Carne Cruda Podcast · La República Independiente de la Radio

Derroteros: Tener pluma, con Sabina Urraca (CARNE CRUDA EXTRA)

·38 min·2 clips

A University of Granada study found gay men on hook-up apps who describe themselves as 'heterosexual with a girlfriend' to signal they lack effeminate traits.

1. Carne Cruda Extra's 'Derroteros' segment features writer Sabina Urraca in a discursive walking monologue about 'pluma' — gay effeminacy — as a cultural, linguistic, and political phenomenon. 2. Sabina Urraca is a Spanish writer whose aunt Lucía's gift of a decorative feather pen from a gay friend first planted the seed of this exploration, years before she understood the full context. 3. The episode's central question is whether effeminacy is an imitation, a construction, an identity, or a political act — and whether heterosexuality is any less constructed. 4. Urraca maps the international vocabulary for gay effeminacy: 'camp,' 'flamboyant,' 'effeminate,' and 'out and proud' in English; 'pluma,' 'sarasa,' 'bujarra,' 'maricón' in Spanish; plus dozens of Latin American regional variants including 'mariflor' (Venezuela), 'se le quema el arroz' (Chile), and 'canoa mojada' (Venezuela). 5. She cites the artwork 'Ejercicios de Medición sobre el Movimiento Amanerado' by Manu Arregui, a seven-screen installation that uses grid lines and positional rasters on body joints to satirize the idea of scientifically measuring mannered movement. 6. A University of Granada research group documented 'heteroasymptomatic' gay men on contact apps — men who describe themselves as 'hetero' or 'hetero con novia' to signal they lack effeminate traits, creating what Urraca calls a 'hyper-mega-construction over another construction.' 7. Urraca traces artistic movements like mannerism, camp, and kitsch to economic and social crisis periods, arguing that the same crises that produce flamboyant art also revive plumophobia, including internalized plumophobia within LGBTQ+ communities. 8. She describes Butch-Femme dress codes in US lesbian communities from 1910 to 1950: middle and upper-class women who lived in same-sex partnerships adopted strict visible role divisions partly to gain the social protection of appearing like a heterosexual married couple. 9. The historian Joan Nessel is cited as arguing that Butch and Femme can be seen as distinct genders in themselves, while Judith Butler argues gender is a social and historical construction rather than a biological given. 10. Urraca recounts a conversation with her mother, who watched a group of gay men passing below a Madrid balcony and said 'I think gays look good, but why do they have to imitate women?' — using this to explore the concept of 'heterosexual candor.' 11. She argues the mother's question contains a false premise: heterosexual gender performance (voice modulation, dress codes, gestural norms) is equally a construction, but heterosexuality is never asked to justify itself as performance because it is treated as instinct rather than culture. 12. She critiques the phrases 'I don't care who you sleep with' and 'it doesn't matter who you love' as forms of conditional acceptance that reduce LGBTQ+ identity to sex or romance, erasing it as a complete way of existing. 13. Oscar Wilde's 1895 prosecution for sodomy and 'unacceptable behavior' is identified as the moment when the effeminate dandy persona first became publicly associated with homosexuality as a category in Western culture. 14. She introduces 'Polari,' an underground language used by gay men in the UK when homosexuality was illegal, mixing Italian, Romani, sailors' slang, Yiddish, and Cockney backslang, with examples including 'omi palone' (gay man) and 'fantabulosa.' 15. Argentine poet and anthropologist Néstor Perlongher's poem 'Miché' is quoted for his warning that as homosexuality normalizes into a heterosexual-passing model, it loses its disruptive social charge — what he calls 'the death of homosexuality.' 16. Urraca connects this to Adrian Kanji's observation that literature begins when a poet produces a language against the language, framing flamboyant speech and Polari as anti-hegemonic linguistic acts. 17. The tone is essayistic and conversational, with Urraca digressing freely through literary references, personal anecdotes, and academic studies while the interviewer adds brief reactions. 18. The format is a loose monologue with occasional dialogue, allowing Urraca to jump between Spain, Argentina, the US, and the UK without structured transitions. 19. Listeners interested in queer theory, gender studies, linguistics, or the history of LGBTQ+ culture in Spain and Latin America will find the episode dense with references and frameworks. 20. Those expecting a structured argument or practical content will find the discursive, reference-heavy format difficult to follow without prior familiarity with the theorists cited.

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