Persona in ancient Greek drama was the mask of the actor indicating the role or character he was performing. Strangely, our understanding of person developed out of the theological reflections and conflicts of the early Church about the Trinity in which the decision was that there are three "persons" in one God. So today persona refers to a social role, a mask, a facade. On the internet, for example, it is possible to invent and present a fictional persona.
When my grandson Paul was 3 years old he would spend much of his day in the persona of Batman. I would enjoy joining him for a while in this imaginary caper. If I pressed him if he was really Batman or pretend Batman he would say pretend. But why press him? It was fun, normal and wholesome.
The male psyche is inclined to the performative persona because the masculine vocation is always to represent what he is not: the heavenly Father and the crucified Bridegroom. This is why men love to wear uniforms, play roles, take on missions...in fantasy and reality both. The male cannot just "be himself;" he has to serve a greater purpose. The mission of masculinity is to image God. His own personality must disappear in humility to unveil the authentic Father. By contrast, the woman does no such representation: she is herself as virgin, bride, mother. The feminine is always authentic; the masculine always representational.
Consider the Drag Queen: a male masquerading as female. It is ironic, comical, transgressive., Very powerful! In the seminary a staple of our "Gaudeamus" celebrations were such performances. They were a riot! There is something primal, hysterical, cathartic about a man acting the female! Recall Some Like it Hot, Tootsie, or Mrs. Doubtfire! How about a woman masquerading as a male? It does not happen. It is not funny. Not ironic. Not even imaginable.
For us Catholics, the priest acts always in Persona Christi. Like John the Baptist, he must decrease so Christ can increase. Narcissism is a big problem for a priest...and for any man. A woman does not perform such a role. Narcissism is a bigger problem for men than for women. Humility is a tougher task for men than for women.
A hot, summer afternoon I was reading in our living room when my teenage son walked in the door, in a dress, glanced at me and then away with a slight smile. I was extremely agitated. Seeing my son in a dress bothered me...a lot. I sat there disturbed. I had no reason to think he was actually homosexual or a cross-dresser as no prior behavior had suggested this. Cognitively I realized he was pranking, teasing me. It was a mind game. He has a sense of humor. But that didn't calm me. I sat there troubled. To assume indifference was not possible: I was too agitated. I could not return to my book. But to engage him seemed futile: argumentation or even conversation seemed pointless and would play into his ploy. After a while the light bulb lit up: I went upstairs to our bedroom and put on my wife's dress. With padded breasts of course. I looked ridiculous! When John saw me he burst into laughter. As did I. We thoroughly enjoyed an exercise in "camp" as transgressive, grotesque, ridiculous, hilarious.
Camp, as famously described by Susan Sontag and Darel Paul (see "Drag Queens" in First Things, February 2023), is: "a taste for artifice...love of the unnatural and things being what they are not...being as playing a role...stylization, theatricality, exaggeration, flamboyance, abnormality, even the grotesque understood precisely as a form or appearance incongruous with nature."
In his incisive article, Darel Paul describes the Drag Queen as camp: a male masquerading in an exaggerated, really grotesque femininity. It is deconstructive of masculinity, but at the same time it is more covertly contemptuous of femininity in a hidden misogyny. He shows that this has been championed by prominent liberal, feminist politicians (AOC, Pelosi, Gillibrand, Warren, Kamala) as an assault upon toxic masculinity on behalf of a liberated progressive feminism. Generally the Drag Queen phenomena is popular among white, liberal women. The story time is sponsored by the American Librarian Association which is overwhelmingly feminine and liberal.
A moderate degree of such behavior...in childhood play, drama, comedy, parody, etc...is playful, wholesome and recreational. But beyond a limit such performance becomes dysfunctional and toxic. The Netflix series Inventing Anna tells the true story of a fraudster who masqueraded as a wealthy heiress. Her entire life was pure performance, a fiction, a masquerade. Nothing about her is real. In Catch Me If You Can Leonardo De Caprio plays the allegedly true story of a preternaturally talented con man who pulls off successful frauds before his 19th birthday. In The Talented Mr. Ripley Matt Damon plays Ripley who entirely assumes, as a persona, the identity of his wealthy friend whom he has killed. My maternal uncle Bill Gallagher was a decorated WWII hero who worked in army intelligence his entire adult life but never told anyone in the family. As a teenager he caddied but pretended he couldn't speak English so as to eliminate all conversation with the golfers. He adopted a performative persona. We see this dynamic throughout literature, cinema and real life. It is part of the human reality.
