AJ Hartwick, Features Editor—
I can say with my full chest that Denisonians view queer student leaders with puritanical suspicion, seeing danger in every closet. Outright and blatant homophobia – though still prevalent – has gone out of style. However, homophobia, like carbon monoxide, persists with a lethal subtlety – so subtle that it is often rendered extinct. Though people may not call you a slur, the feelings of resentment linger beneath the seemingly harmless platitudes and tokenization, that is until you deviate from the socially accepted role of background character.
In my own case, I first noticed backlash when I decided to run for a higher position within Denison’s student government. Suddenly, I was no longer known as the kid with the funny posters; I was the overinvolved, power-hungry first-year who was on a quest for domination. This change in public opinion was solidified during a town hall event in which people were allowed to anonymously submit questions. What started out as harmless jokes quickly spiraled into covert attacks, several of which centered around my gender presentation. Not long after, outright racist remarks were posted, remarks which DCGA has since apologized for facilitating.
In Differential Reactions to Men and Women’s Gender Role Transgressions: Perceptions of Social Status, Sexual Orientation, and Value Dissimilarity, sociologist James Mahalik notes that homosexual male gender role transgressions are viewed with more hostility than any other demographic. He writes that this is in large part because suspicion is projected onto those who defy or subvert social norms: in this case, gender roles. My gender presentation deviates from the vignette of an archetypically masculine leader, so my ambition is viewed with suspicion and perceived as deviant and insincere.
The attacks I received at the town hall only compounded when I ran for Student Body Vice President. Every candidate is subject to scrutiny, but people seemed to be more interested in picking apart all the ways in which my running mate and I come off as unlikeable, vain, and Machiavellian rather than any substantive policy position. Many of the people who have said this formulated their opinion entirely on hearsay and rumors, and that is because one-dimensionally evil people are invented, not born.
This characterization paints a picture of a deviant who’s trying to con you, but isn’t quite smart enough to pull it off – it paints a picture of someone who not only can but deserves to be taken down a notch. Moreover, the combination of fearing the power a queer person could hold over you while also being able to look down on them is the fundamental basis of homophobia. Thus, this characterization imbues a sense of righteous superiority and acts as a conduit for people to openly express their bigotry while remaining within socially acceptable norms.
Even in fiction, this trope seems to only impact people who subvert traditional gender roles. Ryan Murphy’s Netflix series The Politician stars Ben Platt as a ruthlessly driven, queer candidate for student government. Alexander Payne’s 1998 film Election stars a young Reese Witherspoon as a calculating, sociopathic candidate for Student Body President. In both Election and The Politician, high schoolers weaponize the perceived docility that comes along with a more stereotypically feminine gender presentation to manipulate the people around them in a Jezebelian fashion.
I decided to publicly come out because my term as Vice President was going to be painted by my identity whether I embraced it or not. This ritualistic vilification is forced on queer people by virtue of their existence. It has transcended traditions and spanned generations, thus it becomes eminently important that we learn to resist the public spectacle that ensues every time someone who isn’t a heterosexual cisgendered white man expresses any form of ambition. We need to all be able to recognize this paradigm and begin to swiftly call it out if we want to uphold Denison’s promise of inclusivity.