The Privilege to Perform Queerness: When Straight People Step Outside of Cisheteronormativity They Gain Social Capital, But at What Cost?
Meme created by Brittney Okabe and Abolition Memes
On September 29, 2019 Pattie Gonia posted a video and photo of both herself and Alex Honnold donning a matching pair of Pattie’s signature patent-leather, six-inch heeled boots. Honnold and Pattie are seen striking dramatic poses and laughing surrounded by big pine trees on a sunny day.
In the image captured by Stephanie Wright, Honnold is squatting in his black pair of boots posing in a stereotypically feminine way while Pattie blows him a kiss.
This image and caption of Alex Honnold and Pattie Gonia posing together brings forward some questions:
Who gets the privilege to perform queerness without consequence? When did the word “ally” become an identity or label? Has “allyship” lost it’s meaning? Is it no longer a verb that requires action?
In an article published in Vice, “Can Straight People Be Queer?” Author Dora Mortimer writes,
“...does initiating straight people into queer culture dilute it? Should we lobby for a vetting system? Something like, you can only be queer if you have more than one album and a ‘strong female characters’ recommendation on Netflix?”
The article implies that there is a tension here. Because the goal, of course, is not to gate-keep who is “truly” queer or not. There is no list of requirements for being really queer because that would be dehumanizing and ridiculous. But currently, there exists a dire need to acknowledge that there is a recent trend of individuals and organizations co-opting LGBTQIA+ and two-spirit culture right now.
For Honnold to don a pair of heeled boots in this comedic, SNL-like way does not feel genuine and that’s because it’s not meant to be. It’s meant to be a joke. Honnold is not making a grand gesture of allyship towards the LGBTQIA+ and two-spirit communities. Unintentionally or not, he is making a mockery of the dynamism that is queer culture. The implication of his foray into drag is that it is temporary, it is one-off, it’s just for show, and it is only for shits and giggles and nothing else. There is no inkling that he is taking seriously his position of power as a white cis person.
Honnold’s lack of self-awareness is more of a testament to his comfort and ease in a society that allows cis people — particularly white cis people — access to anything and everything. This has everything to do with his gender, sexuality, and whiteness, and how he benefits from his dominant identities — identities that he makes no conscious effort of discussing, acknowledging, deconstructing, or examining, despite his vast influence and major platforms.
To be an “ally” is a verb, and unless we missed something, we don’t see any of Honnold’s actions as a rock climber, turned public figure, turned mini celebrity, as tackling the pervasive toxic masculinity, homophobia, transphobia, and anti-Blackness within the climbing community, and the various other spaces he takes up. In fact, we only see glaring examples of how he flippantly maintains these structures of oppression, made evident in his debut documentary “Free Solo.” As well as in the written accounts of his homophobic comments made at a public event, which are detailed in the comments of Pattie’s Instagram post, which you can view below.
This is not about gatekeeping who gets to wear certain items of clothing and who doesn’t, and this is not an attack on Pattie. But this is to acknowledge that for someone like Alex Honnold with immense privilege to wear heels and flaunt it in this inauthentic, jester-like way is an insult to those who wear heels as an act of true self-expression, or even more so, those who may not have that choice because it would literally be life-threatening. Honnold as a cis, white man will face no fatal consequences for his choice to wear something that goes against the rules of cisheteronormativity, if anything he will gain. He gains followers, attention, applause, praise, laughs, affirmations, kudos, and pats on the back. He literally earns himself the label of “ally” with no need to actually act or put any effort behind it. But for queer people, especially Queer and Trans people of color, Black trans womxn, and Black, queer femmes, the ability to self-express often comes at a high, deadly cost.
As Ebony Donnelly says, “Y’all wanna be queer until it’s time to queer y’all politic. Y’all wanna be intersectional until a Black person asserts that same queer politic to call out individuals and organizations profiting from queerness in an otherwise cisheteronormative world.” ( You can find this quote in Ericka Hart’s story “Queer Feels” on Instagram).
In the history of cis, white maleness none of this is surprising. Until, Alex Honnold starts making some significant effort to account for his egregious behavior in “Free Solo,” and starts using his massive influence to garner support for reparations for Black and Indigenous people, and Indigenous sovereignty, he will remain in the Hall of Fame of Mediocre White Men™.
