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In a world where sex is the prevailing currency, this makes feminine gay men worthless. A flamboyant friend told me recently how he was at a club when a guy approached his group and invited his two friends to a chems party. "Not you, though," he told my friend. It's an isolated example, but raises bigger questions about how a certain trope of gay men have allowed a savage hierarchy of attraction to dominate over others.The argument is that it's simply sexual attraction. When in search of cock, no one likes a time waster—so putting "no fems" on your Grindr profile just saves the bother. But attraction bleeds into cultural demarcation. The performer Jonathan Richardson runs a queer clown troupe named The Fems. "Buffoon is a type of satirical clowning performed by lower social orders to mock the elite," he says. "And there's nothing lower on the gay scene than fems."In my play, I've chosen to concentrate on a particular side effect of this phenomenon: previously camp men suddenly adopting a persona of "masc." There's a unique tragedy about somebody repressing who they are because of what other people think; it's the very opposite of pride.In forgetting about the enemy outside, gay men have become the enemies to themselves.
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