Dig down deep enough at Advocate.com and you can occasionally find something that's not totally lockstep lefty (ok, the ethnic discrimination angle probably did get this commentary in). It's by a gay Cuban-American deemed by some gay establishmentarians as "too butch" for the International Mr. Leather competition (which, foolish me, I had thought was all about "butchness").
Will Castillo, who won the title of Mr. Florida Leather 2005,
calls himself a "passionate, masculine gay man" and notes that he
has been "addressing gay male audiences who feel disenfranchised
from the gay world due to not identifying with the dominant gay
culture: feminized gay men." He says he was advised, when competing
for the International Mr. Leather (IML) title, to be "less Fidel
Castro and more Carmen Miranda" if he wanted to win, and that
experienced IML hands:
cajoled me into swinging my hips, moving my arms, exaggerating my walk, and beaming a huge smile while waving wildly. I thought I was losing my mind. They told me, "It's a fag contest, honey! Queen it up!"
Castillo, who placed fourth in the IML contest, concludes, "Carmen Miranda can have her basket of fruit back to place firmly on her head. She looks better with it in high heels than I do."
While Castillo sees the criticism of his "machismo" as anti-Hispanic, it actually points to something far broader - the internalization of the feminist critique of masculinity to the point that even leather contests, apparently, aren't safe.
Look Back: My article "Masculinity
Under Siege," although a bit dated (it was written in 1993),
explores "the feminist critique of manhood" and its embrace by
certain gay theorists on the cultural left.