For
Megan and the other participants at True Directions, they’re expected to
straighten up – literally – but not many of the tasks and assignments they’re
given to perform are related to their attraction to members of the same
sex. Rather, much of the so-called
reparative program is focused on gender policing. (Note:
I’ll be discussing some spoilers from the movie.)
Once
the kids confess their homosexuality, they’re immediately dressed in “appropriate”
colors: blue for the boys, pink for the
girls. They’re instructed endlessly on
the roles of men and women and given different lessons according to these
roles. The girls, for instance, need to vacuum,
change diapers, scrub floors, and cross their legs in a ladylike manner,
whereas the boys are expected to fix cars, chop wood, catch footballs, and play
war games.
In this
way, the kids’ femininity or masculinity is a litmus test for their
orientation. Those regarded as making
the most progress are girls who know how to sit in a skirt, boys who don’t act
like “sissies.” Feminine cheerleader
Megan is held up as a role model to the other girls, and when two boys are
caught fooling around, Dolph, a wrestler, receives the harshest lecture because
they “expected better” from him.
Feminine girls and masculine boys aren’t “supposed” to be gay, so the
way to heteronormalize teens is to make them adhere to rigid gender roles.
It’s as
if, deep down, they realize they don’t know how to “teach” the kids to be
straight. They don’t know how to
condition away existing feelings of attraction and condition in new ones, and
even if they did, there’s no way they could monitor or measure it. So they turn their attentions on something
tangible: the kids’ gender
presentation. That’s something they can
see, it’s behavior the kids can be taught to mimic. Start from the outside in – make them
look/act straight, and the corresponding straight feelings will just happen as
a result.
But of
course, that doesn’t wash. It doesn’t
matter that Dolph is athletic or that Megan wears sundresses. He falls in love with a boy and Megan falls
in love with a girl. Throughout the
program, it’s made abundantly clear that, whatever supposed progress the kids
are making to act appropriately femme or butch, they’re still every bit as gay
as they always were. One especially
dramatic example comes when Andre is cut before graduation because he’s too “sissy,”
and another boy’s encouragement starts with “nice” and “smart” and quickly
segues into “sexy” and “firm.” A
dejected Andre snaps, “The last thing I need right now is some fruit who’s just
proved himself straight tellin’ my ass how sexy I am!” Meanwhile, no one believes butch,
softball-playing Jan when she comes out as straight, tearfully admitting that
she “can’t help” liking guys. With her shaved head and baggy pants, True
Directions declares that she’s “not straight yet.”
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