Likewise, Donald Trump as a serious narcissist is a performance. He is a reality show, not real. He is performing for the public. Very little of him seems to be genuine or real. As chronicled by Yuval Levin, much of our national politics is no longer about policy or even power, but purely performative in a desperation to gain public recognition and status. Darel Paul associates the surge in drag queen popularity with the Trump presidency as a reaction to his toxic masculinity. Trump himself, however, is best understood as a camp character. He is a grotesque caricature of exaggerated, deviant masculinity: big, strong, aggressive and egotistical, lustful, greedy and devoid of humility, compassion, conscience or the faintest sense of truth. He is straight out of Gotham City and would hold his own with the Joker, the Riddler and all the other perverts. As such a character he is immensely entertaining, at least for those who applaud his defiance of our liberal elites. His mass appeal is precisely because, with Steve Bannon and the Joker, he is nihilist and anarchistic: his is a rage to tear down, not to build up. His "MAGA" is itself a facade expressing incoherent rage, indignation and fury. The more rational Republicans who supported him reluctantly as the lesser evil...and those like Pence who served his administration loyally...had to suffer a dissonance in conscience that has only worsened with time and events.
The performative persona as childhood fantasy and play, tongue-in-cheek comedy, camp and entertainment is wholesome and fun. When it loses its sense of irony and becomes serious, it is dangerous.
Star Wars is fun because there is a soft sense of camp or irony. By contrast, Lord of the Rings is a more serious, straightforward drama. Contrast Jack Nicholson's Joker with that of Heath Ledger: the former is entirely comedic; the later has crossed the line into seriousness and is deeply troubling, and probably fatal for that actor. We know that Nicholson warned Leger to beware of the character.
Marie is schizophrenic, very bright, and open with me. She would tell me there is a little man living in her ear. She would beckon me to observe how she could move the sun across the sky. She was, in effect, a performative persona when she was in this state of mind. I would not affirm her; but not challenge her either. Mostly, I would quietly receive her narrations. Sometimes I would suggest that she was in symptoms and at times she would seem to agree. What mattered most was that I received her (but not her narratives) warmly. It seemed to help her to just talk about it.
Veronica was one of the most impressive applicants I interviewed for our woman's residence. Tall, staturesque, glamorous; had a good job as evaluator of real estate; got good references from Rabbi and others; spoke affectionately about nephew's basketball game suggesting healthy family life. I happily checked all the boxes. A few days later the young woman in room adjacent to Veronica's burst into my office in a rage:" Why did you accept that man?" Veronica was exercising and manifested clearly the masculine genitalia in the underpants. This became an interesting experience. I liked Veronica. I enjoyed her. The entire interaction with Veronica was performative, imaginative, theatrical, and recreational. It was fun. It was not real. I was not dealing with an actual person, male or female. I was dealing with an imaginative, playful-but-serious performative persona. It was all pretend.
My friend Danny, a troubled personality, told me that he was to become the first layman pope. He was not a steadfast Catholic nor a stable personality, so this was a complete delusion. But I merely received this communication. Futile to challenge it; but worse to affirm it.
Anorexics who weigh under 100 pounds can be entirely convinced that they are obscenely obese. Again: futile to disagree. Their performative persona is in charge.
Homosexuality as an romantic-physical attraction, action and relationship is real. But the entire gay edifice is not. It is a performative persona. A cultural construct. It is an artifice. It is a fictional, fabricated identity not unlike that of Batman, the drag queen, the "obese" anorexic or Marie moving the sun across the sky.
Homosexuality has been with us forever but the gay identity and culture is a recent invention. It is the epitome of the cultural-sexual revolution of the 1960s: individualistic, libertarian, libertine, indulgent, narcissistic, histrionic and therapeutic.
