"Homophobia Is Gay" | Teen Ink

Contents:

• "HOMOPHOBIA IS GAY"
• HOMOPHOBIA IS GAY.
• HOMOPHOBIA IS GAY.… (FRANK IERO QUOTE)
• HOMOPHOBIA IS GAY.
• HOMOPHOBIA IS GAY--FRANK IERO
• HOMOPHOBIA IS GAY ANK IERO ESSENTIAL T-SHIRT
• HOMOPHOBIA IS GAY - FRANK IERO PHOTOGRAPHIC PRT
• HOMOPHOBIA IS GAY - FRANK IERO POSTER
• HOMOPHOBIA IS GAY - FRANK IERO STICKER
• "HOMOPHOBIA IS GAY"
• HOMOPHOBIA IS GAY - FRANK IERO ESSENTIAL T-SHIRT

"HOMOPHOBIA IS GAY"

Through an examatn of stage-gay, the notor practice of queer performativy on stage by straight performers the emo mic subculture, I vtigate how a rtrictive notn of “tth” discsns of queerbag n actually close off the very possibili of transformatn and open-end nfiguratns of sexualy that Alexanr Doty’s formulatn of queerns promised. In the same volume, Emma Nord suggts there are two sis to queerbag—one versn has producers “htg at yet nyg queer ntent, and the other one has producers promisg gay characters yet not liverg proper reprentatn.

”3 Most of the thors Brennan’s book are fairly clear that the liberate tent of media producers is a key part of queerbag, as opposed to viewer terpretatns of queerns or homoeroticism. 4 Obvly this be more plited when we apply to the ncept of stage-gay, which is a term vented by fans of emo and post-punk bands the early 2000s. But jt as wh stage-gay, uld be argued that emo’s genr polics hold out a promise of progrs or egalarianism that they don’t really fulfill.

Here we foc specifilly on emo bands’ penchant for stage-gay: that is, monstratns of male/male affectn and eroticism, up to and cludg full kissg and simulatg sex onstage. When nsirg emo bands’ tentns performg stage-gay, we should look to explic statements ma by band members about s purpose: not to take them as transparent statements of fact, but as performative elements the Butlerian/Fouuldian sense, which be wh other visual and dible statements to nstct a disurse of queerns. 10 Fans’ of and rpons to stage-gay also ntribute to the nstctn of s meangs.

HOMOPHOBIA IS GAY.

We should also take to acunt the soc-cultural ntexts which stage-gay first me to public note: two boys kissg onstage at a hard rock ftival 2002 is an entirely different statement than the same gture ma a queer-iendly club 2020. 12 “Queer” is not one si of a bary on which the other si is “hetero-”: the word we would be lookg for that se is “homo-”.

Buildg on this ia of persona, I will then briefly outle the theory of performativy through which I tend to analyze the practice of stage-gay.

I will discs performers’ paratextual statements on the meangs of stage-gay while suatg agast the background of hardre and punk om which emerged, and go on to discs some of the ag that fans have ma om the texts. I will then be the lens of performativy wh the soclogil theori of Robert Heasley and Jane Ward, orr to terme that stage-gay n be really read as queerbag pends both on how we nsir the readg, the queer and the real.

HOMOPHOBIA IS GAY.… (FRANK IERO QUOTE)

Brennan and McDermott document a thread on the popular LGBT se Datalounge discsg wh a potedly homoerotic photoshoot starrg Jonas as an example of “panrg” or simply “showg his gay fans what they want to see. Readg 2006), to shouts of “faggots”: those of who were old enough to attend hardre and rock shows the early-mid 2000s will rell when there was nothg particularly remarkable about this vilent subcultural homophobia.

Stage-gay tak two forms. The first tak place lerally onstage at ncerts, and nsists of homoerotic gtur between bandmat cludg huggg, touchg, kissg and ed simulatg sex.

Emo bands the early 2000s were among the first performers to troduce this sort of performativy to an dience outsi basements, and certaly to brg to ftivals, which is why emo fandom ed stage-gay as a term. Each Try band has a particular “pairg” most notor for stage-gay (i.

HOMOPHOBIA IS GAY.

The send kd of stage-gay ncerns paratexts om televisn, magaz and social media: pos, gtur, signs, the wearg of T-shirts readg “I <3 [the other member of the pairg qutn]” and even explic sex jok.

”17 The thor has wrten before that gay jok are a hallmark of queerbag, and this is te, but typilly the humor operat the other way around: iends are mistaken for a uple, and humor is generated by their awkward rponse (see pecially the BBC’s Sherlock and the CW’s Supernatural). Havg attend the ncerts of all three bands over a perd of nearly fifteen years, I thk is safe to say that recent years, the stage-gay has been toned down, possibly bee is rather ls strikg a statement mid-sized arenas 2020 than hardre and alternative rock clubs 2004.

Bands were que explic about why they did this: when a Spanish fan acced Gerard Way of queerbag via Twter: “So you preten [sic] to be gay for get our attentn [sic]and buy more MCR's albums?

HOMOPHOBIA IS GAY--FRANK IERO

You’re very clever, ”18 he rpond archly, “Actually, the purpose of the stage persona was to challenge genr standards and homophobia. ”19 We’ll return to the ment on “slashfictn” [sic] and the of stage-gay by fans later, but this is an explic nial of the implied ceptn queerbag.

Aga, this is not to say we n take artists’ word as fact, but certaly offers an alternative nstctn of producer tent and th how stage-gay might be terpreted. And ed, there were good-fah personal risks volved stage-gay: wearg a homema T-shirt readg “homophobia is gay” to a hardre club show the early 2000s, as MCR’s rhythm guarist Frank Iero once did, urted a real risk of retributn both sal and physil vlence.

