I am labelled a twink.
A twink is a feminine, flamboyant young homosexual man, whom dainties about and throws caution to the wind as he chugs his vodka cruisers, smokes like a chimney and parties to Beyonce like no other. He is thin, hairless and prone to high-pitched squealing, and he can often be found at loud nightclubs, dancing it up with other members of his subculture.
I am given this label because I am, to many, a slender party boy. This is not something I asked to be called, and it is not something I identify with. Primarily because oftentimes the reaction by many when accosted by a twink, is amusement and distaste, though that is based primarily on my own personal experience.
People oftentimes choose to identify with a label - indeed, in a recent study published by the Australian Research Centre for Sexual Health and Society, it was found that, of 1,000 gay men between the ages of 18 and 39, asked whether they identify with a label, 20% identified with 'twink', compared to 9% who identified as a 'cub' - because it provides them a greater sense of community. They feel at home with those among them, and whether or not they actively seek twink counterparts - which I don't personally feel is the case - it helps to know that there is a group that they fit in with.
It is interesting to note that while 20% of the participants identified as twinks, and only 9% identified as cubs, that cubs were more likely to be organised as a group through meetings. That they were more likely to congregate and form friendships. And you know that it's the norm. There are no 'twink bars' that I know of, but bear and cub haunts aplenty. Entire bars filled with a certain determined 'type' of homosexual man, catering to their subculture. So, from that, you could assume that although twinks may potentially occupy a larger spectrum of the gay 'community', they lack that sense of community itself. That sense of belonging.
It runs right back through to high school notions of cliques and wanting to feel like you belong. There's quintessential sociology and psychology at work. Knowing this, and knowing it's a perfectly normal characteristic of human beings - why don't I fit in with the facet of the community I am perceived to belong to? Why don't I try to fit in?
Maybe it's because I don't appreciate being pigeonholed. I don't want people to make assumptions about my personality. I have gone on dates with men who, within the span of our meeting, have come to the actual conclusion that I am vacuous and airheaded, purely because of my body type, because of the subculture I appear to belong to. I quote, "You're such an airhead twink". I've been told this within minutes, to my very face. Like I'm meant to agree, and falter into a giggling fit. Oh god, you're right! I'm so silly.
Which is why, when put on the panel for the radio show, I was bizarrely confronted when I realised that my detest towards this label might, in fact, be part of a problem. A problem that I have.
I might hate labels, but I'm sure as hell ready to label others.
Nobody wants to be seen as anything other than the convoluted, unique individual that they are. Yet, in the spirit of attempting to belong, we assign ourselves labels - some less so than others, as 56% of the participants in the above study did not self-identify with a label - and we succumb to the merciless stereotyping committed by others, others in our own community.
"I don't want to be that person, because that person is seen as gross. That person is vacuous and childlike and reckless and embarrassing to be around. I don't want to be that person, and I don't want you to view me as that person, because that person is a flicker of a human being, a mould of someone who was once flesh and bone. Don't make me into a type."
Yet, in the same breath that we utter these words, we create an image. And when we look around at the people surrounding us, we start to see that same image. We notice the same trends viewed of us by others. When I go out to a gay nightclub, I see the slender arms and the flouncing stride, the characteristics of a stereotype, and suddenly, I'm perturbed, I'm embarrassed, I'm revolted.
Maybe not revolted, but you get my gist.
Look at that little twink. What a laugh. What a joke. I'm nothing like him.
I should point out at this point that I think it's perfectly acceptable for friends to bandy about terms and assign each other stereotypes amongst themselves - in the spirit of a joke, of playful camaraderie and jest. Because you know the person you're talking to. You recognise their intricacies and their uniqueness and the complexity of their mind. You see them; who they are. Not a stereotype.
One of the hosts on the radio show asked me a question based upon a finding from the study; that many gay men who did not self-identify with a label were found to feel less positive about being gay. That many of them were found to have less self-worth. He asked me, in a tone so casual that it could have been the drunken banter sprawled out across a bar along with a bottle of vino - and I'm paraphrasing here - do you feel like you hate yourself because of your sexuality?
What a question.
Is the reason why I choose not to self-identify because, on some level I hate myself, and am ashamed of being gay? Is it because I don't want to fit in with the cliques and the stereotypes, said cliques and stereotypes I dole out unto others as though those others are not walking, talking, three-dimensional, convoluted and too-often-misunderstood human beings? The same complicated meat sacks of firing synapses and original thoughts who suffer the same derogatory dalliances with other people presuming their personalities that I do? Was I once alienated, and in turn began to alienate others?
