth understanding of what it means to perform drag.  “Homecoming queens, drag queens, what’s the difference?” she asks ignorantly.  “They’re all people dressing up, pretending to be something they’re not.”  The troubling of gender has only just begun.

Without the proper background information or the personal history of a particular performer it is often not easy to tell whether the performance is queer or not. Although, there are a couple of ways to queer a song, they are either through the makeup of the music or the lyrics. I would say it is much easier to determine if something is or has been queered by the lyrics. How do we define the difference between something that is queer and something that has queer connotations. For my first example I will use the band Kiss.

Kiss could be considered queer by their means of dress and the high falsetto style in which they sing. However, their lyrics in the song “I Was Made For Loving You” talk specifically about loving a woman. So, in fact is their dress just a means of expressing themselves and is actually masculine or is there a certain undertone that they are trying to suggest. This is not as obvious to determine as if I where using RuPaul as an example. RuPaul is clearly queer in the fact that this particular artist states that they are queer. So my main question is, what is the difference between these two artists and their performances? and are they trying to relay the same message?

In terms of sexuality there are many different ways that men and women can express themselves. I do not think your sexuality relates directly to your sex. Whether you are male or female, sexuality should be how one sees themselves and the way in which you need to express yourself individually. Most, if not all of the artists in the music industry today have to pay respect to the performers who came before them and who represented their sexuality in very specific ways. For instance Big Mama Thornton, who in the 1960s did not dress or display typical female attire and characteristics respectively. This individual form of self-expression easily goes back as far as the 1930s. During the German Cabaret period, songs involving queer subject matter started to appear. Even though at this time this subject matter was not displayed in public as often as in the years that followed, people started to voice their opinions and express themselves more freely. In the article “Anders Als Die Anderen or Queering The Song Construction and Representation of Homosexuality in German Cabaret Song and Recordings” by Anno Mungen, the term “Sexual Liberalism” is used. “Sexual Liberalism” is the act of people expressing their sexuality on stage through drag (both ways) men as women and women as men. The performers used these aspects to help create a greater connection and understanding between the aural and visual meaning of their performances. Today it is much more difficult to categorize a person or a performance, because there are so many different aspects and developing levels of how we identify our identity. Overall, the main point is; no matter how someone identifies themselves it is most important to express oneself in the true form of who you are, one part just happens to be sexuality.

 

 

 

In the light of the recent drag ball fesitivities, I was inspired to write about whose show I watched last year at Drag Ball, by Amanda Lepore.

I found her show fascinating, specifically because she seemed so hyper-sexualized and overt about her femininity. Amanda Lepore was born male-bodied and by the age of 15 had begun taking hormones to change to female-bodied; she underwent a sex change operation and has undergone numerous surgeries in order to create a specific feminine “look” she was going for. In a video interview she gave in 2006, the “look,” was intended to be something like “Marilyn Monroe,” and judging from her performance in last year’s drag ball, I personally felt she succeeded.

Lepore has had her lips enlarged, her breasts enlarged (three times), her eyes slanted, her hairline moved down, her butt “shaped,” and had a nose job. She also had a rib broken and pushed in to change the shape of her body. She is extremely famous within the New York City night club scene, and has apparently spent a total sum of money on her plastic surgeries that she says she “practically could have bought ten houses.”

Primarily, I am interested in the way that sexuality in this case manifests itself through gender–specifically, that Lepore was so intent on creating a specific “look” as a female-bodied person to express her sexuality. I also think that the “work” that is done (as in the educational work that the drag queens were able to achieve in the Taylor and Rupp article we read) by Lepore hinges upon whether or not the audience knows that she was born male-bodied. I find it fascinating that an audience member could, assuming Lepore was born female-bodied, dismiss her as a hyper-sexualized female, who was using her looks and body as her sole means of employment, and possibly be disconcerted about that fact. (I wonder how Lepore’s super-effemininity, for example, could be contrasted against the “grrrl” or “riot grrrrl” expressed in the Biddle/Jarman-Ivens “Oh Boy!” introduction article we read.) However, knowing that Lepore was born male-bodied immediately challenges our conceptions of the gender and sexual binary, and we wonder what is “real” and what is “fake” in her performance of her (literally) created gender. As we dig deeper, it is easy to extrapolate and realize that we all (literally) create our own gender, even if it is not necessarily through plastic surgery, and that we all maintain “real” and “fake” aspects of our gender performitivity and sexuality.

I also wonder about the extent to which Lepore she felt she had to become effeminate in order to be understood as female-bodied. Did she feel it necessary to be “authentically” female that she had to have breasts of a specific size, or eyes of a certain slant, or a butt of a certain shape? And yet, to even say someone is “authentically” female is extremely problematic, as we have seen in our very short survey of female performers who have lower voices and dress in male clothing–such as Big Mama Thornton, who was considered a more “masculine” female in her performativity of her songs and her own gender.

