masculinity

The Box's Crush of the Week: Neil Patrick Harris

Juliana Tringali — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 20:48:25 -0500

How I Met Your Mother's Barney Stinson is the best reason to turn on your TV on a Monday night. He's crass. He's selfish. He's a capitalist. And his way with women makes Sam Malone look like Lloyd Dobbler. So why is this feminist crushing so hard? Because while Neil Patrick Harris' comic ability makes me laugh at Barney's sexist jokes against my will, his dramatic ability evokes sympathy that I've never come close to with previous TV Lotharios.

Note: This video contains ads.

Do you see it? The insecurity lurking behind the bravado? The sweet, chewy center within the womanizing shell? That's NPH taking a played-out male stereotype to a new level. And people love it. Not only does Barney Stinson have a popular blog on cbs.com (he's always bugging his fictional friends to read it), he also has multiple fan sites where enthusiasts discuss their favorite Barney moments and quotes. But the fact that Neil Patrick Harris is openly homosexual doesn't come up much in the comments. In fact, Harris' homosexuality seems to go so well with his tongue-in-cheek masculinity that most fans forget about it.

That's probably why he's even more "masculine" when he's playing himself. His turn in the Harold & Kumar movies as a club-drugging, seat-humping, hooker-branding version of himself was every bit as funny as it was disturbing. And his endorsements of Old Spice cologne show that the brand is only too happy to have the debonair NPH shill their manly brand. Who cares if they have to get some other guy to kiss the girl?

Note: This video is an ad.

I'm going to posit that Neil Patrick Harris is this century's answer to Cary Grant. He brings a self-awareness to his performance that allows us to understand, appreciate, and even crush on characters who would otherwise be written off as casualties of dudes-are-like-this/chicks-are-like that writing. He shows us that even stereotypical men can have a softer side, even while they're doing their damnedest to man up and hide it.

Say what you will about Barney Stinson, but NPH is a total dreamboat.

Miscellaneous reasons to crush:

His turn as the tragic nerd/supervillain in the extraordinary Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. (This is especially recommended for Buffy fans, as it was written and directed by Joss Whedon.)

His adorable recurring role on Sesame Street as the Shoe Fairy

His narration of the Henry Huggins audio books by Beverly Cleary
His love of magic (He's on the Board of Directors of the Hollywood Magic Castle). Le sigh.

Get some nuts?

Debbie Rasmussen — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 19:53:55 -0400

If you're offended, you can take some relief knowing that the ad was never shown in the United States – Mars (Snickers' parent company) agreed to pull it after complaints from the HRC.

About/for my dad

Debbie Rasmussen — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 18:05:38 -0400

Since today is Father's Day, I want to take some time to reflect on my dad, and try to start giving voice to some ideas and pain and anger that have been simmering in my mind.

My dad died this past winter after a shitty and long battle with cancer (he was a life-long smoker). He was 67. Now I know this might seem like a particularly loaded way of bringing politics down to the level of personal (and thus emotional), but here's the thing. I've been doing a lot reading lately. Of books, of blogs, of zines, magazines, chapbooks, of vision statements and organizing principles of self-described radical organizations and people... I've also been doing a lot of listening. And struggling to find the language to pull these ideas and feelings out of my head/heart, thoughts about identities and experiences. Critiques of which ones are validated/politicized and which ones aren't, and which others aren't even considered as possibilities for political analysis. And I've been struggling to even speak because, who knows? Maybe I haven't considered enough. Maybe I'm missing something. Maybe I haven't been as thoughtful as I think I have. Maybe I haven't searched hard enough.

(There are some people who need to learn to step aside and be quiet and there are others who need to learn to find their voice, to not be afraid.)

Back to my dad. I didn't have the greatest relationship with him while I was growing up. He'd come from a very fundamentally religious family and despite his efforts not to, ended up recreating the same culture of authority, punishment, and shame he'd experienced in his family. Fortunately he was also quiet, stubborn, stoic, and tended to keep to himself, so the overtly oppressive qualities usually only came out when my sister and/or I were in trouble. Now it's true that we were in trouble a lot, but it's also true that we had many good moments as a family. I feel very lucky that some of my happiest memories are of shared family moments – swimming on the Mississippi River, playing cards in our basement, watching the Muppets, traveling to Nashville (my dad had a thing for country music).

What I don't feel so lucky about is that we were poor in matters of heart, money, and resources.

I remember, about seven years ago, reading bell hook's book All About Love. The book made me so angry. Who was she to tell me what love is and isn't, I thought. It took me two years to recognize that my anger was total self-defense. Against the truth that despite what I believe were my parents good intentions, the values I was raised with were completely antithetical to love. Authority, punishment, shame... Sure we had some fun times, but ours was not a family of love as I've come to think of it, in part thanks to hooks' thinking.

Five years ago, shortly after I read All About Love, my dad's fight with cancer began. It started in his lungs and kidneys, later spread to his brain, and then his shoulder, pelvis, and eventually his bones. My dad and his illness, treatments, and sometimes fights to get treatment (he was uninsured) occupied our small family until he died this past November. My mom was his full-time caretaker, which began as cooking for him and getting him to his appointments and eventually including cleaning his dentures, changing his bedpan, and getting up multiple times a night to scratch his back (a side effect of painkillers his painkillers was that they made him itchy). For most of it, she also did this while working a crappy full-time job.

During my dad's recovery from brain surgery, though, my mom was laid off. At risk of sounding overly dramatic, this was pretty much the story of our (family) life.

(I do realize that lately my posts have been turning into more "Debbie Downer" than "Minneosta Nice".)

Back to the idea of love. The upside to my dad's long and at times agonizing (for all of us) battle with cancer was that I was handed an opportunity to reconcile, make amends, replace the remaining bitterness and anger with love, forgiveness, and compassion. It was difficult work (and I'm grateful to friends, mentors, and those who've gone before me for assistance/guidance), and to be honest, work that didn't come full-circle until I returned home to see my dad shortly before he died. The last time I'd seen him was a year prior, and though he was very thin and walked with a cane, he was still my dad as I knew and remembered him. I'd walked farther down my path of love and forgiveness, but I still felt traces of anger.

