While homosexuality and bisexuality is becoming more accepted in modern America in recent years, and other sexual lifestyles and tastes are being brought into the open, some people are uncomfortable with being related to or knowing "admitted faggots." Harlem, New York's black mecca, houses a unique subculture which caters to the wants and needs of gay black men who have been rejected by their families. This essay will explore the Harlem ball subculture, and the balls and parties thrown which enhance and define it.
The bulk of research done for this composition came from watching "Paris is Burning," Jennie Livingston's film documentary. What I remember most from the movie was the effeminate way the people behaved; that disturbed me a little. Usually, Harlem portraits depict tough-looking masculine (black) men in tough neighborhoods, and I grew edgy after constantly being bombarded by images of men acting more like women than men. I tend to find the general stereotype of a man, and before I saw the motion picture, I seldom saw men acting like females. Thus, I had to leave the showing of the documentary for a while to "get back to (my) reality", which was heterosexuality. The terms "usually" and "normally" are relative in this context due to what is considered "usual" and "normal" in contemporary American society, of which I think I belong. However, this paper analyzes a particular subculture which escaped from the majority, and asks the norm to look at it (and judge it) through Jennie Livingston's camera lens.
Most of the men were rejected from their own nuclear and/or biological families because of their sexual choices. They fled to a place where they knew they would be accepted: the homosexual Harlem "house" subculture. Each "house" had a "mother", a man who founded and ran the house. In a symbolic gesture, each new "family member" legally changed their last name from their "old" family to the mother's name -- the house name. (Proof of this was in the film's credits, which almost nobody stayed to watch.) Changing a name represented that these men finally had family and friends who cared for them. The restructure of this "family" is part of the downfall of the traditional nuclear family, but "traditional family values" (such as truth, honesty and integrity) were still upheld.
Socially, the subculture was among the lower groups, chiefly because they were all black, gay, and effeminate (that's three strikes -- they're out). They strived for acceptance into "the real world," and in recent times, they have made some good, especially in the media. Two examples are the vogueing dance style, and the success of Willie Ninja. Both involved Madonna, who has acknowledged that she has an extreme sexual curiosity. Her influence almost definitely contributed to the world's exposure to the culture.
Because contemporary American society shrugged off these people once termed "peculiar" and "queer", they ran away to their own little corner of the world they could call theirs. They structured their own hierarchies, which were very similar to gangs. (Balls were compared to gang street fights, except awards were given instead of wounds.) The houses were determined to create a life and a lifestyle which they felt comfortable. At the balls, everybody paraded down a catwalk or platform like a model, showing off various costumes, makeup, and their "act": how they walked, talked, acted, preened, et cetera. While watching these men "do their little turns on the catwalk," I believed that the average contemporary American (which is a heterosexual married male with 2.3 kids) wouldn't be able to judge if the person was a female or a male in female garb. One in particular looked so beautiful that I would almost ask him out on a date, if not for two items: his voice was too deep and masculine, and he revealed in the documentary that he was a male biologically. (In the above sentence, I typed "her" and "she" at first, then had to replace those with "him" and "he." Whoever s/he was, s/he looked very convincing as a female.)
The subculture seemed preoccupied with not just making things look real, but calling things real when they were not. To be real was important to them. Their rebellion towards society was confusing it. Nobody knew if somebody was male or female, a military man or a flaming homosexual, a beautiful female dancer or a man who liked to dress like one. They called this real; they conformed to what they thought and defined as true life. These cross-dressers (wearing opposite-sex clothing on a part- time basis) sometimes "graduated" to transvestitism (full-time) if they chose, which led to transsexualism (biologically and sexually changing from one gender to the other).
The style of this culture conveys what it ultimately wants: happiness and acceptance in modern society. Right now it enjoys limited amounts of both because what they consider normal is dubbed taboo by the normals of society. It hides into its little corner and throws a party, but only sends invitations to those in their corner. The things the culture shows the world advertises that these people are real (by their own definition, and by the "traditional" definition), and that they try to be as happy as they can be. But they want more, and they strive for more.
The whole discussion is guided back to what contemporary American society is, and that is the traditional society that this country was founded on: old white conservative men in power, no foreigners or weirdos, only heterosexual couples and the "made in America" ideology. A man who epitomizes this is Jesse Helms, the U.S. Senator from North Carolina. In my opinion, he is anti- political correctness and anti-1990s.
These men may have been born with a sexual desire for other men and/or femininity, but they still want to be as normal as possible (within their own definition of "normal"), and still enjoy their lives and their lifestyles.