I think about words a lot. Not an unusual state of affairs for a writer. Words, language, and the use and abuse of language stir in me emotions that I’m sure many would feel are inappropriate for something so commonplace. But to me Americans treat our language in much the same way we treat our automobiles: we disregard the great power it has to influence, for good or bad, and treat it as if it was a toy. Every now and then, though, I run into a word or a turn of phrase that makes me laugh right out loud because of its sheer cleverness, the utter aptness with which the author has applied the language. That’s happened to me twice recently, though only one of them is a portmanteau.
fauxmo: acting homosexual for effect in opposition to your usual or true sexual orientation.
I found this word, which is also listed in the Urban Dictionary with several slightly different definitions than the one above, in an essay titled “The Evolution of the Prime-Time Lesbian Clinch” by Diane Anderson-Marshall (originally published in Bitch, Winter 2004; reprinted in BITCHfest: Ten Years of Cultural Criticism from the Pages of Bitch Magazine). Anderson-Marshall’s critique is worth reading if only because it highlights the gap between how lesbian sexuality is portrayed in the media and how “…real, live lesbians are treated in society and how uncomfortable their presence still makes straight viewers.” Even though it’s now three years old, it carries even more weight in an environment that has accepted the women of The L Word as the defacto standard for how lesbians look and act and straight society’s disdain for any woman that doesn’t look like she has stepped off the pages of Cosmo has completely entrenched itself in the “lesbian community.”
Part of the reason this amused me so is because my discovery of this word, which the Urban Dictionary applies primarily to men because, I think, “homo” is still an epithet that lives largely in the male sphere, came on the heels of Slate.com’s excellent critique of what it means to be a celebrity near the end of 2007 and how that is illustrated by MTV’s newest reality show A Shot at Love With Tila Tequila.
Taking his cue from an earlier Time magazine article on the titular star of the show that asked “Does she represent the triumph of a new democratic starmaking medium or its crass exploitation for maximum personal gain?” writer Troy Patterson focuses almost accidentally on the solipsism of the modern age highlighting the disconnect in a world that revolves entirely around the “self” where the “self” is mediated and crafted, sometimes completely, for performance purposes (after all, if the “self” is the only thing that exists, for whom are all these people performing?). Patterson writes,
Last night, the dating show A Shot at Love With Tila Tequila (MTV, Tuesdays at 10 p.m. ET) arrived to offer a reply [to Time Magazine’s question]. “Crass exploitation,” it giggled, continuing, “Duh!”
In a twist on all those stodgy televised courtship tournaments, A Shot at Love sets 16 men and 16 women in pursuit of the heroine’s affections. Yes, Tila is proud to call herself bisexual. No, I’m not holding my breath in expectation that she’ll win an award from GLAAD. But far be it from me to question the passions that stir Tila’s heart and loins. I’ll leave that to You, the collective author of Wikipedia and its ilk, who has coined the term “MySpace bisexual.” The recreational lexicographers at UrbanDictionary.com bring the utmost delicacy to defining the term: “A girl who makes out with other slutty chicks at parties and then claims to be bisexual because it’s trendy to say so and gets people’s attention on myspace.”
– A Shot at Love With Tila Tequila: The bisexual MySpace star has a dating show on MTV., Troy Patterson, Slate.com, Wednesday, Oct. 10, 2007, at 5:45 PM ET
Unlike “beer queer,” its decades older predecessor, “MySpace bisexual” like “fauxmo” captures the idea of same-sex attraction as performance or a means to achieving another end that is inherently unrelated to the expressed sexuality. But it does something that neither of the other two terms do: seemingly it applies only to women.
Since performance sexuality predates myspace by almost a decade – see Roseanne Barr’s ratings grabbing lip lock with Mariel Hemingway in 1994 – what does the presence of a term that seems to apply only to female sexuality say about both language and sexuality in a world where language seems to be normalizing to the masculine (what else, after all, can you call the acceptance in public discourse of “you guys” to refer to a mixed sex group and “gay” to refer to both male and female homosexuals)?
I’m not sure I have any answers but I do know that I’ll be listening more critically from now on.
Perhaps I’m just jaded and/or dense, but the existence of the term margarita queer/myspace bisexual and their ilk seems a natural outgrowth of female bisexuality being prized for the voyueristic kicks afforded to straight males, with no specific male equivalent as male homosexual leanings are not nearly as sexy to the (straight) male gaze. Nothing particularly new there, though expressed more cleverly in this turn of phrase’s case.
There’s nothing especially new about female sexuality being prized by the male gaze, no, but given that genuine expression of female sexuality has been reduced down in importance so as to be meaningless I find the presence of a term that highlights it and only it to be intriguing. Naming is power…yet…it’s not.