ABSTRACT
It didn’t take long for us to notice we were raising a “boy” boy. As two gay men, we were naturally alert to the signs, though perhaps no more so than anyone in our gender-attuned times. This realization would occur repeatedly, almost anew each time, taking me by surprise. On one occasion, it was not until we reached the baseball field that I realized how anxious I was, holding our five-year-old son’s hand with sweaty palms. We had arrived for his first little league practice, and when I saw the field I was gripped by the old dread so powerfully associated with team sports: the nauseating mix of fear, shame, and anger so typical of some proto-gay boys. My own brief foray into group athletics – approximately five minutes of little league at the same age – consisted mostly of shock and fear in relation to the coaches, who seemed loud, rough, frightening, existing only to belittle. I felt completely “other,” out of place among boys who seemed to take the shout-ing directives of the father–coaches in stride, even thrilled by the intensity of the practice, the rough-and-tumble play. I, of course, didn’t yet have the words – nor had I heard their analogs hurled at me yet – for the unformulated experience of being a “girly” boy among seeming “boy” boys (Corbett, 1996; see also Drescher, 1998). 1 Even when I managed to get aspects of the stereotypical “boy” boy gender performance right, I was not part of the team: a few years later in a middle school phys ed baseball game, I caught the ball – through the miraculous intervention of some magical fairy godmother – and tagged out one of the more popular jocks. He promptly called me “faggot” for the indignity of losing a run on my “nellie” account. My teammates seemed to agree.