This last time, however, I walked into their home to see him lying in a hospital bed in my parents' living room. He was tiny, frail, ribs poking out, lucid but already in some other dimension. He was infant-like, his head covered with light fuzz, and he'd lost fine motor control over his movements. All the work, reading, meditating, talking, listening I'd done couldn't have prepared me for seeing him like this. But neither could I have been prepared for the feeling of total love and compassion that washed over me. The only thing in the world I cared about during that last week with him was making him as comfortable and feel as loved and cared for as possible. Although I know he was extremely uncomfortable, I wanted desperately for our time together to continue, so I could love him more, hold his hand longer, tell him again that I love him, and hear him mumble it back, sweetly. It was both the most painful and the most beautiful and transformative thing I've ever experienced.

On his final morning of consciousness, as I sat next to his bed, he asked me, "Days or hours?" I asked him to explain. He said, "Do you think I have days or hours left?" I said, "I think you have days left. How much time do you want?"

"Years," he replied. Shortly after, though, he said, "This has been a long struggle, and I can't fight anymore."

He stared out the window for a few minutes, then asked, "Where do you think I'll go after this?"

I was stunned. I didn't have the language of spirit, the faith, the knowledge of how to respond in a way that would sound loving and comforting but also true to what was really in my head/heart. "I don't really don't know," I said, "but I believe it will be a better place than here."

Shortly after this, he fell into a coma, where he remained for another three days until he died, his eyes and face looking up toward the sky, a look of calm washed over them.

...

And now.

Six months have passed.

The presence of his absence barrages me with emotions, feelings, reactions. Some of them are positive, like the feelings of liberation – freedom from his sometimes oppressive nature, and freedom from feeling like the lives of my mom, sister, and me had in many senses been on hold for the five years of his illness. His death has opened up a space that I didn't even realize would be there until after he was gone – my mom, sister, niece, and I all relate to each other differently now.

Then there are the moments of the deepest, most comforting psychic connection I've felt. Like when I listen to his favorite version of Amazing Grace, or when I listen to Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, the Carter Family, and all the other old country and southern gospel music that deeply moved him. And since my accordion learning coincided with a long-awaited love between my dad and me, when I play my accordion now, it's almost as though I feel his energy running up and down my spine. I've never felt anything like it.

But sometimes the pain of it all hits so hard that I have no language to communicate. I literally disassociate from reality and enter another dimension. My mind shuts down in complete denial that he is gone. That's the downside of opening your heart to someone, right? It's devastating when they're gone.

In other moments that are more simply sorrowful, I think of the potentials that are lost. Potentials for more closeness, more understanding, more love. I still struggle and imagine I always will with the reality that even until the end, my dad didn't want to die.

But as I sit here today, I feel confused and frustrated. Angry. I think about my dad, growing up poor, dropping out of high school, joining the Navy, serving in Vietnam. Trying to support a family, but never being able to. Not having money or resources or access to them. Not knowing how to connect to people emotionally. All the while trying to repress his own sense of failure and self-hatred because he hasn't lived up to society's conception of what it means to "be a man."

When I was young and didn't know any better, I directed my anger at our constant financial struggles at him. My parents hadn't had access/exposure to progressive/radical ideas, so didn't know that there were political/systemic reasons for our circumstances. When I discovered my life's work of fighting for social/economic justice, he didn't understand. His internalized classism ran too deep. So does mine, I'm learning, since some of this is finally coming to light for the first time in my life.

Funny, when I was tying this into a word-processing program, it flagged the word "classism" because it's not even in its dictionary.

And as I sit here today, I also think about what we (as social movements) say we've learned, how important we say it is that we avoid "oppression olympics" and how important it is to focus on intersectionality yet how infrequently this happens (and is it possible, many ask).

And we all have our own wounds and scars, but I'm beginning to open some of mine because I see/feel the need for genuine healing...

Where does class and anti-classism fit into our feminism(s) or movements for social justice, if it's not as central as other struggles?

Are we actively seeking to center people from poor backgrounds (from across race/ethnic and gender categories) in our movements, recognizing the violence of capitalist/economic oppression?

How do we politicize family struggles/experiences?

How do we move beyond organizing by outdated identity categories, start considering/politicizing the impacts of other identities, and also focus our attention on one's consciousness rather than what we see on someone from the outside?

How do we infuse our work with "spiritual activism" (I first heard this term from Gloria Anzaldua, but perhaps it originated with someone else?) and centralize concepts like love, forgiveness, and compassion into our politics?

I'm not asking for answers to these questions (though if you have them, by all means, I'd love to hear them, as well as other questions or insights). I just know that the conversations need to be pushed deeper, farther. I know that I have to start getting these thoughts out of my head and out into the world. People will continue to be hurt and silenced if we continue to use the language/frameworks we're using.

I'm not sure how to end this post, so I'll end with a video of Johnny Cash, who my dad and I both loved, and who gracefully and powerfully addresses some of what I'm trying to get at here (collective struggle, the idea of solidarity). How wonderful to find Spanish subtitles to one of his great ones.

Coming out (and out and out)

Debbie Rasmussen — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 17:36:55 -0400

Lately I've been thinking about the process of coming out and identities/shifting, and how for so many of us it's an ongoing/lifetime process. In part because we as individuals change, and/or in part because our environment changes, and/or in part because our identities can't be read on the outside, and/or because some of us feel the most comfortable in those in-between spaces yet sometimes feel compelled to "pick a side" (so to speak/referencing here the dualism so prevalent in mainstream Western culture), because the struggle to have our identities validated (or even finding language to define ourselves and our experiences) simply becomes too much work. But then when we "pick that side," we might eventually feel the weight of that boxed-in identity start to hurt, so we begin the process of coming out again... Or geez, to put it most simply, because things just change...

I don't just mean coming out as it relates to gender and sexuality, but coming out as, say, someone who's dealing with depression or other mental/emotional realities. Or as someone who creates/exists in relationships that defy convention (and, oftentimes, language). Or as someone who prefers no relationships at all. Or as someone who grew up in a culture of conflict or abuse, or grew up in a religiously fundamental family.

The examples are, obviously endless, but I'll share something that happened to me recently. When I was in Wisconsin, I had a lovely and in-depth conversation with someone about the focus of feminism(s) these days, and about identities and assumptions. It was the first time I'd met her, so I knew nothing about her. She asked, "If you had to make an assumption about my life, identity, or work, what's one thing that comes to mind?" I responded as honestly as I could, and said that considering her appearance and the way she spoke, I would likely assume that she's a professor or someone from the "professional class." She then corrected my assumptions by telling me that she'd been homeless for the past three years, in and out of transitional homes, but largely living on the street. She's never set foot on a college campus. But, she added, she often meets people who, like me, assume that her reality/identity are much different.

