Paul Rudnick and Judith Martin, move over! Do What I Say: Ms. Behavior's Guide to Gay and Lesbian Etiquette is now available in bookstores, and author Meryl Cohn, the doyenne of queer manners, is certain to become an instant celebrity, a national spokesperson for the lighter side of gay life in America. Cohn began writing the "Ms. Behavior" advice column for Boston's Bay Windows when she noticed a serious lack in the otherwise highly evolved gay and lesbian culture -- there was nowhere for lesbians and gay men to turn for etiquette tips and advice. But with this exquisitely funny book, Ms. Behavior -- far hipper than Ann, Abby, or even Miss Manners -- has crafted an indispensable blueprint for the subtleties of gay life.
| |||||||||||||||
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Introduction
Ms. Behavior has written this book because she has always wished
it existed. She especially longed for a book like this when she
was a preteen dyke-in-training, unable to reconcile her
attraction to comfortable shoes with her mother's need to buy
her feminine, fashionable footwear.
If only Ms. Behavior had had some guidance, coming out might
have been easier. She might have gone on fewer dates with scary
people. Perhaps she wouldn't have had her first steamy lesbian
experience on a weekend when her parents were visiting her at
school. And it might even have been unnecessary for Ms. Behavior
to spend endless nights crying herself to sleep, clutching her
toy fire engine to her breast.
Where do you turn for advice if you're a gay man or lesbian?
Although your very supportive therapist insists that she isn't
grossed out by your sex life, she still doesn't get all the
queer little everyday subtleties that concern you. Your mother
can't help you, because she's just learning not to retch when
you say the word "lover." And there are some questions that are
just too embarrassing to ask your friends.
Not knowing how to behave in any social situation can cause a
lot of angst and give you a headache, so Ms. Behavior aims to
relieve some of the uncertainty in dealing with circumstances in
your ordinary life. She hopes, in fact, to help you to achieve a
state of enlightened, meditative bliss.
In investigating each of the topics in this book, Ms. Behavior
sometimes acts as adviser, sometimes observer, and sometimes
adventurer. She likes to think of herself as an astronaut
exploring gay and lesbian life, even if in a particular chapter
she happens to be exploring only her own cervix.
For a long time now, gay men have remembered to laugh at the
idiosyncrasies and campy pleasures of gay culture; even lesbians
(who have occasionally been accused of humorlessness) are
beginning to learn to chuckle. Ms. Behavior feels that despite
the battles that remain, gay and lesbian culture has evolved to
a point where we can afford to enjoy some laughter directed at
our own irresistible quirks and customs.
And what about straight people? Some heterosexuals crave a
window through which they can understand gay and lesbian culture
(or perhaps get a surreptitious glance at what they secretly
think they might be missing). Although Ms. Behavior has written
this book primarily for gay men and lesbians, she welcomes her
enlightened straight readership to learn about size queens,
wimmin's music festivals, dressing in drag, and lesbian
vegetarian potluck dinners, as well as the ways in which gay men
and lesbians are forced to confront conflicts about fitting in.
Ms. Behavior hopes you enjoy her book. Please let her know if
there is anything else with which she can help. She is only too
happy to provide you with the answers to all of your questions
and solutions for all of your problems. She would like to be the
salve for your pain and the balm you spread on your wounds.
In Love and Light,
Ms. Behavior
Chapter 12: Ms. Behavior's Ode to Sissies
In her childhood, Ms. Behavior always befriended sissy boys,
those quiet, creative types who loved to color, play with dolls,
and tie their mothers' silky floral scarves over their heads in
tribute to Jackie O the moment they were left at home alone.
Some of the sissy boys hung together in a femme gaggle, a sure
target for roving jocks with hard-ons for giving wedgies to the
limp-wristed. But Ms. Behavior's closest childhood friend,
Gabriel, was a cute, precocious, slightly fay boy, a lone sissy
who got called "fairy" and "homo" by the other kids at school.
Ms. Behavior has never forgotten how mean kids can be, and there
are some nasty children she remembers from elementary school who
have surely grown into beastly adults whom Ms. Behavior would
still like to pummel.
