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Why does society still have a problem with camp men?

5/3/2014

4 Comments

 
I read Patrick McAleenan article about this and it got me thinking since it's something I regularly expience. I use quite a lot of camp humour in my writing, in my life, my taste in music and films/TV, everywhere really - have you seen this website?

Patrick said ‘Despite the prevalence of camp humour, being camp is still seen as an unattractive trait whether you’re gay or straight.’ His article got me thinking. I’ve just read the comments at the bottom of his article, and I can’t even...

So, without further mincing about - the word ‘camp’ comes from French slang ‘se camper’ which is ‘to pose in an exaggerated fashion’ and what’s wrong with that?

Gay men’s views on camp men

I’ve been told, on gay dating websites there’s a lot of people looking for ‘straight acting’ or ‘no camps/femmes’ which I find quite sad. I wrote about why I went to Brighton Pride, even though I am not proud to be gay, the main point I was making is that there are so many different ways to be gay nowadays, that there’s no such thing as ‘the right way.’ However, from what I’ve read about these websites, this isn’t quite the case.

Society’s views on camp men

They’re often only OK for entertainment and humour from society as a whole: there’s plenty of camp men in the media every day: Alan Carr, Graham Norton, Joe McElderry, Will Young, and in the seventies, Larry Grayson, Kenneth Williams, Charles Hawtry and John Inman.

Why is this a problem?

Both these views basically amount to the same thing: that camp makes you less of a man – a gay man or a straight man – than not being camp.

Doing and being camp

There’s doing camp and being camp. Doing camp is when someone puts it on for effect, and can return to non camp if they want. Being camp is just how some people are – gay and straight men – and it’s not something they can turn on and off, they just are.

Some gay men can ‘pass’ – as in it’s not obvious they’re gay, they might do camp sometimes, but they’re not being camp. That’s one of the many ways of being gay and I welcome this diversity. However, there are other gay men who can’t ‘pass’ so easily. I remember saying to a friend that I didn’t really bother coming out any more, because normally when I walked into a room, I could see on people’s faces that they were thinking, oh look, it’s a gay man. And I’m fine with that, I have to be. There’s nothing I can do about it, I can’t change my persona, actions, how I talk, any more than I can really change any other aspects of my personality. Nor, I think should I have to.

How this attitude can be hurtful

When I was at uni, I met a guy at the student union bar and we ended up coming back to my room in halls of residence. I thought it was all going well. We arrived in my room and he looked at the Steps and A1 posters – it was the late nineties – and said, ‘You’re basically a walking stereotype aren’t you?’ (I had a H from Steps-esque haircut too, all spiky fringe and highlights.) So I told him to leave and he looked so surprised, until I pushed him out of my room, down the corridor and out the front door.

This can be a double edged sword: in some instances being a bit camp (a bit, I hear you cry!) has allowed me to get away with things I otherwise couldn’t have done. We had Kim Woodburn from TV’s How Clean Is Your House visit my work place and I asked for a photo from the professional photographer of me wearing the feathered rubber gloves, stood next to her. The chief executive said, ‘You have no shame, Liam,’ and she was clearly keen for Kim to get on with the job in hand. And I replied, with a smile and a feathery glove, ‘No, I don’t suppose I do.’ To which the chief executive said nothing. I still have that photo.

On the minus side it means I am essentially a beacon of camp wherever I go. I’ve had a car drive past me along the road where we live, with a man hanging out the window shouting ‘poof, fa**ot, queer, bender’ at me. I assume this was because I wore a pink striped T shirt, and had peroxided hair. Recently, I was driving back to the New Forest from a suburb of Southampton in my little – admittedly pretty camp – Mazda. Late at night, a car overtook me and a man leant out the window and shouted abuse at me. I turned up my Dido CD, and drove home, checking my mirrors in case the car was following. It wasn’t. It took me a few Dido tracks and a few junctions on the motorway until I had calmed myself down.

These are all examples of homophobia because of camp. And because camp is generally accepted as a way of being less of a man, this homophobia is more readily accepted in society in little insignificant ways, small comments, in the same way that racism or sexism probably wouldn’t be so accepted. 

So next time you’re laughing at a camp comedian on the TV or radio think about why that is, and maybe pause to consider why if you’re a gay man you only want a ‘straight acting’ boyfriend/ sex buddy, and what that says about you. Or, as Patrick summed it up perfectly, ‘Maybe it's time we all lighten up and embrace our inner camp a little more often.’ And maybe for those of us whose inner camp is a bit more outer camp, that should be celebrated

Until next time,

Liam Livings xx

4 Comments
Beverley Jansen link
5/3/2014 09:15:19 pm

Camp makes me happy! I have friends who are camp by nature, camp for effect, camp for humour. I was talking to an author who almost wrote his debut novel as a response to the gay community calling Rylan (reality star) too gay! Camp can be gay or straight and it's better than gloom! If you support diversity, you can't create more divisions. I have been known to camp it up myself with joy!

Reply
Liam Livings
6/3/2014 12:59:46 am

Hi Beverley, camp makes me happy too! I think it's sad that the gay community refer to people as 'too gay' what they mean is 'too camp' and for some people, it's just how they are. Much better than grey I'd say.

Reply
Shelagh
5/3/2014 10:11:26 pm

Ooooooh, this really got me thinking! I can find camp really irritating, especially the OTT camp, and it's because it's always felt like an affectation. I didn't know the root of the word; it's the 'exaggerating' that I don't like, but I don't like it in any context (not just in relation to camp) - it feels insincere, so I mistrust it. I've always thought of camp as being a bit of a parody of what's being feminine is supposed to be.

The part of your post that really caught my eye was 'There’s <i>doing</i> camp and <i>being</i> camp. Doing camp is when someone puts it on for effect, and can return to non camp if they want. Being camp is just how some people are – gay and straight men – and it’s not something they can turn on and off, they just are.' I'm embarrassed to admit that it had never really occurred to me that there's a distinction. I think I need to say that I dislike it when women are overtly feminine. We don't call it camp, but we all know the women who turn into a completely different creature when there are (straight!) men around - all that simpering, baby speech and fluttering of eyelashes. It makes me grind my teeth! I think I've always seen camp as similar behaviour, just with different motivation.

There's a further aspect to it that's always made me feel uncomfortable. I hate being the centre of attention, but very overt camp seems to me to be attention-seeking and it just makes me want to run away and hide :) As I've grown older, I've become more accepting of camp. Like you say, camp is often the object of homophobioa. Straight men can also be camp and they too can be objects of derision. I think camp attracts predjudice from two sources, homophobia, and the lesser value that anything feminine is seen to hold. I've also come to appreciate camp more as I've grown older and see it more as a 'fuck you' to the haters.

Reply
Liam Livings
6/3/2014 01:02:54 am

Hi Shelagh, in The Simpsons they describe camp as 'the comically tragic, the tragically comic' or 'like when a clown dies' which I suppose sort of works.
Being exagerated is definitely a part of it, but for some that's not an exageration any more than being right handed is an exageration. Simpering of any kind is definitely irritating. Liam x

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    Liam Livings

    Gay romance & gay fiction author

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