Anyway, I want to share a podcast with y'all, which actually is focused on the more traditional conception of coming out (in a gender/sexuality context), but is a wonderful example of how, for so many people, coming out is a continuous and ever-changing process.

It's called The gayest podcast in Michigan and it's produced by Trevor Hoppe, who I met back when I (and Bitch) was in the San Francisco Bay Area. It's a personal interview with Jackson Bowman, someone I've had the pleasure of knowing for a long time (through his transition from lesbian to butch to man to gay man). He's a great story-teller, and he offers some valuable and candid insights on body image, sexuality, gay male culture, masculinity, and queer culture in general.

Warning: Parts of this interview are very sexually graphic, and might be triggering to people who've experienced sexual abuse.

Below is a five minute preview. If you like what you hear, head over here to hear the rest.

In the interview several important books and authors were mentioned and I want to link to a few here:

Leslie Feinberg and Stone Butch Blues

Body Alchemy: Photographs

Riki Anne Wilchins' Read My Lips: Sexual subversion and the end of gender

Jamison Greene

More conference bitching

Debbie Rasmussen — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 17:33:03 -0400

I was back in Minneapolis this weekend for the National Conference for Media Reform, an event organized by the folks at Free Press, a nonpartisan group focused on media reform and policy.

I've had conflicted feelings about the conference since it started in 2003. Actually, back when it first started, I wasn't so much conflicted as just pissed off. A lot of us were pissed. I was living in Madison then, which was the site chosen for the first conference. Many of us were part of a vibrant and active independent/grassroots media community that included, among many other projects and efforts, a radical community newspaper, an active Indymedia center, and a long-running community radio station. What pissed us off is that although the conference was to be held in Madison, none of us local independent media creators/media justice organizers were included in the planning. Actually, we weren't even alerted that the conference organizing was taking place. It was beyond ridiculous; it was offensive. How could an event focused on media reform blatantly ignore the folks who were a critical part of that work, even if our focus was different?

What made the situation more frustrating to me is that at the time, I was in somewhat regular contact with two of the founders of Free Press – Bob McChesney and John Nichols. I'd turned to Bob for assistance in designing an independent study course on media criticism (I was taking courses at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he'd taught years earlier but was allegedly ousted for being too radical; he now teaches at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana), and he kindly provided some much-needed guidance and mentorship. He'd also allowed us at the Madison Insurgent to reprint some of his articles on media conglomeration. John had kindly assisted those of us involved in the unionizing effort at Whole Foods by writing op-eds for the local paper, and helping us get the word out about our struggles.

In other words, the founders/organizers of the conference were well aware that there were active local independent media projects, yet didn't make a single effort at reaching out to any of us. In fact some of us tried to reach out to them, but our calls and emails were not returned. It was infuriating, to put it mildly.

In response, a radical contingent of Madison independent media producers/media justice activists organized a shadow conference that, from all accounts was very successful (I was unable to make it because by the time the conference came around, I'd already moved to Oakland).

Two years later, the conference moved to St. Louis, and it was clear that efforts were at least being made to be more inclusive. For one thing, Free Press offered scholarships to those of us who otherwise wouldn't be able to attend. I was grateful for the opportunity the scholarship provided, to meet lots of folks doing great grassroots work, and reconnect with old allies/comrades. But my overwhelming reaction (and the one of countless other radical media folks I talked to) was one of frustration at the extent to which media reformers still didn't seem to notice (let alone value) those of us creating media, and/or those of us who incorporate a media justice ethic into our work. It was frightening to see how many people think policy and lobbying is the only way to effect change. It was frightening to see the absence of challenging deeply systemic power structures. It didn't feel like movement-building. It felt like a lot of disconnected policy talk, a lot of strategizing about organizing through the usual channels (without an examination of the structures that produce and replicate systems of oppression), and a painful absence of creativity and misunderstanding (or outright refusal to consider?) democracy and media justice.

So I knew what I was getting into this year, but wanted to give it another shot. And overall, I'm glad I did. Over 3,000 people attended. Again I thank Free Press for offering scholarships to those of us who otherwise wouldn't be able to attend. I met many new folks, learned about some exciting organizing going on, reconnected with people working on some incredible projects (like the Center for Media Justice, the Prometheus Radio Project, Youth Outlook, and People's Production House), and at the end of one long day, was even lucky enough to visit two of my favorite Minneapolis night spots (The Brass Rail and The Saloon), where I got some much-needed kindness by a loving contingent of Minnesota Nice homos and fags (thanks, all of you, for being as sweet as you always have been).

But. When I registered and opened this year's conference packet, I read the welcome letter, the opening line of which is, "We are here because the media's failure to inform and represent our communities poses one of the greatest threats to our democracy."

Our "democracy"? Call me nitpicky, but my definition of democracy means that people actually have power. Moreover, or more specific to this conference, considering the ongoing criticisms of media justice activists and media producers that they don't feel included, it seems all the more strange to use such loaded language.

I missed last year's conference in Memphis, but I talked to a number of folks who said they felt things had actually regressed this year, and they were openly questioning whether they would continue to return.

We need a media movement that's engaging and built from the ground up. We need a movement that examines power structures and seeks to destroy the status quo. This does not feel like a movement. It does not feel inclusive to many of us from marginalized identities, and/or who are fighting on the margins.

It also replicates the same cult of personality/power that we as progressives/radicals claim to resist. With all due respect, how many times do we need to put folks like Amy Goodman, Bill Moyers, Phil Donahue, and now Dan Rather on a platform? I understand the need to lure folks in, but if that's what it takes, we have more work to do, most notably in the areas of listening to other people's stories and opening up doors and spaces.

