You Can't Escape Discrimination

"But the fairy also provoked a high degree of anxiety an scorn among middle-class men because he embodied the very things middle-class men most feared about their gender status. His effeminacy represented in extreme form the loss of manhood middle-class men most feared in themselves, and his style seemed to undermine their efforts to shore up their manly status.  His womanlike manner challenged the supposed immutability of gender differences by demonstrating that anatomical males did not inevitably become men and were not inevitably different from women.  The fairy's feminization of his body seemed to ridicule and highlight the artificiality of the efforts of other men to masculinize theirs.  Being called a fairy became  a serious threat to middle-class men precisely because the boundaries between the she-man and the middle-class man seemed so permeable, despite men's beset efforts to develop manly bodies and cultural styles" (115).

Discrimination seems to be the never-ending theme that I see so far this semester! It's everywhere! Also, the recurring theme that society doesn't like things that are new.  In this case it is the gay culture and the fairy.  I find myself having a hard time with this issue because I think of America as so free.  We are free to be who we want to be, say what we want to say, do what we want to do (within reason).  And yet this comes with an almost guaranteed attachment of society's disapproval.  A part of society will always disapprove of something someone does.  So we do not really have true freedom without disapproval from someone.  Does all freedom come along with an attached judgement by society?  Is it even possible to do something completely "right" according to society?  Is society made up of one view?  I would think not; rather, I think society is an overlapping and chunking of many different views on different issues.  Society's judgement and constructs seem inescapable, and it kind of freaks me out.  Our history texts and other texts that we have read thus far in AmCon seem to say that society's judgements are inescapable to.
Scary, I think.