One is taught young, for instance, that homosexuality is a semiotic, that there are signs of it, and that one ought not to produce those signs. Even as children (perhaps especially as children), gays are taught to hide their own signs and substitute those of the dominant culture: boys who are sissies internalize quite early that the signs of their sissihood are (absurdly, for they seem self-produced and contiguous with identity) their enemy.