I didn't think much of it at the time - we were all laughter and jokes and intelligent discussion, and it certainly wasn't a question posed in any negative spirit at all - but later, as I wandered the city streets on my way home from the station, I started to really think on what I'd been asked.
And then I remembered when I nearly went under the knife to change the way my face looks. To get my nose hacked off and my jaw realigned. Because when I looked at strangers in the dark of a nightclub, who looked something close to the picture perfect homosexual man, it made me angry, and sad, and yearning. Because I thought about how they might not want to ever know me, just because of the way I looked. Because I wanted too badly to "fit in" - to be seen as attractive to strangers who don't even know my name yet, let alone my story.
And I remembered when I changed my mind entirely. When I cancelled my surgery, one I'd been planning for years, the week before it was due. Because I didn't want to be the person who tried to assimilate into a culture which pulls in and isolates and estranges one another based on their physical characteristics. Because I wanted to be the person who values every single person for their unique characteristics - for the parts that make them interesting. Fascinating. Wonderful. On the surface, and within.
How strange, then: the very concept of sitting in a radio station, speaking into a microphone on Australia's most popular community radio show, considering all of my past experiences, passively deriding homosexual men for prejudging me over my looks, while at the same time going to every effort to distance myself from the very stereotype I've tried so hard to insist does not befit me, casting that stereotype upon faceless characters in the dark of a nightclub.
I guess this kind of thing takes time.
Jimmy at the bar is studying law. He's got his whole life ahead of him, just like his mother always told him, and he knows where he wants to end up. He likes video games, playing with his dog, hanging with his friends, and the smell that wafted in from the trees outside his childhood bedroom window after a storm. When he was sixteen, he came out to his parents. His mother was fine with it - you know it's a dangerous life, Jimmy, it's a dangerous life, but I love you, and I'll protect you - but his Dad gave him one hard look in the eye, then walked out the door. When he came home, he took all of Jimmy's video games, and threw them out his bedroom window. With the trees and the scent of rain on the air.
Later that week, Jimmy moved out, with some friends in a sharehouse. He's a little too young, but he's trying, and because if there's one thing he knows, it's that he's got his whole life ahead of him. Just like his mother always told him. I'm sorry, Dad, I'm sorry you never got the football-playing ladies' man that you always wanted. I'm sorry we couldn't work out together. I'm sorry we couldn't kick the pig skin, or whatever. I'm sorry I'll never have a wife. I'm sorry I never got the chance to develop a taste for beer with you, because you could never accept me for who I am. I'm sorry I've got bigger dreams than whatever broken ones you've flayed out on the floor, that you keep trodding on, trodding, trodding, trodding, trodding, trodding...
Jimmy at the bar is studying law. And you're rolling your eyes and clenching your teeth because he's skinny, because he's small, because he's feminine. Because he's not what you want to be. Because he's not what you think a gay man should be. Because you think you know him. Because you think he's not worth knowing.
And that's a tragedy. Not for them - for you.
I won't be self-identifying as a twink any time soon. I'll call out any motherfucker who wants to typecast me as an airhead, all because I'm thin, and I'll refuse to allow anyone to view me as anything other than clever, brilliant and three-dimensional, irregardless of my size.
But the next time I'm out at a nightclub, and I see before me, a slender and dishevelled, flouncing dancing queen: I'm going to take another look. Refrain from clenching my teeth.
We have been conditioned towards treasuring masculinity and demonising femininity in gay men. It's something many of us have tried hard to avoid, but inevitably collapses out of our rears at the unlikeliest of times, just when we think we've unlearned it. We have been also conditioned into stereotyping others, and placing them in categories. This is both a blessing and a curse - and unfortunately for some, has a habit of somehow determining their perceived worth.
But you can't ever be held to someone else's standard of beauty. You are better than a body or a type, and you are worth so much more. After all, are we not an incredibly diverse community, awash with colourful characters and whimsical personalities and beautiful stories and shared struggles? I'd like to think so.
Be exactly who you are. Because you are beautiful. Everything that makes you, you. I won't judge you.
This was for every person who has ever felt like they weren't good enough, or fit enough, or lean enough, or muscular enough, or attractive enough, to fit into this community. This was for every person who has ever felt like they were not worth knowing because of the way that they look.
This was for you.
