Coming out Scenes in Films

Dad, this is your Peter.

On Reconfiguring My Feelings and Building a Queer-friendly mode of experiencing romance

Ignore the title.

Obviously what I am claiming in this short post is informed by my own personal experience, which may or may not be generalized to other people.

Even though I have never been in a romantic relationship and I do not think I am presently ready for or capable of one, I still listen to modern love songs and watch movies, these cultural products in turn inform my understanding, expectation and fantasy of romance.

I believe, growing up in a heteronormative environment, most of these movies and pop songs produce, promote, romanticize, encourage and reaffirm binary, stereotypical gender role-playing in a male-female relationship. As gay males, while consuming these movies and pop songs, we were presented with unexpected freedom to identify with the male character, the female, or alternating between the two. I had generally been inclined to consume the plot of these movies in the position of the female character.

Love songs by male singers typically have an assumed, if not explicit female "audience", filled with the lyrics sanctioned by hetero-, phallocentric society, 2 degrees of separation from the song of my heart.

Female singers sing in feminine voices; those were not "my" voices.

I feel it is important for me, if I ever love, to love with "my" image and "my" voice; so that the feelings are not distorted as I; so that I don't have to squeeze and force them through oddly-shaped categories; so that I could dismiss questions like "so are you the guy or girl?" as nonsense as I know what sense is; so that I could experience, and express love and tenderness with my body and my voice, as equal of another guy.

Toward this end, I have been looking up male version of English songs originally sung by female singers.

So far I have listened to:

Innocence, When You're Gone, I'm With You by Avril Lavigne
My Heart Will Go on by Celine Dion
A Thousand Years by Christina Perri
Baby by Justin Bieber (this is an exception)

Listening to these songs in the male voice makes me feel, I don't know, feel as though I have been given back something that I long should have.

Even if it's just a script, a manual for romance, at least now it's closer to experience and actuality.