Kevin Sessums and the Power of Sissydom

[donsu]

http://counterpunch.com/scagliotti03172007.html

A Sissy's Manifesto


Kevin Sessums has thrown down the gauntlet for sissydom. In Mississippi Sissy , his just-published memoir, there is no equivocation, no smarmy requests for tolerance and understanding, no demands for retribution or even sympathy (and lord knows growing up in the white, racist patriarchal South in the '60s, where men were fighting to be men, and Southern belles trying hard to remain ladies, a sissy boy was always one step away from physical annihilation).

There is not even an attempt to negotiate with those who might secretly want to find a safe haven for the sissy. No. Kevin comes at you with arms akimbo, a sassy mouth, and an intelligent sashaying analysis that directly attacks the core of all of us men who have ever dared to travel close to the world of effeminacy and scarily denied any of those attributes-our limp wrists, slight lisps or empathetic sigh-that might have been perceived by others as girly and repulsive. Men who have committed violence are lost forever. Men, especially those of us who are gay, who have recoiled from their effeminate better selves stand guilty, with only a glimmer of hope for redemption. There is nowhere to hide once you start with this book. Kevin Sessums has written a sissy's manifesto, and in it we can all see our trespasses.

And do we need it, because amid this upsurge of absurd cruelty and conformity, with fundamentalist wingnuts and their corporate agents around the world pushing warped values of maleness and militarism, shock and awe on an everyday scale, we all have to look toward the margins for lessons of courage and strength. The antiwar "movement" was wandering in the desert until a mother camped out at Bush's ranch because her son's meaningless death in Iraq forced her to beg for an end to the insanity. That was two years ago, and the war and torture go on and the movement is still wandering, and Cindy Sheehan is still raising hell and still marginal as we roll our eyes at spineless liberal Democratic politicians hiding behind their non-binding proclamations of ineptitude. Really, who is out there that is not mealy-mouthed? Are the Dixie Chicks really that brave? I mean, at least Sinead O'Connor had the guts to rip up the Pope's picture on national television.

-snip-

What Sessums shows is that our weakness is our strength, and there's nothing like some Southern gothic to reveal the rot at the core of all that's meant to be strong and pure about American manliness-the essence of all those football games and statue soldiers and paeans to honor and glory, even if it was to defend slavery. It is sheer pleasure to see the Southern exposures of white manliness and race brought together from the perspective of a young sissy, the small ways white people's sense of racial superiority and male prowess were indoctrinated day after day and in the oddest moments.

-snip-

The sissy really is the hero for all of us. Kevin Sessums' manifesto should be required reading to anyone seriously thinking about taking on the stereotype roll of a man. It might just give them pause and save of us all a few more black eyes.
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and rapes


(when I was in grade school I read all of the Oz books. they caused a lot of children to think. and I always wondered why they picked the Wizard of Oz to make a movie as some of the other Oz stories were better.)

read all of the article to see why I ref. to Oz.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

1. Sissies aren't all that rare in The South.

One band I worked for, from the south, had a big ol' sissy in it. He did just fine, until he dropped his tongue, horrifyingly, in an interview. I have known plenty of others as well. Of course, they had learned well how to avoid the guys with three teeth, whose idea of a good time was drunkenly shooting things, both animate and inanimate, from the porches of their trailer.

Which wasn't a stretch; everyone else avoided those guys too. It wasn't like the genetic throwbacks were a secret to "decent folk". Trouble is, these days them guys seem to be running things and there is way too many other folk trying to emulate them.