The meang of ROUGH TRADE is gay men who are or affect to be gged and potentially vlent; also : such a gay person.
Contents:
- ROUGH TRA : [DANGERO GAY EROTI]
- FOXTCHER’S GAY SUBTEXT BRGS “ROUGH TRA” TO THE MOVI
- GAY ‘ROUGH TRA’ SEX: TWO BIG BEEFY BEARS BTAL, FIRST TIME PIG PLAY
ROUGH TRA : [DANGERO GAY EROTI]
* rough trade gay *
: gay men who are or affect to be gged and potentially vlent. also: such a gay person. A gay male prostute who engag btaly or sadism, or such gay men llectively.
A lower-class man who is found sexually attractive by a gay man om a higher social of rough tra1First rerd 1925–30Words Nearby rough traroughshodrough sleeperrough sprough-spokenrough stufough trarough uprough-voicedrough-wged Unabridged. 'Brish Dictnary fns for rough tranounslang ( homosexual e) a tough or vlent sexual partner, p a lorry driver, nstctn worker, or docker, sually picked upColls English Dictnary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digal Edn.
Foxtcher’s Gay Subtext Brgs “Rough Tra” to the Movi. To unrstand the disfort that many gay viewers are undoubtedly feelg screengs of Foxtcher—the dreary b of Osr ba jt out om director Bent Miller—you need to unrstand a few thgs about gay archetyp and how they have historilly functned. This is important, bee I nnot thk of another recent movie that so clearly reli on homo-anx, dog-whistle shorthand for both s characterizatn and plot; and yet, save for Armond Whe’s sthg piece OUT, the film’s largely posive reviews have avoid real examatn of the issue.
FOXTCHER’S GAY SUBTEXT BRGS “ROUGH TRA” TO THE MOVI
To be fair, some crics have wonred aloud about the film’s “hts” at homoeroticism, but they have ultimately shied away om gog further. Those elements are probably there somewhere, but ’s the gay subtext— this se, the age-old story of a wealthy, effete fairy gog after rough tra—that feels most central, most necsary for the movie to make whatever narrative sense do. But then, none of the read as crypto-gay eher.
Schultz wr his memoir that “I had my spicns [that du Pont might be gay], but I never observed … anythg that would e me to say he was a homosexual. The term will be faiar to many gay rears, but perhaps ls so to others, so here’s a quick troductn.
Tra is a slang word om Polari, a gay English dialect popular the 19th and early 20th centuri that’s mostly died out now save for a few exprsns. The term generally refers to a mascule-prentg man who is not gay-intified, but who will have sex wh gay men for money or social stat. Even if you didn’t nscly know about the fairy/tra dynamic before, you’ve almost certaly picked up along the way as a cultural trope, a lazy way of reprentg gay male relatnships as predatory—and there li my problem wh this movie.
GAY ‘ROUGH TRA’ SEX: TWO BIG BEEFY BEARS BTAL, FIRST TIME PIG PLAY
But what really soured Foxtcher for me (asi om disverg that so much of this stuff arose om artistic choice rather than historil fact) was Miller’s sistence that the te st of this gay drama was not to du Pont or even Mark, but to the heterosexual fay. The more I reflect on this movie, the more I feel like reli on a particularly sid—and troublgly effective—kd of homophobic suggtn for s allure.
Nothg anti-gay is ever prented clearly, and yet, if you’re primed to accept homophobic iology (or to look for media), s prence Foxtcher is palpable. 30, 2008David Bret’s angle on Clark Gable is this: Gable was “gay for pay” and “rough tra, ” and he enjoyed havg sex “for bucks.
Wh clear disgt, he also lls Gable a hypocre for matag a macho sex-symbol image and for engagg “homophobic rantgs, ” even though he’d slept wh men.