I'm still on the fence about my future involvement, but I do want to end on a positive note, because I experienced many inspiring and refueling moments over the weekend. Things like:

Interacting with folks from one of what I consider to be the most radical organizing efforts around, the Kennsington Welfare Rights Union. If you're not familiar with their work, please read about them and support them. They're a multi-racial organization by and for people who are poor and homeless.
Hearing Chris Rabb emphasize the importance of organizing across race and gender, focusing on inclusive efforts that also foreground class. I've been hearing a lot of talk lately (well, for a long time, really) about the importance of not playing oppression derby, but I still see a lot of it happening, and as long as I've been politically active, I've seen class/classism take a back seat to other identities. I have a lot more to say about this, but for now I'll just express my firm belief that until we start foregrounding class and critiquing capitalist values, efforts at effecting social change are meaningless.
Hearing Daisy Hernandez speak to the history and current work of Color Lines, and appreciating her reminder to those of us involved in grassroots publishing projects that it can be more meaningful and impactful for one person being incited to action through reading a story than to have massive numbers of subscribers.
And finally, seeing an incredible movie called Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes, which examines masculinity, sexism, violence, and anti-gay sentiment (and homoeroticism) in hip-hop culture. Using interviews with hip-hop artists, cultural critics, and his own experiences and relationships to hip hop and anti-sexist work, Byron Hurt did a phenomenal job of covering the multiplicity of forces converging to make hip-hop what it is today. For anyone who thinks feminism is/should be all about women, for anyone who doesn't recognize the profound ways in which men are constrained by our oppressive cultural values, this movie is a serious wake up call. Many parts were painful to watch, but it was a powerful story and an extremely well done film. Following the screening, Byron answered questions, and emphasized, as others have recently, the importance of inclusive organizing that transcends race, class, and gender. I left hopeful knowing that there are folks out there who realize the necessity of inclusiveness in movement building.

Masculinity’s Mid-Life Crisis

Anna Breshears — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 13:34:51 -0400

Lately, it seems there's been more discussion of what it means to be a man. Maybe because old school notions are becoming so unworkable that there's a critical mass of resentful partners in hetero relationships; perhaps Hilary's presidential run is raising some eyebrows in sheltered communities; certainly, movies like Knocked Up and 40 Year Old Virgin, which portray an alarmingly large group of American males that exist in perpetual adolescence, have attracted media attention.

Walrus (I'm to understand it's like the Canadian New Yorker) contributer Edward Keenan's two-month-old blog, Act Like A Man, seeks to meditate on what exactly that very phrase means in our current cultural climate. He writes in his initial post:

I've come to realize more and more that I don't even really have a clear idea of what the phrase "act like a man" means. The zeitgeist definition of masculinity, summed up in the oeuvres of Judd Apatow, Ben Stiller and the Farrelly brothers (and underscored less amusingly by Maxim magazine and a slew of Budweiser commercials) is a moronically-if-kind-of-harmlessly sexist, indefinitely suspended adolescence in which playing video games in your parent's basement replaces getting a real job and women are universally cleavage-bearing Mommy Dearest stand-ins who will tick (and nag) you into a suffocating life of boredom and responsibility, to be drooled over from a distance but feared like a high school principal in person. Sad? Maybe. But not entirely inaccurate.

What follows are fairly insightful (whether or not I agree is another issue) entries on the death penalty, guy V. man, responsibility and man's resistance to growing up, sports & gender relations; as can be expected comments are interesting and, more often than not, well-written. The very notion of masculinity seems outdated to me, as it's more iconic, positive aspects like standing up for someone you love, supporting your children, being brave in the face of adversity and what not are the qualities of being a good human in general, not just a good man. Alas, it is never as simple as that, is it?

This issue was also recently addressed in "Child-Man", an editorial by Kay Hymnowitz, (contributing editor at Manhattan Institute's City Journal) which focuses on the problem with perpetual adolescence.

With women, you could argue that adulthood is in fact emergent. Single women in their 20s and early 30s are joining an international New Girl Order, hyper-achieving in both school and an increasingly female-friendly workplace, while packing leisure hours with shopping, traveling and dining with friends. Single young males, or SYMs, by contrast, often seem to hang out in a playground of drinking, hooking up, playing Halo 3 and, in many cases, underachieving. With them, adulthood looks as though it's receding.

Essentially, she argues, men's "default state" is immaturity.

We can argue endlessly about whether "masculinity" is natural or constructed - whether men are innately promiscuous, restless and slobby or socialized to be that way - but there's no denying the lesson of today's media marketplace: Give young men a choice between serious drama on the one hand, and Victoria's Secret models, battling cyborgs, exploding toilets and the NFL on the other, and it's the models, cyborgs, toilets and football by a mile.

Part of this is perversion by media (Maxim, bad TV) but it is more a denial of self-reflection and lack of expectations that make some males the eternal "dudes" they become. And that leaves hetero women with some pretty poor choices for partners, as well as negatively affecting relationships with their own children and communities at large. Keenan argues that as men feel more obsolete (women can do everything without them thank you very much) they regress. Explaining the psychology behind that is another issue entirely (I'm rolling my eyes here), but it's clear that many men do struggle with finding another role outside of those they grew up with.

News flash: boys like relationships

Lisa Jervis — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 17:23:41 -0500

Cheers to a new study reporting that, contrary to age-old stereotypes about teenage boys as indiscriminate horndogs, 16-year-old boys' primary motivations for dating are that they "really like the person" (via the New York Times health blog).

It's kinda sad that both the study and the even-handed New York Times treatment is cause for celebration, but when most media discussion of gender and sexuality regurgitates the same old hoo-ha with a few new twists, well, I'm breakin' out my noisemaker for this one.

It'll be interesting to see what kind of play the study gets. As documented by frequent Bitch contributor Keely Savoie, among others, reporting on science tends to be especially steeped in cultural baggage. Can a commonsense conclusion like this one break through?

Love Guns, Tight Pants, and Big Sticks

Kyla — Tue, 01 Mar 2005 00:00:00 -0500

cock rock: To some, the term conjures up images of rock gods in white jumpsuits, long hair haloed by a rainbow of lights, fans waving their Bics in unison as an immaculate guitar solo screams out from a tower of amps. To others, it evokes backstage legends of drugs and debauchery, the triumph of malecentric hedonism over social conscience, the unapologetic celebration of sleaze. To still others, it’s shorthand for memorable riffs with a backbeat that makes you want to throw some devil horns and bang your head.

The term was originally coined in the early ’70s to describe the preening, strutting style of bands like Led Zeppelin and, later, Aerosmith and AC/DC; in the ’80s it was used—usually contemptuously—to dismiss the overweening excesses and jokey double entendres of Van Halen, Ratt, and any other band featured in Hit Parader. In their 1978 essay “Rock and Sexuality,” cultural critics Angela McRobbie and Simon Frith identified cock rock as “music making in which performance is an explicit, crude and often aggressive expression of male sexuality,” suggesting a thread that ran from Elvis Presley to Mick Jagger and onward. But while the definition of cock rock could be limited to the stylistically outrageous but utterly derivative genre that formed around a few gifted innovators, it could also include all rock music that automatically places men on stage and women in the audience—that is, almost all mainstream rock. For most contemporary listeners, it also has to include ironic—intentionally or not—appropriations like This Is Spinal Tap, Penelope Spheeris’s documentary The Decline of Western Civilization Part II, and even the theme song from Beverly Hills, 90210.