Homosexuality as desire is an affliction, a terrible suffering, a cross. It is a temptation. It is, with God's grace, an occasion for heroic patience and sacrifice, nobility of character, and holiness of life. As an action it is a sin of the flesh. More troubling, however, than the act is the surrender to a faux identity, a persona.
Disparagement, shaming or condemnation of the homosexual is a grave sin against charity. Affirmation of the troubled LGTBQ identity is a sin against truth.
Reality, as Creation, has intelligibility and form to it. Primary structures of human life include: masculinity/femininity, paternity/maternity, spousality, filiality, fidelity, chastity and other virtues. Also real is the universe of evil and suffering unleased by the primal sins of Lucifer, his legions and our ancestors. But the alphabet soup of gay-bi-trans-non-binary-etc. is not real, it is a fictional construct.
It may be objected that the Batman play and drag queen camp are consciously ironic, they are pretense while the gay or trans identity is not. That is, of course, the point: the sincere, interior acceptance of this "persona-identity" is self-destructive in the manner of the anorexic or schizophrenic.
The gay-trans identity and culture is an effort to remove human suffering. It comes from an unspeakable depth of pain: shame, isolation, despair, confusion, self-hatred, resentment, condemnation, and real desperation. Compassion and decency require recognition of this interior affliction. It is also undeniable that many find relief in acceptance of this identity and often in an exclusive, faithful, intimate, quasi-spousal partnership. We live with an acceptance of this and value the genuine good in such lives.
Like most folks today, I have in my inner circle of family, friends and coworkers at least a handful who live this lifestyle. They are dear to me: men and women; talented, generous, devout, interesting, funny, delightful, admirable, intelligent. We enjoy life together on many levels: shared work, interests, family, faith. We never talk about this gay stuff. It is "don't ask, don't tell." It is "live and let live." It is "I mow my lawn and you mow yours." To me they are not gay or lesbian or trans. I love them for who they are, who they are in themselves, who they are to me. I do not see them as gay any more than I see Trump as the greatest president in history or Marie as queen of the universe or Paulie as batman or the starving anorexic as fat or Veronica as a woman.
Gay-affirmation is not love-in-truth. It is well intended for sure: the goal is to relieve shame, self-hatred, and inferiority. But it is sentimental, enabling and co-dependent as it affirms an erroneous identity.
I will surely be accused of hate and homophobia. I have neither fear nor hatred; I am comfortable with homosexuals and homosexuality. I am not angry, or anxious or indignant. Any more than I am about the delusional anorexic, schizophrenic, or narcissist. I am, to be precise, an LGBTQ+-Denier. I don't see the thing as real; I see it as performative. Mine is a moral-intellectual judgment; I can be wrong; but my confidence is high because I stand on thousands of years of Catholic tradition.
Disregarding the performative persona, I love, revere and cherish this person before me, man or woman, who is suffering, noble, delightful, fascinating, admirable, and charming. Let's get back to Veronica. How ironic that the feminine name he adopted means "true image!" The femininity was entirely a false image, the opposite of an icon. But I enjoyed him. It was a fun game. And yet there was also some real connection with this male-faux-feminine person. More than once he said I reminded him of his 90-year-old, devout Catholic father. This was said with affection. But one day there was hysterical screaming in his room about me and my Church and (Freud would say) about his father problem. He agreed from the start not to use the common bathrooms, but the private one. After some melodrama, including police and crisis unit, he left peacefully.
If a friend tells me he is gay, or trans, or non-binary, or asexual...I will nod calmly. I will not affirm and will not challenge. In my head I will think: "You are suffering. I am sorry. You are not what you think. You are the beloved son/daughter of our heavenly Father. You are destined for a life of filial, fraternal/sororal, spousal, and maternal/paternal generosity, in some form. You do not know that now but in God's grace and good time you will."
The gay identity and culture is an artifice, not a reality. Yet it also surges with compassion, kindness, generosity, creativity, and even religious devotion. We need not affirm the falsehood, but we can in peace rejoice in all that is True and Good and Beautiful in this interesting world and among these good, beautiful people.
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