Gabriel was artistic and sensitive and played Barbra Streisand
songs on his piano. His high voice frequently cracked while
singing "The Way We Were," and his father would mutter "faggot"
under his breath in the kitchen. Gabriel also took painting
classes, made macrame bracelets, and freely expressed his desire
to be an actor, all of which were interpreted as sure signs of
sissyhood by the other kids, who seemed to have some sort of
ultrasensitive twink radar.
Gabriel liked baseball, but he broke his nose nearly every time
he tried to play, and he fractured his arm a couple of times
falling out of his treehouse. Still, he refused to hang out with
the other boys who found gym class humiliating, and he made a
point of listening to Led Zeppelin and Aerosmith instead of
Aretha, the Supremes, and Patti LaBelle, who were the sissy-boy
favorites. He hated being called "fem" and "faggot" and tried to
prove his masculinity by wearing plaid flannel shirts and Levis
like the butch boys and by making a show of chasing girls.
The pubescent Ms. Behavior was one of the girls whom Gabriel
awkwardly kissed and touched on a mattress on the floor of his
basement. Ms. Behavior and Gabriel both tried not to make faces
while they kissed, and they sometimes ran their fingers
tentatively over each other's soft skin as if they wished they
could be wearing gloves. Ms. Behavior was not surprised when, at
age fourteen, Gabriel announced to her that he had also been
fooling around with boys. (It was at about this point that Ms.
Behavior realized that perhaps her own lack of interest in
Gabriel's very excitable johnson, with which she was just
becoming familiar, might also be significant.)
Once Gabriel realized that he was gay, he found it hard to come
out, because it meant acknowledging that those name-calling kids
at school had been right. Still, his stubbornness about
expressing himself had been pumped and flexed so much that he
gradually eased into a refreshing flamboyancy that others
eventually accepted.
The writer Frank Rose, in his essay "Sissyhood Is Powerful"
(Village Voice, November 15, 1976), offers the following
definition: "A sissy is a male who is not a man and not likely
to become one." Rose, like some other gay writers and
psychologists, claims that most gay men aren't sissy and most
sissies aren't gay, but Ms. Behavior believes otherwise.
Although her experience with this is only what might be
considered anecdotal, it seems to Ms. Behavior that most gay men
have been considered sissies at one point or another and most
boys who start out as sweet-voiced pansies do not ultimately
evolve into heterosexual men. The majority of the boys Ms.
Behavior knows who collected Barbies and played house as kids
are still doing so today, whether literally or metaphorically.
(Her friends Jake and Larry have a Barbie collection that would
turn any six-year-old girl livid with envy. Their collection is
so large that they have to keep one of their Barbie dolls in the
freezer; they refer to her, fully dressed and magnificent, as
the Ice Queen Barbie.)
Self-assessment, upon which many sociological surveys rely, is a
tricky thing. Ms. Behavior's friend Tommy-Tuna claims he was
never a sissy, but it is difficult to determine how accurate his
perspective might be, since he is huge, muscle-bound, and
tattooed but also the faggiest man Ms. Behavior knows. At the
time he denied his prissy tendencies, he was lounging in his
back yard in a green floral muumuu, sipping iced tea through a
skinny red straw and frantically waving a Japanese fan around
his face.
Now Ms. Behavior is about to make a confession that could have
dangerous repercussions. She knows that if she were not a
lesbian, her preference would be for adult sissy boys. Sissy
boys are the coolest and the most attractive men. What could be
more appealing than a sensitive person who can communicate, cry,
cook, clean, choose your clothing, style your hair, and arrange
flowers on the dining room table? The appeal of sissy boys does
not seem to have been lost on straight women, either, who often
befriend a few to confide in. Of course Ms. Behavior realizes
that even if she lost her fervent interest in women and
expressed her aberrant preference, some of her wishes for
gratification would never be fulfilled, because sissy boys are
not usually attracted to women. (If they were, Ms. Behavior is
not sure she would be at the top of the list, since she has very
few outfits worth borrowing and little patience for being the
subject of elaborate hair and makeup festivities.)
What is it that is so attractive about sissies? Once they grow
up to be men, they have most of the feminine qualities a lesbian
might find desirable, and fewer of the liabilities. They are
soft, vulnerable, design-proficient, emotive, and well read
(from all those years spent with their faces in books while the
other boys played sports). So okay, sissy boys might be a little
bitchy at times, but it is easy just to think of it as PMS. And
maybe they are a little bossy about where to place the antique
armoire or what kind of flowers to grow in windowboxes, but at
least they are not controlling about what foods to boycott or
why you should be spending all of your free time volunteering at
the nearest battered women's shelter.