Again, I think that in our quest to put people into one gender binary or another, I agree with Raquel that it is important to have umbrella terms like “queer” that allow for more ambiguity and space in between our gendered notions of what is masculine, what is feminine, and what it is, exactly, that determines one’s sexuality. I think the interesting case with Amanda Lepore is that her gender expression is so overtly feminine that she reinforces sterotypical notions of femininity, which is highly ironic to many audience members considering that she was born male. The point to take away, I think, is that we must continually work to not categorize or assume things about people’s identities that they themselves do not assume in their own performitivity in day-to-day life.

Gender, sexuality, and queer politics are central to identity politics.  Throughout the classes on gender and sexuality, we have challenged our hegemonic expectations of gender and sex, as well as what it means to be queer or identify as outside of the sexuality binary.  We have done this through our exploration of the term queer, and choosing to define the word queer as a word with no definition.  As a voice from within the queer community, I find that to be a success on our part as we work to do away with terms that force people into identity boxes and instead create larger umbrella terms that allow people to flow freely through their identity construction.  In class we also explored the meaning of drag performance, and what it means to bend and manipulate gender presentation so radically and how it affects viewers and performers alike.  Through all of this, I believe the class was able (and encouraged) to walk away with a more confused and undefined conception of gender and sexuality, and would question their own approaches to the gender and sexuality of their community, friends, and themselves.
The discussion on drag performance was particularly pertinent this weekend as the yearly drag ball swept over the campus.  Taylor and Rupp made very compelling arguments in their article “Learning from drag queens” as they brought the reader into the drag performance space and into the minds of the performers.  They expressed how drag performance is a way that the queer and straight communities intertwine, and also a site where the queer community can educate the majority straight audience through gender bending performances, honesty of their identity and their choices to drag, their sometimes physically intrusive performances, and their general sexual appeal.  Taylor and Rupp explain that although the audience may not recognize it, they are getting an education about their binaristic notions of their own sexuality as they are attracted to a variety of different genders in one evening, and in some cases even act on it.  The performance space creates a safe place where gender and sexuality can be explored by the audience as the performers arouse sexual curiosity through their genderfuck performances.  In addition, the authors also acknowledge that when a straight audience enters a drag performance space, they are submitting to being the minority in a space where queer sexuality runs the show.  This kind of space is unique and educational for those who may never get this kind of queer attention or those who believe every space to be the majority straight with queers on the periphery.
Oberlin College’s drag ball attempts to create this kind of space, where queer becomes the majority and straight people are made to fit in with the queers.  And I have to admit when I first attended drag ball in my freshman year I was awed by this very aspect.  But as my years go on, I become more and more disturbed by the wide spectrum of attitudes people bring to drag ball, as well as its clear disconnect from Oberlin’s significant trans community who deal with these issues of gender on a daily basis.  In years past, TAG (Transgender Advocacy Group), SIC, and other groups on campus have joined in the drag ball efforts to put on workshops ahead of time about dragging (which I attended) as well as informational panels about what it means to be trans in Oberlin and how to be an ally.  This year, there was one workshop leading up to drag ball put on by the performers brought in from the outside, but very little connection to the Oberlin campus and the trans student voices.  Attending drag workshops helped people not only learn about how to better look like another gender, but also to create a persona that fits your character (such as macho, nerdy, sporty, etc.).  In addition, these workshops also helped to educate on what it means to perform another gender and how this translates into the lives we live everyday as our own gender.  Having a drag party without these kinds of educational experiences only enforces the binaristic notion of gender, as well as seeing drag performance as little more than putting on a costume (shown by the fact that there were no student performers this year, and only a runway show emphasizing less of the embodiment and more of the physical appeal).  For example, I found it very common to find men in very scandalous and revealing women’s clothes, but acting double the loud obnoxious fool they probably normally would be.  I find the identity challenge to be a big part of the exploration when it comes dragging, but may have been lost in the minds of a lot of partygoers this year. I think the 801 Cabaret would be disappointed with this years drag ball.
Because I’ve been on a Bitch and Animal kick, I love this song because it shows the confusion and sexual appeal of dragging.  And I always love how this duo manages to change it up and force people to think: the main character is a lesbian, but finds herself confused as she is attracted to a ‘man’.
Drag King Bar – Bitch and Animal

I am posting a clip of Frank Sinatra singing ‘Fly me to the Moon.’ Sinatra embodies masculinity in several ways: firstly, his dress (usually a typically masculine suit) is gendered. His songs are often about love, and sometimes toward a female audience; they have been used in countless love scenes between heterosexual couples in Hollywood movies, so much that I would say his songs are iconic. Finally, Frank Sinatra is associated with the Mafia, a male-dominated and excessively masculine-identifying organization.