HOMOPHOBIA IS GAY ANK IERO ESSENTIAL T-SHIRT

If we nceive stage-gay as a seri of time-bound, ntext-specific performative statements, seems to me neher that mandg the ner tth of a performer’s sexualy as the only te form of actualizatn is missg the pot.

Performativy is the actualizatn of sexualy, and the homophobic and misogynist rponse om early hardre shows monstrat s effectivens.

If personas are the “the material forms of public selfhood, ”30 we ought to read stage-gay, I would argue, as statements that nstct a persona actn. Stage-gay and Fandom. We should also nsir the of stage-gay by young queer and gay fans who uld see themselv and their sir reprented at a rock show, probably for the first time, by emo artists.

HOMOPHOBIA IS GAY - FRANK IERO PHOTOGRAPHIC PRT

For stance, there is one notor Panic slash story known as “the k fic, ” ncerng Brendon Urie and his former guarist Ryan Ross, who were major proponents of stage-gay.

HOMOPHOBIA IS GAY - FRANK IERO POSTER

This kd of ratifitn of fan practice om the subjects volved—as opposed to Way’s prev assertn that stage-gay was not tend to be ed “for” fanfic—do not make stage-gay any more or ls real, but grants a kd of license or thorizatn to queer fan practice, rultg a eer space of play. Much has also been wrten on the of emo by non-mascule male fans, both straight and gay-intifyg, to articulate their emotns and offer alternative genr exprsns. ”44 Pete Wentz has appeared on the ver of the gay liftyle magaze Out, provotively posed above the headg “Yeah, I am a fag.

” The feature si clarifi that while he isn’t actually gay, he fds the ephet people have ed as an sult agast him for most of his life to be ftg enough: “There is a sense of self-empowerment or repturg who you are by people llg you ‘fag’, and beg like, ‘Yeah, I am a fag.

HOMOPHOBIA IS GAY - FRANK IERO STICKER

”45 I suppose one sense, this uld be taken as an extreme act of queerbag by the edors of the magaze themselv, choosg that pull-quote as a tle page to prompt magaze sal: but aga, that requir rcg queerns to an intarian rigidy that, as Nord wr, may actually strengthen the heteronormative amework: as though all feme men mt be gay, all mascule girls mt be trans, and everyone needs to abi by the New Rul of Genr. In the brilliantly tled, Not Gay: Sex Between Straight Whe Men, Ward warns agast an intarian nceptn of sexualy that assigns some sort of ratifitn label to dividuals on the basis of particular sexual acts. 46 She has studied the range of homosexual and homoerotic behavr between different kds of men who intify themselv as straight.

"HOMOPHOBIA IS GAY"

She ntends there is nothg unual about this—that on the ntrary, male/male homoeroticism is fundamental to the nstctn of heterosexual norms. After all, if we n neatly ci what kds of queer activy unt as gay, and which don’t—somethg Ward’s stunts seem entirely nvced of their judgements — is much easier to mata the boundari of normal and abnormal and assign dividuals to those box.

As Ward puts , To the extent that sexual ntact between straight whe men is ever acknowledged, the cultural narrativ that circulate around the practic typilly suggt that they are not gay their intarian nsequenc, but are stead about buildg heterosexual men, strengtheng hetero-mascule bonds, and strengtheng the bonds of whe manhood particular…In particular, I am gog to argue that when straight whe men approach homosexual sex the ‘right’ way—when they make a show of endurg , imposg , and repudiatg —dog so functns to bolster not only their heterosexualy, but also their masculy and whens. Sex between men don’t make them gay, says Ward, and certaly don’t make them queer.

HOMOPHOBIA IS GAY - FRANK IERO ESSENTIAL T-SHIRT

Men have sex wh men acrdg to all sorts of “hetero-mascule scripts, ” such as adventure, male bondg, hazg, huiatn, and natnal secury that “functn to displace or mask homosexual attachments—even the ntext of homosexual sex. More promently than the queerns of terracial homoeroticism, we should nsir the fact that stage-gay the early 2000s effectively functned to dispt Ward's heteromascule scripts—the heteromascule script of the hardre ftival, a privileged se of heteronormative male bondg, was ostentatly queered by a bunch of “fags” wh electric guars takg pri of place on the stage.

”51 She not that while she might ocsnally e the terms gay and queer terchangeably, she has tried to rerve her of queer “for stanc which I am scribg what some might ll ‘the gay left, ’ or the movement to rist gay assiatn and celebrate sexual and genr non-normativy. ”53 Could there be anythg more performative, anythg ls domtic, than stage-gay on a tour stop at a hard rock ftival? In an odd sense, says Ward, queerns has the stanc been “taken up by straights, ” as “gay inty is [creasgly] tethered to love and blogy…monogamo same-sex love and the gay and lbian fai prumed to ultimately rult om this love.

”54 In Ward’s schema, makp wearg straight boys, makg out at a hardre ftival over their phallic guars would certaly qualify as much queerer than two gay men gettg married the suburbs: “In sum, while the field of queer erotics has narrowed wh this turn to homonormative love, the field of hetero-erotics is ever expandg. …In many ways, straight whe men’s homosexual enunters look remarkably like the kd of queer llective sexualy I am scribg here: munal, public, kky, and fiant. “Social jtice straight-queers” are, jt as they sound, femist men and gay alli whotake actn publicly and at the risk of beg rpond to as if they were gay.