Sissy boys have never been sex symbols. Social stigma and
internalized homophobia have ensured that universal admiration
has always been directed toward men who are straight-looking and
-acting, those few homosexuals who might be allowed to play
football with the heteros. Gay culture has deified the small
proportion of fags who represent the same ideals that straight
society has extolled forever: toughness, masculinity, and
hard-...
Ms. Behavior has written this book because she has always wished
it existed. She especially longed for a book like this when she
was a preteen dyke-in-training, unable to reconcile her
attraction to comfortable shoes with her mother's need to buy
her feminine, fashionable footwear.
If only Ms. Behavior had had some guidance, coming out might
have been easier. She might have gone on fewer dates with scary
people. Perhaps she wouldn't have had her first steamy lesbian
experience on a weekend when her parents were visiting her at
school. And it might even have been unnecessary for Ms. Behavior
to spend endless nights crying herself to sleep, clutching her
toy fire engine to her breast.
Where do you turn for advice if you're a gay man or lesbian?
Although your very supportive therapist insists that she isn't
grossed out by your sex life, she still doesn't get all the
queer little everyday subtleties that concern you. Your mother
can't help you, because she's just learning not to retch when
you say the word "lover." And there are some questions that are
just too embarrassing to ask your friends.
Not knowing how to behave in any social situation can cause a
lot of angst and give you a headache, so Ms. Behavior aims to
relieve some of the uncertainty in dealing with circumstances in
your ordinary life. She hopes, in fact, to help you to achieve a
state of enlightened, meditative bliss.
In investigating each of the topics in this book, Ms. Behavior
sometimes acts as adviser, sometimes observer, and sometimes
adventurer. She likes to think of herself as an astronaut
exploring gay and lesbian life, even if in a particular chapter
she happens to be exploring only her own cervix.
For a long time now, gay men have remembered to laugh at the
idiosyncrasies and campy pleasures of gay culture; even lesbians
(who have occasionally been accused of humorlessness) are
beginning to learn to chuckle. Ms. Behavior feels that despite
the battles that remain, gay and lesbian culture has evolved to
a point where we can afford to enjoy some laughter directed at
our own irresistible quirks and customs.
And what about straight people? Some heterosexuals crave a
window through which they can understand gay and lesbian culture
(or perhaps get a surreptitious glance at what they secretly
think they might be missing). Although Ms. Behavior has written
this book primarily for gay men and lesbians, she welcomes her
enlightened straight readership to learn about size queens,
wimmin's music festivals, dressing in drag, and lesbian
vegetarian potluck dinners, as well as the ways in which gay men
and lesbians are forced to confront conflicts about fitting in.
Ms. Behavior hopes you enjoy her book. Please let her know if
there is anything else with which she can help. She is only too
happy to provide you with the answers to all of your questions
and solutions for all of your problems. She would like to be the
salve for your pain and the balm you spread on your wounds.
In Love and Light,
Ms. Behavior
Chapter 12: Ms. Behavior's Ode to Sissies
In her childhood, Ms. Behavior always befriended sissy boys,
those quiet, creative types who loved to color, play with dolls,
and tie their mothers' silky floral scarves over their heads in
tribute to Jackie O the moment they were left at home alone.
Some of the sissy boys hung together in a femme gaggle, a sure
target for roving jocks with hard-ons for giving wedgies to the
limp-wristed. But Ms. Behavior's closest childhood friend,
Gabriel, was a cute, precocious, slightly fay boy, a lone sissy
who got called "fairy" and "homo" by the other kids at school.
Ms. Behavior has never forgotten how mean kids can be, and there
are some nasty children she remembers from elementary school who
have surely grown into beastly adults whom Ms. Behavior would
still like to pummel.
Gabriel was artistic and sensitive and played Barbra Streisand
songs on his piano. His high voice frequently cracked while
singing "The Way We Were," and his father would mutter "faggot"
under his breath in the kitchen. Gabriel also took painting
classes, made macrame bracelets, and freely expressed his desire
to be an actor, all of which were interpreted as sure signs of
sissyhood by the other kids, who seemed to have some sort of
ultrasensitive twink radar.
