Wow, today sucks.
Sucks real bad. But I’ve been sitting on this post for a minute, and I thought maybe talking about something good and beautiful would help, so this is a little bit selfish. I sat for a bit today looking through the Gay Dreaming by Anthony Hurd and for sure cried a bit, because the steady thread of ohnooooo in my chest vibrates more loudly when I think about what’s likely to come, and how it will impact queer people, trans people, my people, but also, let’s not pretend that for some people, nothing was going to get better even if the election went another way. But this is not really that conversation. This is a conversation about how soft masculinity is so important to me.
As a masc-leaning, non-binary person who only fully realized it at forty, my relationship to gender has always been super dicey. I was socialized female, with very specific fundamentalist christian expectations, and I think it’s accurate to say it every part of that was a struggle. As a kid I could never get the notes right: the dress always looked wrong, the makeup didn’t suit, the body was a betrayal.
As an adult, performing femininity felt like drag, all the time. Even quickly finding a way to less conservative expressions that embraced the louder elements of my personality didn’t fit much more comfortably. I would look at femme people, especially femme presenting men and just feel so frustrated, like how was everyone else getting this right? How come I couldn’t fit? And you know, turns out… reasons.
Exploring masculinity was only slightly better, in part because I’m not actually that typically butch. Fam, I love a flannel, but I am a fussy fiber arts and crafts queer through and through. I do not like to fuck up my hands, they are my lifeline to creating, thank you. And like pretty most of the people I know, the dominant examples of manhood in media or my life were based on the same ol’ framework of femininity is bad, he-man good bullshit that allows only for feelings and expressions of anger, no other emotions. I totally have a therapist about it.
But art like this, wow. Gay men holding each other. Queer men dancing together in brightness and light. Men with big bodies taking up space together and kissing each other and laughing. Colorful men being soft, without the mantle of discomfort that can be so quick to follow. And I mean the softness itself is so bold, it’s so intentional, that it strips away any idea of weakness and replaces it with tenderness.
I’m not sharing images because one, not mine to share, and two, I really hope you will go look at Anthony Hurd’s work and experience it yourself, maybe even pick up his book, because I think you’ll love it.
Leave a Reply