No matter where they might be ranked on the cock-rock scale (one person’s thunder rock could very well be another’s glitter rock), the musicians, music, and performances discussed here all had a few key things in common. There was the hair, for one: Throughout the ’70s, ’80s, and early ’90s, big hair was the bare minimum requirement for acceptance into the cock-rock world—hence the synonym “hair bands” for ’80s cock rockers like Mötley Crüe and Night Ranger. Though teased-out man locks befuddle us now, long rock hair in its many forms was accepted as both sexual signifier and universal rebel currency for years. (It’s mystifying that the same men who were flouncing around in spiral perms and floppy velvet hats could project such disparaging attitudes toward women, but rejecting the crew-cut generation of their fathers—even if their politics barely differed—was crucial to rock rebellion.)

Then there were the pants. Cock rockers took the late-’70s vogue in snug trousers to new heights, with improbable bulges proudly displayed at eye level to screaming fans, a medium for the band’s sexual connection to the audience. Elsewhere, the suggestive was made explicit by lyrics veiled only by the most transparent euphemisms, from Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar on Me” (“You got the peaches, I got the cream”) to Aerosmith’s naughty teaser “Big Ten Inch” (“I cover her with kisses/And when we’re in a lover’s clinch/She gets all excited/When she begs for my big ten inch/Record”). It’s hard to work up much of a huff over lyrics like these—they’re laughable in spite of, or perhaps because of, the earnestness with which they were delivered, pelvic thrusts and all.

Finally, there was the spectacle of the stage shows—the lasers, flashpots, and dry ice; the wicked guitar and drum solos; and the sexually charged presence of the frontman, who, along with the lead guitarist, functioned as a conduit for the music’s erotic energy. Through stage antics that have long since become cliché—humping the mic stand, positioning the guitar at crotch level and thrusting it toward the audience during a solo—cock rockers telegraphed the centrality of the phallus to rock music, both onstage and off.

In recent years, some of these elements have enjoyed a revival within indie music and fashion circles. Vintage Guns N’ Roses and Cheap Trick t-shirts retail for five times their original arena value; white belts and mullets are being embraced by kids who were watching Sesame Street when Quiet Riot hit MTV. The most sensitive emo boy will give it up for the Rolling Stones and boast of Metallica albums buried somewhere in his past. Bands like the Darkness have ridden the zip-up-jumpsuit, killer-guitar-solo wave to greatness in an effort that’s almost entirely stylistic. Cock-rock appreciation circa 2005 is simultaneously ironic, nostalgic, hard-core, and self-deprecating—standard traits of any decent hipster fad.

But what happens when it’s women taking on the cock in rock? It’s a question worth posing to the new slew of all-female cock-rock tribute bands. California alone is home to Hell’s Belles, AC/DShe, Cheap Chick, Black Sabbath tribute band Mistress of Reality, the Iron Maidens, and more. When female musicians dress like their rock forefathers and play what is, by its very moniker, assumed to be male music, do they necessarily suggest a feminist critique? Visit their websites and you’ll get a range of answers. Mistress of Reality, for example, pride themselves on the authenticity of their tribute, but seem uninterested in exploring the gender politics of metal. AC/DShe say they play because they’re the “biggest AC/DC fans around”—a subtle hint of gender equity in the music scene, but little more. Cheap Chick happily claim an “estrogen-loaded homage to the golden age of stadium rock” and celebrate their “gender-bending twist,” and Hell’s Belles leave no room for doubt when it comes to political agenda, solidly “representing for a new generation of women who won’t be intimidated.”

It’s no secret that rock music has long been the domain of men, but it wasn’t always this way. In the ’50s and early ’60s, the biggest consumers of rock ’n’ roll records and concert tickets were teenage girls. As the music grew in technical prowess and political consciousness in the late ’60s, fans grew with it. Concerts became a site of psychological, social, and sexual experimentation, and while the scene wasn’t exactly utopian, it did provide a space for women to explore a long-repressed sexuality that was only just emerging in the public mind.

But then a strange conversion took place: Rock ’n’ roll became rock, and female fans were transformed into dates, groupies,While groupies haven’t exactly enjoyed feminist iconhood, it’s important to note that they did their fair share of objectifying rock stars. My favorite example is the legendary Cynthia Plaster Caster, whose plaster casts of rock’s cocks (which she still makes today) reverse the more conventional “rocker as artist, groupie as muse” relationship. or stay-at-home fans. Enter cock rock.

In her groundbreaking 1970 article “Rock Around the Cock,” Patricia Kennealy-Morrison attributed the decline of female attendance at rock shows to multiple factors. For one thing, as the music became more technically oriented and invited a more educated critique, it was claimed as boy territory—supposedly beyond female comprehension. The rise of rock criticism in mainstream media was fueled by the notion that writers could capture the true genius of musicians by casually hanging out with them, and that translated to a no-girls-allowed obstacle for a number of female critics, including Kennealy-Morrison herself. (Female rock writers who did spend time with bands were always under suspicion of being mere groupies looking to make time with their fave raves under the auspices of journalism.)

And as the music got harder, its sexual overtones intensified, and they didn’t generally provide a girl-friendly vision of male sexuality. Lyrics such as “I didn’t know if you were legal tender/But I spent you just the same” (AC/DC) and “You’re wearin’ clothes that fit you well/Baby, baby, you’re not hard to sell” (KISS), while steeped in a blues tradition,Nearly all of rock’s sexual expression is based in the blues, but white male interpretations of that sexuality have largely lacked the original nuance of the blues performers. As Charles Shaar Murray put it in Crosstown Traffic, a song like “Whole Lotta Love” was sweet and seductive in Muddy Waters’s hands, but became “thermonuclear gang rape” when performed by Led Zeppelin. seemed to unabashedly endorse the objectification of—if not violence against—women. The combination of misogynist lyrics and aggressive delivery created a space for some male fans to engage in gross acts of disrespect toward female fans, most commonly manifesting in molestation. Whereas concerts had always been slightly anarchic, they became generally unsafe for women to attend alone.It may have appeared that women’s interest in rock faded out altogether, but it’s more likely that it simply retreated indoors. Cock rockers had a huge presence in fan magazines: Teen rags like Bop, Tiger Beat, and 16 ran constant images of Roger Daltrey, David Lee Roth, Jimmy Page, and even Meatloaf, for display on bedroom walls. Rock! even ran a “Win the Shirt off Ted Nugent’s Bod” contest.

