Further thoughts on But I’m a Cheerleader

 

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.”

 

Despite the inundation of these stereotypes, the kids understand internally that their orientation is more than how they dress or behave.  Megan doesn’t believe she’s a lesbian when the “evidence” given at her intervention is her Melissa Etheridge poster, vegetarianism, or Georgia O’Keeffe pillow.  It doesn’t click for her until one of the other kids at True Directions points out that most girls don’t think what she does when she looks at other girls – she just assumes they do.  That’s when she puts it together, and all the ensuing gender policing doesn’t make her straight.  The only reason she’s gay is because she falls in love with girls, and regardless of how masculine or feminine the other kids are, the same is true for them.