Fridae

Shakespeare once made such a remark: "Unseemly woman in a seeming man/An ill-beseeming beast in seeming both!" (Romeo and Juliet, Act 3, Scene 3). Even at the time of Shakespeare, effeminacy as a condition is synonymous with the unnatural and the monstrous. Such a sentiment, in fact, finds its contemporary equivalent in our very own day and age.

Most of us are all too familiar with the stock images: limp-wrists, a sashaying gait, a voice that teeters on the falsetto range. Already the butt of cruel jokes, our poor 'sistas' find themselves further stigmatised as sluts or sexually-deprived freaks pathetically lusting after some woman's boyfriend, husband or the guileless but beefy 17-year-old boy.

Indeed, the mainstream media has sometimes been accused of perpetuating these and other grotesque stereotypes, evinced, for instance, by the continued presence of transvestite cum clown figures in Southeast Asian sitcoms and dramas.

Talking to my beloved queenie friends, it was not difficult to see that each had his axe to grind with the homophobic heterosexual world. "It's so unfair!," whines David, a highly talented hairstylist.

"Why can't people accept my beauty as it is? Whenever I travel by public transport, there are idiots who would stare and snigger rudely. Didn't their mothers teach them some manners?"

Agreeing emphatically with David is Dennis, a 30-year-old executive. "These people ought to be taught a lesson," contends the latter. "The hurtful names and jibes that I received in school and the army continue to haunt me today. Alas, it's so hard to cast out these demons," laments Dennis, simultaneously suppressing a sob.

So what exactly is it that triggers such responses to queens from our heterosexual counterparts? One explanation is the belief that effeminacy - and effeminate gay men for that matter - undermine the security of heterosexual society by eroding its (often misguided) parameters of masculine and feminine behaviour.

To put it simply, human beings sometimes fear what they don't recognise, or what appears alien to them. So when things familiar to people, such as the yardsticks defining male/female behaviour, are threatened, some turn insecure and react unfortunately in hostile ways to the offending object or person.

In other words, the homophobic hostility to queens is perhaps an instinctive - albeit unwarranted - response to safeguard/protect the familiar from the unknown.

Yet even more curious is the fact that within the gay community itself, queens and femmes are increasingly an ostracised lot. Evidence for this harsh reality is easily at hand.

Visit popular gay chatrooms on the Net, and comments/remarks such as 'No sissies and femmes, pls' appear almost without fail in everyone's personal profile cum facelink page.

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Alternatively, make a trip down to the hottest gay clubs and gyms in your area, and try counting the number of queens versus muscled cuties hit on by other men.

Given the current gay penchant for gym-toned bods, golden tans and muscle-god demeanours, the withered queen of yesteryear seems destined for, alas, a life of tragic oblivion. As Warren, a gay men undergoing radical self-transformation opines, "I'll rather commit suicide than be labelled an 'auntie' by my friends!"

So why this cruel rejection of queens from our very own community? For many a gay man today, the effeminate gay man is but a vestige of a throwback era, a time when 'Gay Pride' and 'machismo' were still Greek-sounding terms to us.

Perennially condemned as the target of bigotry and disparagement, the effeminate gay man emblematises all that is weak, deplorable and freaky about being a sexual minority. With so many years spent empowering ourselves with confidence and months spent pumping iron in the gym, who would really want to remember those infamous days when one was still a - well - lily-faced, cowering wimp?

Having eschewed the impotency of a 'fractured' wrist for the prowess of a rock-hard bicep, it is no surprise why our gay brothers are as quick to denounce any allusion to their effeminate roots as one might discard incriminating photos of one's bad hairdo in the 80s.

In these times where gay relationships mean MASCULINE men getting together for fun and love, choosing resolutely to remain a femme a.k.a. potential dream 'wife' of another guy will surely garner you the swiftest ticket to gay Siberia.

In any case, being gay in the first place means as a man, you are attracted to other MEN (and not women, or pseudo-women, or whatever).

Then, there are (sadly) some closeted friends of ours, who in the attempt to construct a veneer of heterosexuality for self-protection, see in queens and femmes the worst possible versions of what they could become.

In order to exorcise their own demons, our closeted friends may deliberately - albeit ironically - adopt a homophobic attitude towards gays, targeting our effeminate counterparts especially. The belief is that by jeering at effeminate gay men, difference is accentuated between the closet himself and these femmes, granting the former a (false) sense of security about his own sexuality. But the scapegoats for the insecurity of others are once again our poor sisters.

So does this all mean a complete absence of hope for our long-suffering sisters? Surely, many of them have been, and will continue to be survivors against the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. For some, possessing an unyielding spirit has proven to be an effective panacea against double discrimination and continued marginalisation.

Afterall, as an old saying goes, margins may be envisioned as frontiers by those with fortitude in their hearts. For the less inspired, a hearty dose of humour will surely go a long way in carrying us through the humdrum of daily discrimination.

As KK, my dear 'sista', exclaimed in jest, "I'm my own victim - the victim of my beauty nonpareil. These people - both straight and gay - are just JEALOUS of what they can't attain!"