Gabriel liked baseball, but he broke his nose nearly every time
he tried to play, and he fractured his arm a couple of times
falling out of his treehouse. Still, he refused to hang out with
the other boys who found gym class humiliating, and he made a
point of listening to Led Zeppelin and Aerosmith instead of
Aretha, the Supremes, and Patti LaBelle, who were the sissy-boy
favorites. He hated being called "fem" and "faggot" and tried to
prove his masculinity by wearing plaid flannel shirts and Levis
like the butch boys and by making a show of chasing girls.
The pubescent Ms. Behavior was one of the girls whom Gabriel
awkwardly kissed and touched on a mattress on the floor of his
basement. Ms. Behavior and Gabriel both tried not to make faces
while they kissed, and they sometimes ran their fingers
tentatively over each other's soft skin as if they wished they
could be wearing gloves. Ms. Behavior was not surprised when, at
age fourteen, Gabriel announced to her that he had also been
fooling around with boys. (It was at about this point that Ms.
Behavior realized that perhaps her own lack of interest in
Gabriel's very excitable johnson, with which she was just
becoming familiar, might also be significant.)
Once Gabriel realized that he was gay, he found it hard to come
out, because it meant acknowledging that those name-calling kids
at school had been right. Still, his stubbornness about
expressing himself had been pumped and flexed so much that he
gradually eased into a refreshing flamboyancy that others
eventually accepted.
The writer Frank Rose, in his essay "Sissyhood Is Powerful"
(Village Voice, November 15, 1976), offers the following
definition: "A sissy is a male who is not a man and not likely
to become one." Rose, like some other gay writers and
psychologists, claims that most gay men aren't sissy and most
sissies aren't gay, but Ms. Behavior believes otherwise.
Although her experience with this is only what might be
considered anecdotal, it seems to Ms. Behavior that most gay men
have been considered sissies at one point or another and most
boys who start out as sweet-voiced pansies do not ultimately
evolve into heterosexual men. The majority of the boys Ms.
Behavior knows who collected Barbies and played house as kids
are still doing so today, whether literally or metaphorically.
(Her friends Jake and Larry have a Barbie collection that would
turn any six-year-old girl livid with envy. Their collection is
so large that they have to keep one of their Barbie dolls in the
freezer; they refer to her, fully dressed and magnificent, as
the Ice Queen Barbie.)
Self-assessment, upon which many sociological surveys rely, is a
tricky thing. Ms. Behavior's friend Tommy-Tuna claims he was
never a sissy, but it is difficult to determine how accurate his
perspective might be, since he is huge, muscle-bound, and
tattooed but also the faggiest man Ms. Behavior knows. At the
time he denied his prissy tendencies, he was lounging in his
back yard in a green floral muumuu, sipping iced tea through a
skinny red straw and frantically waving a Japanese fan around
his face.
Now Ms. Behavior is about to make a confession that could have
dangerous repercussions. She knows that if she were not a
lesbian, her preference would be for adult sissy boys. Sissy
boys are the coolest and the most attractive men. What could be
more appealing than a sensitive person who can communicate, cry,
cook, clean, choose your clothing, style your hair, and arrange
flowers on the dining room table? The appeal of sissy boys does
not seem to have been lost on straight women, either, who often
befriend a few to confide in. Of course Ms. Behavior realizes
that even if she lost her fervent interest in women and
expressed her aberrant preference, some of her wishes for
gratification would never be fulfilled, because sissy boys are
not usually attracted to women. (If they were, Ms. Behavior is
not sure she would be at the top of the list, since she has very
few outfits worth borrowing and little patience for being the
subject of elaborate hair and makeup festivities.)
What is it that is so attractive about sissies? Once they grow
up to be men, they have most of the feminine qualities a lesbian
might find desirable, and fewer of the liabilities. They are
soft, vulnerable, design-proficient, emotive, and well read
(from all those years spent with their faces in books while the
other boys played sports). So okay, sissy boys might be a little
bitchy at times, but it is easy just to think of it as PMS. And
maybe they are a little bossy about where to place the antique
armoire or what kind of flowers to grow in windowboxes, but at
least they are not controlling about what foods to boycott or
why you should be spending all of your free time volunteering at
the nearest battered women's shelter.
