Abstract
Yas Queen. Woof. Breed me, Daddy. Faggot God. K-hole. Good pup! Each of these phrases draws on the lexicon of different gay male subcultures. In Rusty Barrett’s From Drag Queens to Leathermen: Language, Gender, and Gay Male Subcultures, we discover how the language used in various gay male subcultures draws on gender, sexuality, and other identities like race and class to evoke, create, and perform these subcultures. How does the language of the radical faeries, a subculture of spiritual gay “not men,” differ from that of bears, a subculture that emphasizes the beauty of large hairy men? Barrett uses linguistic and ethnographic methods to understand these different cultures. In many cases, he supplements ethnographic observations of the subculture with analysis of recorded language, whether audio or previously published works. This is an illuminating book that eloquently demonstrates the necessity of analyzing sexuality and gender simultaneously and thereby revels the intersectional nature of language across cultures.
Barrett examines a range of gay male subcultures that reveal the stereotype of the homonormative upper-middle-class white gay man is not an accurate representation of the depth and diversity of gay male cultures. As the name of the book reveals, Barrett focuses on six cultures in particular. In each of these subcultures, he uses the language within this subculture to teach a broader lesson about the intersectional nature of language use. For instance, using recordings of performances, Barrett analyzes the use of “white woman” language by African-American Drag Queens in Houston, TX. Their “polyphony” reveals that these queens use “white women” language to reference not only that they can be read as women but an upper-class white woman. By breaking out of this language at times during performances, they also draw on language marking them as lower-class black men thereby demonstrating that they can successfully perform both identities and highlighting their mastery and flawlessness in performing femininity.
In other chapters, Barrett reveals how seemingly disparate groups might rely on referencing gendered class or classed gender distinctions to alternative ends. Bears—a gay male subculture that revers hair and large size—use indexical references that draw upon a white Southern United States working-class identity that naturalizes their masculinity, although few of the Bears he analyzes otherwise have a Southern working-class identity. On the other hand, buff hairless circuit boys present their masculinity as highly manufactured requiring upper-middle-class travel tastes and what might otherwise be construed as feminine primping. Circuit boys draw upon camp interactional styles and flourishes to demonstrate their superior masculinity to straight men while simultaneously negating the potential association with effeminate gay men.
Barrett provides persuasive evidence that combining references to indexical meanings to different orders and identities allows masculinity to come to mean something very different for different groups, such as a barebacker or a Leatherman, gay men who do not use condoms and those involved in BDSM/kink subcultures, respectively. While masculine integrity for a Leatherman might use indexical disjunctures—referencing a citation that is at odds with other identities being referenced—to patriotism and hegemonic values of nation and family, masculine integrity for barebackers means fostering a nonhypocritical and rational lay epidemiology toward condom use and risk management. It is in these later two chapters that Barrett falters, though this seems a result of changing norms since the time of his data collection. Barrett seems to participate in the same public health discourse of “safe sex” that these men deny, rather than respecting their lay epidemiology as also valid. I feel this was done to sidestep the stigma that comes with acknowledging that queer men like to have sex without condoms, like other groups. Similarly, the analytical slippage between community and “nation” in his chapter on leathermen could have been examined more sharply. However, Barrett’s analysis of the language use and masculinity within these groups is spot on!
Barrett’s book manages to cover an impressive scope of subcultures and makes a significant contribution to research on masculinity, but also gender, sexuality, and language broadly. I have never seen a more eloquent and precise discussion of key concepts like performativity than in Barrett’s opening chapter. The scope of subcultures would make this an excellent book to assign to LGBTQ studies courses, and the excellent contributions to gender and sexuality concepts mean that this book should be assigned early within gender and sexualities courses. If someone thinks they can research or teach gender and sexuality separately, hand them this book. The persuasive and compelling research here provides concepts that I will be returning to for a while.