The Curse of the Educated Queen
One of the fatal attractions in this world is an educated queen of good breeding. And by queen, I mean the homosexual category of an effeminate man and the usual qualifier that succeeds that category, as in an 'educated queen'. A marvel of the modern world. And a reincarnation of social archetypes that modernity ruthlessly demolished. The delicate, entertainer archetype. The one that spends an entire lifetime being schooled in the art of conversation and refined entertainment and whose utmost expectation in life is to be acknowledged by her, usually royal, audience. Acknowledgment never exceeding an informal condescension of her existence. Very modest expectations indeed.
The delicate entertainer must have an ethereal quality about her. A perpetual sense of beauty and decorum. The moment she becomes vulgar or gaudy she is doomed into being a second class courtesan. The moment she acknowledges that she is human that she demands from her audience, her interlocutors something more than amusement, she is demoted into the status of a common prostitute.
She must thrill and delight her audience. Without sounding too patronizing or too frivolous . She must always be the epitome of grace and personal dignity.
Who else but an educated queen can do that?
No one I guess.
Unlike her predecessors, an educated queen, is not rewarded by the nobility or patronized by royalty. She is left to the whims of a dysfunctional masculinity. She is transformed into some kind of freak show rather than being one of the fundamental sources of entertainment in the ancient world.
One of the unfathomable legacies of colonialism is the curse of bilingualism. Being bilingual acquired a sacred position. Bilinguals became a different race. One that is well versed in the arts of the "colonial master". Something of a witch doctor. Someone who is connected to a higher realm. Someone who understands the workings of the cosmos.
And eventually bilinguals started to regard themselves as possessing an intrinsically superior nature then those around.
A terrible mental disposition indeed.
Now combine, bilingualism with a "good education", and place them in the form of an
Legends have it that the earliest geishas were actually men. And we know for fact that the earliest “female” actors and singers were actually men impersonating women. Perverse gender normativity. A dislocation that can only produce the most peculiar attitudes towards this perverse gender configuration. Attitudes that are as perverse as the gender configurations themselves.
Such attitudes become the coincidence of opposites. Where in on context it allows for an unprecedented degree of intimacy, only in one context, only in that context. And in another it imposes this rigid distance. Unfathomable, solid distance.
The incredible distance imposed between an entertainer and the audience. While in other forms of entertainment this distance is challenged, an entertaining queen risk a lot if she does.
She is consigned a fixed role, a function, nothing more. She becomes an object, not a free moral agent. She is not the master of her destiny. Or is she allowed to choose. Choose freely.
And men, a cruel race by nature, relegate this entertainer, this fantastic interlocutor, to one frame of existence. She can only listen, and speak when asked, but to demand more, to dream of asking for more is not something open for discussion.
She collects mementos, memories, compliments and promises of happiness and nothing more. The rest is shadows, things one can not see or is allowed to see.
If I count the number of times gentlemen callers from all walks of life, from every corner of the planet who sought my company and went on and on about how engaging my conversation is. Or the quality of my education. My worldliness. I will have quite a list..
But this is where the story ends. And the carriage has to take me somewhere else, and the civility I get is the civility of anonymous strangers, brief, transitory and impersonal.
And the promise of happiness is replaced by moments of awkwardness, and the meaningfulness of human relations is replaced by arbitrary abuse of emotions.
And this space becomes one hell of an opportunity to bitch all about it!
The delicate entertainer must have an ethereal quality about her. A perpetual sense of beauty and decorum. The moment she becomes vulgar or gaudy she is doomed into being a second class courtesan. The moment she acknowledges that she is human that she demands from her audience, her interlocutors something more than amusement, she is demoted into the status of a common prostitute.
She must thrill and delight her audience. Without sounding too patronizing or too frivolous . She must always be the epitome of grace and personal dignity.
Who else but an educated queen can do that?
No one I guess.
Unlike her predecessors, an educated queen, is not rewarded by the nobility or patronized by royalty. She is left to the whims of a dysfunctional masculinity. She is transformed into some kind of freak show rather than being one of the fundamental sources of entertainment in the ancient world.
One of the unfathomable legacies of colonialism is the curse of bilingualism. Being bilingual acquired a sacred position. Bilinguals became a different race. One that is well versed in the arts of the "colonial master". Something of a witch doctor. Someone who is connected to a higher realm. Someone who understands the workings of the cosmos.
And eventually bilinguals started to regard themselves as possessing an intrinsically superior nature then those around.
A terrible mental disposition indeed.
Now combine, bilingualism with a "good education", and place them in the form of an
entertaining queen, and you get the modern take of a lady-in-waiting or a geisha. Pretty, pretty, and immensly entertaining. That’s it.
Legends have it that the earliest geishas were actually men. And we know for fact that the earliest “female” actors and singers were actually men impersonating women. Perverse gender normativity. A dislocation that can only produce the most peculiar attitudes towards this perverse gender configuration. Attitudes that are as perverse as the gender configurations themselves.
Such attitudes become the coincidence of opposites. Where in on context it allows for an unprecedented degree of intimacy, only in one context, only in that context. And in another it imposes this rigid distance. Unfathomable, solid distance.
The incredible distance imposed between an entertainer and the audience. While in other forms of entertainment this distance is challenged, an entertaining queen risk a lot if she does.
She is consigned a fixed role, a function, nothing more. She becomes an object, not a free moral agent. She is not the master of her destiny. Or is she allowed to choose. Choose freely.
And men, a cruel race by nature, relegate this entertainer, this fantastic interlocutor, to one frame of existence. She can only listen, and speak when asked, but to demand more, to dream of asking for more is not something open for discussion.
She collects mementos, memories, compliments and promises of happiness and nothing more. The rest is shadows, things one can not see or is allowed to see.
If I count the number of times gentlemen callers from all walks of life, from every corner of the planet who sought my company and went on and on about how engaging my conversation is. Or the quality of my education. My worldliness. I will have quite a list..
But this is where the story ends. And the carriage has to take me somewhere else, and the civility I get is the civility of anonymous strangers, brief, transitory and impersonal.
And the promise of happiness is replaced by moments of awkwardness, and the meaningfulness of human relations is replaced by arbitrary abuse of emotions.
And this space becomes one hell of an opportunity to bitch all about it!
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