Sissy boys have never been sex symbols. Social stigma and
internalized homophobia have ensured that universal admiration
has always been directed toward men who are straight-looking and
-acting, those few homosexuals who might be allowed to play
football with the heteros. Gay culture has deified the small
proportion of fags who represent the same ideals that straight
society has extolled forever: toughness, masculinity, and
hard-...
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Funniest look at gay and lesbian life ever written.,
By
This review is from: Do What I Say: Ms. Behavior's Guide to Gay and Lesbian Etiquette (Paperback)
This book is a witty and engaging look at life in the 90's from a gay and lesbian perspective. Meryl Cohn tells us how to handle all sorts of situations with her unique blend of compassion and distain for the modern tribulations of every-queer. A must read for straight and gay alike.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Love it!,
By Informed Shopper (Philadelphia, PA United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Do What I Say: Ms. Behavior's Guide to Gay and Lesbian Etiquette (Paperback)
I was blown away by this book. Ms. Cohn has an enjoyable writing style and sense of humor, it has no typos that I recall (a pet peeve of mine), and it is very entertaining. I laughed out loud many times. Some of the stories have stuck with me and I pull them out when I need a laugh. If you like David Sedaris, you will like this book. I passed it on to someone who is a very devout Christian and also a closet bisexual (the makings of a great inner struggle for her). I worried that she might see it solely as a GBLT book and so it wouldn't interest her, but I hoped she would read it with an open mind, and I directed her to my favorite chapter. Many months later, she still hasn't returned it to me. When asked, I was told that I can "borrow" it on a short-term basis. Outrageously funny on its own, and not merely a parody of Ms. Manners, Dear Abby, Martha Stewart and the like. I want more!!! Please, please, please publish another book or let me know where I can get more of these delightful stories. Not for children. Not just for GBLT, but a homophobe will not enjoy it.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Hilarious if you can loosen up enough to enjoy it!,
By Karrie Hunter "Stop Googling Me" (Richmond, VA United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Do What I Say: Ms. Behavior's Guide to Gay and Lesbian Etiquette (Paperback)
This book was hilarious and kept me reading and laughing. You will love this book if you can keep in mind that by playing up the tired old stereotypes, Cohn pokes fun at gays and lesbians in a smart and witty "inside the crowd" kind of way. This book isn't made to be representative of the gay community to outsiders who need to understand the stereotypes aren't real, it's great comedy that you'll find yourself nodding to every once in a while saying "my god, I KNOW someone who is ACTUALLY like that!" I'd recommend it as well as "Who's Cares if It's A Choice" to any person without "Irony deficiency".
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Inside This Book
(learn more)
First Sentence:
Okay, so you were your gym teacher's pet in high school and had a torrid fling with a babe named Muffy at your Seven Sisters college, but does that necessarily mean that you qualify as a Real Lesbian? Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
lesbian therapist, multiple piercings, sissy boys, bed death, dental dams Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Sporting Dyke, Lesbian Bed Death, Muscle Queens, Activist Dykes, Drama Queens, Leather Queens, Lipstick Lesbians, Club Kids, Leather Dykes, Sweet Mother, Bette Davis, Big Heavy Boots, Green Hair, Butch Brother, Gay Pride, Joan Crawford Queens, Marilyn Monroe, Object of Your Fantasy, Sweet Pea, Baby Jane, Barbra Streisand, Joan Crawford's Fan Club, Seven Sisters, The Way We Were, Trouser Trout New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Okay, so you were your gym teacher's pet in high school and had a torrid fling with a babe named Muffy at your Seven Sisters college, but does that necessarily mean that you qualify as a Real Lesbian? Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
lesbian therapist, multiple piercings, sissy boys, bed death, dental dams Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Sporting Dyke, Lesbian Bed Death, Muscle Queens, Activist Dykes, Drama Queens, Leather Queens, Lipstick Lesbians, Club Kids, Leather Dykes, Sweet Mother, Bette Davis, Big Heavy Boots, Green Hair, Butch Brother, Gay Pride, Joan Crawford Queens, Marilyn Monroe, Object of Your Fantasy, Sweet Pea, Baby Jane, Barbra Streisand, Joan Crawford's Fan Club, Seven Sisters, The Way We Were, Trouser Trout New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