While female musicians found success in the rock scene, they were more often than not regarded as novelties. Heart’s “Barracuda,” for instance, is arguably one of the greatest songs of the ’70s, but its popularity at the time was tempered by critics’ claims that bandleaders Ann and Nancy Wilson were lesbians—as if that, and not the quality of their lyrics and riffs, were the real issue. The Runaways—self-proclaimed Queens of Noise—featured Joan Jett and Lita Ford, both formidable guitarists. (Ford would later be the first woman inducted into Circus magazine’s Rock Hall of Fame.) A band of Hollywood teenagers assembled by industry provocateur Kim Fowley, the Runaways attracted an audience largely consisting of screaming teenage boys, dispelling the notion that male fans had a more rational appreciation of music and women were the ones who went into fits. But because of both the band’s gender and its provenance, male critics met the Runaways with predictable contempt. (One review opened simply with “These bitches suck.”) Jett recalled these reactions to her band in a 1998 interview in the Onion AV Club: “First, people just tried to get around it by saying, ‘Oh, wow, isn’t that cute? Girls playing rock and roll!’ and when we said ‘Yeah, right, this isn’t a phase; it’s what we want to do with our lives,’ it became ‘Oh! You must be a bunch of sluts! You dykes, you whores.’”

In an increasingly closed-minded mainstream scene, many women went underground for the freedom to rock. In the emerging punk scene, female players and fans enjoyed both a diy spirit that allowed girls to be in the know without a gendered “technical” knowledge prerequisite and a political agenda (at least in theory) of challenging the male-only scene. While movements such as homocore and riot grrrl would later call out—and confront—the straight white male hierarchy within the scene, punk sure as hell beat the likes of cock rockers proudly upholding every privilege of straight white masculinity in lip gloss and AquaNet.Just as masculine aggression was a given in cock rock, so was much of it foisted upon musicians by the industry itself. In his 1975 Rolling Stone interview with Jimmy Page and Robert Plant, Cameron Crowe asked them to respond to critics’ claims that their lyrics were “dated flower-child gibberish.” Plant replied, “How can anybody be a ‘dated flower-child’? The essence of the whole trip was the desire for peace and tranquility and an idyllic situation. That’s all anybody could ever want…. Not all my stuff is meant to be scrutinized, though. Things like ‘Black Dog’ are blatant let’s-do-it-in-the-bath type things, but they make their point just the same. People listen.” It seems that rockers were more likely to receive a negative response from the press when they avoided misogynist lyrics in favor of more constructive content.

Cock rock in its many forms has endured for so long because it does what pop does best: It allows white teen boys to express their rebellion within the confines of a materialistic, misogynistic, racially exclusive, and altogether politically impotent scene. However, like a virus that develops new and powerful strains, cock rock’s tenacious influence has also inadvertently provided a space for female musicians to respond to and, in many cases, appropriate it. Patti Smith managed to make poetry rock and still do it harder than most guys. Wendy O. Williams and the Lunachicks aped the genre’s depraved, violent sense of humor and Halloweenish getups; in an era of grunge, L7 and Babes in Toyland mixed cock-rock bravado with feminist lyrics, campaigning throughout their careers to bring more women to hard rock. It might even be argued that without the open misogyny of cock-rock videos, Madonna could never have been lauded as a feminist alternative.

Tribe 8 brought the cock to dyke punk, literally, with singer Lynn Breedlove mocking the male stage presence with a strap-on and then stroking it, leering and strutting, and eventually castrating it with a big shiny knife. Even Tori Amos and PJ Harvey, who are reluctant to identify themselves and their music as feminist, seemed in their debut albums to be responding to a recent liberation from the shackles of the cock. Amos took the symbolic masturbation of the guitar/phallus and created a more vulvic model of pleasure as she straddled her piano bench and feigned vocal orgasm. As for Harvey, it was enough for a skinny English girl to do what the Stones, Cream, Led Zeppelin, and the Who had done before her: take on the blues as though they were hers alone. More recently, the electro-punk Peaches is infamous for sporting a mullet and mirrored shades, thrusting her guitar out from between her legs, and screaming “You came to see a rock show? A big gigantic cock show?!”

In light of the massive advances women have made in rock over the past 15 years, Hell’s Belles’ balls-out feminist declarations might seem redundant. After all, haven’t women always proven they can rock simply by doing so? Well, yes. But if women can, and have, rocked both in defiance of cock rock and in celebration of it, why are female bands that mimic male rockers so darn popular? Most of the musicians also have other projects playing original music, but say their cover bands are much more successful. Unlike those tribute bands made up of sweaty, middle-aged guys who play fairgrounds and tourist bars with no hope of press coverage, these women are guaranteed a fan base not only because they’re good, but because they’re hot. When describing their acts, Cheap Chick, Iron Maidens, and Mistress of Reality are all careful to call themselves “beauties,” as if their rock talent is somehow justified by their fantasy-groupie look. Likewise, male critics have seized upon their appearances. It seems that watching women take on masculine performance styles is fine when it’s “unnervingly hot” (Details) or “AC/DC only sexier!” (the Wave). As one dj said of Mistress of Reality, “Even the purest of picky Sabbath fans will find these gorgeous women to be 100% truly Ozzzzzz-some!” (As if to do Osbourne justice you’d have to be some kind of looker.) Pam Utterback, Cheap Chick’s bassist, described her own experience to the Wave: “It’s fun to pretend you’re a sexy, hot, studly rock star.” So why can’t she just be a studly rock star and play her own material?

While these female tribute bands are showing everyone that women can play as well as men down to the last note, they’re still subject to a hierarchy wherein female imitations of male rockers are regarded by the music world as being more potent and interesting than women reworking the cock-rock canon in their own image. Their popularity exposes the widespread assumption that “real” rock is still a male domain that women may enter only under a masculine guise. Likewise, the women in these bands are presented as being more serious rockers by emulating men than they’d be performing their own material. In many ways, they are the ultimate fans, in the audience even while they’re onstage.

I appreciate the irony that these bands bring to their performance, the questions they pose simply by posing, and the proof they offer that no one needs a cock to rock. Still, I long for the day when music created by women can not only be recognized for rocking as hard as Led Zeppelin or AC/DC, but garner the critical acclaim, popular recognition, and widespread cultural impact that cock rock has always enjoyed, whether deservedly or not. When this day comes it will be women we see when we think of rock, surrounded by a stadium studded with tiny flames, their own solos wailing from the amps. And that will be more awesome than any light show.

