A brief posting designed to work my way towards further postings about recent exchanges with Richard Vytniorgu, on the occasion of his new book (released on 6/21):
RV, Effeminate Belonging: Gender Nonconforming Experience and Gay Bottom Identities, Emerald Publishing, 2024
My plans for posting about RV’s book spun off so many aspects of the work that I have been unable to organize this material into a coherent posting (while still getting through daily life, which has often been challenging in recent months), so I’ve temporized by posting little, more manageable essays on other, unrelated, topics. But I really have to get to some of the Effeminate Belonging material.
Today’s wedge into one bit of this material comes from a Peanuts comic strip, one that first appeared on 8/4/69 (posted recently on Facebook by Jeff Bowles);
Lucy relays to Linus their grandmother’s disapproval of his security blanket
Gramma’s disapproval is implicitly two-pronged. Prong 1 is that having a security blanket is, variously:
different, atypical, unusual, ill-adjusted, nonconforming
while Prong 2, unspoken, is that it is also
undesirable, reprehensible, even contemptible, potentially threatening
Gramma refuses to accept the behavioral variation that Linus displays, thus mirroring the lack of social acceptance of other kinds of variation — in particular, the disapproval, by many, of same-sex desires, practices, and identities; and the more specific disapproval of what I’ve called f-gay men — the effeminate and the faggy. Disapprovals that are especially wounding because Prong 2 is wrapped up in them.
More to come.
August 18, 2024 at 6:51 am |
And of course Linus’s sarcastic defiance of Gramma’s disapproval is refreshing and inspiring.
August 18, 2024 at 7:07 am |
Indeed. Linus is the hero of the strip (and Schulz’s voice).