Juliana Tringali is Bitch’s assistant editor. The first mixed tape she ever received opened with “Highway to Hell.”

Dumb & Getting Dumber

Kyla — Tue, 01 Mar 2005 00:00:00 -0500

In 2004, every corner of popular culture was populated by men in crisis, and I don’t just mean George Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, and Dick Cheney. We had men in trouble, men in triumph, men in uniform, men on the cross, men in squarepants; men being men with other men, talking about masculinity—what it is, how to have it, keep it, get it, make it last. We might even call it the Year of the Man, but the response to such a title could reasonably be, So what’s new? Isn’t every year the year of the man?

Yes, it is. And every year is the year that masculinity is declared to be in crisis, requiring lots of help from the church, the government, the media, and Dr. Phil. And yet 2004 in particular—an annus horribilis for politics, world peace, and atheism—was notable for the way questions about masculinity dominated the media. Whether it was Bush and Kerry squaring off in the presidential debates over questions about who was more capable of killing Iraqis; or photographic reports of military prison guards in Iraq forcing prisoners into blatantly sodomitical postures; or images of a bleeding, suffering, masochistic Jesus in The Passion of the Christ; or Paul Giamatti and Thomas Haden Church in Sideways competing for the Most Unworthy Male to Find a Totally Hot Chick to Love Him Award, we had no choice but to sit up and notice new dimensions of male domination. These new dimensions include the incorporation of massive amounts of homoerotic imagery, explicit depictions of male-on-male violence (a defense against the homoeroticism), and, oddly, the performance of male stupidity. It’s been a creeping trend, this exaltation of bumbling men on the big screen (Jim Carrey in Dumb and Dumber, Adam Sandler in just about any Adam Sandler movie), the small screen (the hapless husbands of According to Jim, King of the Hill, and of course The Simpsons), and—most disturbingly—in real life.

Since the start of George W.’s first term as president, Americans seem to be increasingly enamored of the heroic couplet of men and stupidity. As the most recent election proved, playing dumb means playing to “the people”—who, apparently, now find intellectual acumen to be a sign of overeducation, elitism, and Washington-insider status. As many critics have pointed out, no one is more of a Washington insider than Bush, a former governor, the son of a former president, and the brother of the governor of Florida. Even so, W. has made his populist version of stupidity a trademark. The man who can’t pronounce “nuclear” has sold himself to the public as a down-home guy, a fun bbq pal, a student privileged enough to go to Yale but “real” enough to get only C’s—in other words, a genial buffoon who’s a safe bet for the White House because he doesn’t try to befuddle the populace with facts, figures, or, god forbid, ideas. His latest opponent, Kerry, was fluent in French, well educated, well spoken, and therefore highly suspicious on all counts. It’s telling that one of the questions asked of the voting public by pollsters wasn’t about the candidates’ integrity or knowledge, but about which one voters would most like to share a beer with. As a culture, we no longer want a president who’s smarter or more visionary than we are; instead, we want a frat brother.

Stupidity in women, as we know, has often been expected and acceptable in this culture, and some women cultivate it because they see it rewarded in popular icons like Jessica Simpson. Female stupidity can make men feel bigger, better, smarter; and it, in turn, can make many women themselves feel desirable. But what is the appeal of the stupid man, and why does the representation of male stupidity not lead to the same kind of disempowerment many women experience? Stupidity in men has historically been represented in the media as charming (Jerry Lewis), naively disarming, and comforting (George W.).

Male stupidity is, in fact, a new form of machismo, and it comes—perhaps not surprisingly—at a time when alternative masculinities have achieved some small measure of currency. Feminists, transgender and butch activists, and drag kings have all demanded more from masculinity in recent years, and have lovingly and creatively re-envisioned it without past levels of misogyny and sexism. So just when some of us in queer culture presumed that it was finally safe to divorce masculinity from men, male masculinity has risen up again, like the seed of Chucky (or not, since apparently Chuck’s seed in the new movie is quite queer!). Yesteryear’s swaggering macho is this year’s stumbling, bumbling male; omniscience is replaced by idiocy, irony is replaced by literality. As is often the case, we’ve seen the shift illustrated most boldly in the celebrated films of the past few years.

In 2003, for example, one film laid out with great precision the new role for women in a new world of male dominance. And what should have signified as an ironic trope all too quickly became a literal manifestation of gender roles: In Pedro Almodovar’s critically acclaimed masterpiece of misogyny, Talk to Her, two talented women lie in comas and then become wallpaper while the unappealing and unremarkable male leads flirt and coo across their mute and prone bodies. While the male leads are exposed as flawed, deceptive, conniving, even criminal, the film still focuses on their complexity and leaves the women inert, simple, silent. Stupidity, in other words, passes as complexity and male complexity requires, again, female simplicity.

In 2004, most of the new masculinities on display in film intensified the link between aesthetics and misogyny, combining homoeroticism, male bonding, and masculine pathos in a potent stew designed to tug at the heartstrings of the women who love too much and slay the critics in the process. A primo example is Alexander Payne’s universally acclaimed Oscar hopeful Sideways, which pairs up nebbishy, intellectual loser Miles (Paul Giamatti) and preening, faded actor Jack (Thomas Haden Church) and turns their stag-week odyssey into an exploration of wine, women, and wisdom—with the women providing access to first the wine and then the wisdom. On the surface, the movie seems to be exposing male vulnerability, making a spectacle of male stupidity, and anatomizing male arrogance, but in the end it’s no different from any other buddy movie; the movie’s smart ugly guy–dumb cute guy pairing recalls male couples from George and Lenny to Cassidy and Sundance.

The bare-bones plot of Sideways claims to be telling a different, more “human” story about men and masculinity than your average buddy-bonding narrative. On a weeklong wine tour to celebrate Jack’s impending wedding, the men use Miles’s oenophilia as an excuse to drink endlessly. Miles wants to drown his depression over a failed writing career; Jack wants to get laid before he has to sign away his sexuality to marriage. Miles is depressed, physically repulsive, and clearly an alcoholic, while Jack is past his prime, dumb, and blatantly on the make. None of this impedes their chances of getting lucky, though, and the two gorgeous, interesting women they meet up with are drawn to them for no obvious reason.

Just 10 minutes into Sideways we know we are in the presence of a really likable guy when Miles casually steals hundreds of dollars from his aged mother. In a film about working-class men, or men of color, such a scene would indicate the fundamental criminality of the character. In this film, though, the scene is just fine shading in what critics embraced as a heartwarming and complex portrait of two men stumbling together through their midlife crises. In his Chicago Sun-Times column, Roger Ebert suggests that this “human comedy” succeeds because it shows “us” that “women can love us for ourselves, bless their hearts, even when we can’t love ourselves.” Other critics swooned over the movie’s ability to show men in a warts-and-all light. But while it’s true that Miles and Jack are utterly flawed characters, and while director Payne frequently hits the mark with his close-up focus on the loneliness and humanity of all the film’s characters, Sideways is so enamored of its heroes’ flaws that it elevates those flaws into a form of appeal. Personality defects that would mark other kinds of characters (a woman, a gay man, a lesbian, a person of color) as dangerous function to make these men more interesting and more real. In fact, the message of this alleged masterpiece is that men, like wine, get better with age and have to mature to just the right moment before they are opened up and enjoyed. And the message to women, those creatures who stand outside Ebert’s “human comedy,” is basically this: If you stand by your young man through his alcoholism, philandering, sexual-confidence crises, and general anxiety, he will suddenly blossom into…a drunken, philandering, impotent, anxious older man. Jackpot!

I suppose the reason otherwise intelligent critics love this film is because it seems to portray men and masculinity differently than the top-gun blockbusters do. In the New York Times, Manohla Dargis argues that Miles’s appeal lies in his flaws and his obvious struggle to achieve acceptable modes of masculinity, writing that “without struggle and pain, Miles wouldn’t be half the good and decent man he is, though he certainly might complain a little less, venture a little more.” Other critics, like J. Hoberman of the Village Voice, speak admiringly of Miles’s “humanity” and Payne’s comic genius. But few recognize that the so-called humanity of a Miles or a Jack almost always comes at the expense of a woman. Miles’s whole trip is unknowingly sponsored by his mother, from whom he steals the money; and Jack’s lesson in maturity comes at the expense of Stephanie, the vineyard worker who falls in love with and believes Jack when he says he’s ready to move to the wine country for her, as well as at the expense of his fiancée, who has no idea what his stag week involves. And Maya, the compelling object of Miles’s desire, is having a midlife crisis of her own—she’s just been through a divorce and is looking for new purpose in her life—but her role is only to prop up Miles’s fragile ego, tell him she likes his rejected 750-page manuscript, and comfort him as he hurtles through his weeklong bender.

The men of Sideways are really just older, more critically lauded versions of the hapless losers who have always populated teen comedies—the geeky strivers of Sixteen Candles, the libido-crazed pals of the American Pie franchise, or the blindly hedonistic Jesse and Chester of Dude, Where’s My Car? (Perhaps the film should have been called Dude, Where’s My Pinot Noir?) And like the dudes, the bros, the Jim Carreys and Adam Sandlers and George W. Bushes, the stupider and more pathetic the male heroes become, the more they are loved by exceptional women.

One film of 2004, and one film only, had the courage to reveal the new, flawed-and-vulnerable masculinity for what it is: a version of the old, invincible John Wayne masculinity. Spongebob Squarepants: The Movie tells a gripping tale of an old king who loses his crown (I smell an allegory here), an old crab who loses his business to a bottom-feeder, and a brave young sponge who, with the help of a pink starfish named Patrick and a princess mermaid, sets the world of Bikini Bottom straight.

Or is that gay? With the Wall Street Journal and other serious media abuzz with the news that the beloved Spongebob, a mainstay of children’s tv, has found a following in gay communities, the film’s creators have recently had to tackle the question of whether the cartoon is gay. Let’s review the evidence: Spongebob and Patrick are inseparable; Patrick appears toward the end of the movie in fishnets and stilettos; on their journey to find the king’s crown (and become “real men”), Spongebob and Patrick find themselves in a leather bar but disappear to the men’s room together; they are chased by a big leather daddy on a motorbike and secretly want to be caught by him; they show much more interest in each other than in the pretty mermaid; and, last but not least, their final ride back to Bikini Bottom comes courtesy of David Hasselhoff’s ass. As Hasselhoff speeds across the ocean with the little fellows, he looks back at them fighting over his ass and says, “Hey guys, go easy on me back there!”

But more important than Spongebob’s sexual proclivities is the film’s explicit discussions of the difference between boys and men, which take on a very different tone than the angsty dialogue of Sideways. Spongebob and Patrick understand that their quest to recapture the king’s crown will supposedly transform them from boys to men. But the film hilariously pokes fun at the archetypal rendering of this rite of passage, and actually makes boyhood look more complicated, more empathetic, more flexible than the forms of manhood modeled by adults in the story. Spongebob ultimately tells boys that it’s okay to be a boy rather than a man, that manhood is exploitative and competitive, and that business and pleasure, in the end, depend upon figuring out new ways to access the responsibilities of male adulthood without the violence and injustice that so often accompany it. Spongebob and Patrick know that manhood is just a bad combination of confidence, bullshit, humiliation, and Viagra; rather than acquiesce, the two friends set out to make fun of it while representing boyhood as a kind of in-between space free of the performance anxiety and anger that orbit the adult male and fuel his fear of failure. Enlivened by a critique of fast food, capitalism, the monarchy, and nepotism, Spongebob Squarepants: The Movie makes a daring pitch for a softer, more absorbent masculinity.

Savvy viewers know that Spongebob’s sexuality is crucial to his character. When asked about the character’s queeny tendencies, creator Stephen Hillenburg told E! Online News that he thinks of his depictions as asexual, rather than gay, but he admits that they—Spongebob in particular—are “special…weird” and kind of “oddball.” Some call it oddball, but some might say Spongebob’s “softness” connotes a very particular genre of “odd.” But in a year when even action-hero cartoons like The Incredibles pivoted on male midlife crisis, when the governor of California called his legislative opponents “girlie men,” when the white male vote put Bush back in office after a disastrous first term—in such a year, any male icon, gay or straight, who’s not trying to bolster his masculinity is worth a second look. In this new year, let’s hope we can find and insist upon some compelling alternative masculinities—and that a few straight women can find it in their hetero hearts to insist on more from the straight or sideways men they love.

Judith Halberstam teaches at USC and is writing a book on intellectual life in the U.S. titled Dude, Where’s My Theory? She is the author of Female Masculinity, The Drag King Book, and, most recently, In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives.