The history of the origins of the concept of 'homosexuality' shouts out loud that 'homosexuality' refers to queer's sexuality for men, not men's sexuality for men. And that the entire concept is a conspiracy against men.
The people upon whom the concept of 'homosexuality' was first coined were the mollies -- those who were known by the then Western society, not as men, but as members of the third sex -- like anywhere in the world. But their femininity was still misdefined as "males who get anally/ orally penetrated".
Those who invented the concept of 'homosexuality', sought to study these people clinically, under science, and it did not any special talents to see these flamboyant, effeminate, gaudy, individuals as being 'different'. However, the 'scientists' defined their difference in terms of their sexual preferences. So far so good.
The conspiracy angle comes in in the fact, that they defined their sexual preferences, and thus their femininity not in terms of their desire to receive anal/ oral sex from men, but as "male sexual desire for men". This one sweeping act of generalization brought the entire gamut of men's desire for men' into the stigmatized 'queer' category.
What followed was what the conspirators had wanted to do... the media widely popularized the queer sexuality for men, as 'men's sexuality for men', They would deride queers and make fun of them as 'homosexuals', i.e. men who liked men. And the real men (i.e. masculine males), who were almost 100 percent into sex with other men, albeit secretly, started disowning their sexual interest in men, in order to avoid being counted as 'queer'. However, they still had not taken upon the heterosexual identity -- they would never do that -- because it would be a further burden on them.
It was the conspirators, who, along with the new category of 'homosexuals' they had invented and empowered, invented the term 'heterosexual' and later 'straight' to describe those who were trying hard to disown their sexual interest in men, and to divert all their sexual needs towards women, in order to avoid a fate they consider worse than death. To be counted as one of the queers. And indeed, if you look at the stigma attached with the word 'homosexual' or 'gay', you know that it is the same thing as the 'mollies' or the 'third gender' of the early modern era.
No wonder, the 'heterosexual' or 'straight' identity became the most sought after thing for normal, masculine, non-queer males. The conspirators had succeeded. They had finally achieved what their forefathers had desired, but could never hope to succeed in doing. To wipe out men's sexual need for men from the mainstream altogether, and to break men completely from other men. Indeed, in the hysteria the conspirators have later created using the threat of being labelled 'gay', western men today are scared to hold each other's hands in public, when their forefathers kissed each other as social greeting. The media, as usual, is in the forefront of this heterosexualization/ homosexualization, followed by peer-pressure, through which a competition to prove one's heterosexuality and repulsion towards 'homosexuality' (sic) is enforced upon young men.
Today the conspirators, whom we call the Forces of Heterosexualization, and that includes 'homosexuals', can easily sit back and, as far as they are concerned, honestly claim, that 'straight' is about being naturally 'heterosexual' and that they don't have any sexual interest in men. And that anyone, who has a sexual interest in men is necessarily 'gay'.
The contemporary versions of these conspirators are the likes of Bailey, who are bent upon further concretizing this final defeat of men's social/physical/emotional need for men by 'proving' scientifically, using the effeminate 'gays' and the masculine 'straights' as their study base, that 'men who like men' have biological traits of women, including their brain structures, their gait, etc. And that the Queer heterosexuals who are now emerging and who are challenging the conspirator's claim that heterosexualty = straightness, are being scientifically 'proven' to not be really queers. They are also bent upon defeating the 'bisexual' brigade that is also threatening the stigma imposed upon the 'straight' population, by claiming that there is no real 'bisexuality' and bisexuals are merely 'gay' males.
There are hordes of other myths being promoted in the name of science, using this wrong and invalid foundation of sexual orientation, upon the politics of which, the entire western population is structured. E.g., it is women, they claim, who are more commonly 'bisexual', than men. Men are, as a majority, constantly and exclusively heterosexual, as per their claims. Of course, this serves to add to the pressures upon men to be exclusively heterosexual, if they want to be counted as men and not queers.
All in all, the entire social set up, led by the institutions of Science, Media and Peer-pressure are making sure that straight men grow up to be heterosexuals, while the minority who doesn't are marginalized as 'gays', and nobody suspects a thing. Of course, they close their eyes completely to all the biological, historical, contemporary cultural, etc. evidences that shouts in their face that they are wrong. They not only ignore these evidences, but they also seek to destroy them, to misinterpret them, redefine them and to ascribe false 'causes' to them, in order to protect them from challenging their lies. Isn't this how most oppressive systems in the world function? -- heterosexuality, Judio/Christian/Islamic religions, Caste system, apartheid, Communism, and so on -- they all work in similar fashions, by not allowing anyone or anything to challenge their lies.
Their are immense documentations of the institution of Science destroying the evidences of widespread male sexuality for other males in biology (wildlife science), history and culture. Innumerable western 'experts' seek to write off the widespread male intimacies in the non-western world as "inability to find female partners due to social restrictions". They even go so far as to paint the non-western males as 'effeminate' (e.g. one ridiculous claim that Muslim males wear eye-liners, and this makes them effeminate, and then relating this to the widespread male intimacy in Islamic cultures... eye-liners are not inherently feminine, they are not held to be such in the Islamic world, and macho males wear them too. When the society acknowledges the real differences between men and women, men do not have to resort to such artificial differences to maintain their sense of manhood. And is it very scientific for these 'experts' to judge non-western cultures of manhood through the artificial social roles prevalent in the West?). All in all, its a deep, deep rooted conspiracy against men, and one that is the most difficult to fight against, if only because, the west and these forces of heterosexualization, are extremely powerful today, due to vast industrialization -- economically, technologically and politically. They are busy denouncing the values prevalent in the rest of the world as 'backward' and thrusting their conspiracies upon them in the name of more civlised way of living.
The concept of 'homosexuality' as it is defined on the facade, is invalid too. There is no justification for considering man's sexuality for men as separate because all men have a sexual need for men. Today, the western society has suppressed this biological fact so deep, and covered the rest in the straight community, that it is difficult for a non-straight male (which means non-masculine males and women) especially, gays to believe this to be true.
It's like inventing a concept called "two earsnality", the trait of having two ears... Why, because everyone has two ears, except a rare few. The basic assumptions behind the concept of 'homosexuality' are wrong. And upon that, if you see the lies built later on this foundation, to build this concept of 'homosexuality' on the 'third sex' space to further stigmatize it as 'queer', then the entire thing becomes a HUGE conspiracy to break men from men.
Dec 27, 2008
The heterosexualization of (straight) men
Young men know that they are supposed to develop a strong enough sexual need, a sexual comfort, a sexual space for women in their hearts/ minds and that time is running out. The bigger sexual need they are able to develop for women, the easier their life is going to be.
No one talks about it, but almost all straight men (except those to whom it comes more naturally) struggle quietly, without letting anyone know of this struggle, to develop a place for women in their life, because unless they do it, they're going to be queers not men. Mere talking about girls can only take them so far. When men's spaces are strong you can get away with just talking about girls till you get married. And you don't really need a sexuality for women to get married, you only need to do the needful. Marriage is more of a social responsibility. No one cares or knows whether you really enjoy the sexual company of a woman. However, the more heterosexualized the society is, the more you're under pressure to develop a sexuality for women, because they want action, not mere talking.
Its the social mechanisms of man's oppression that have generated this need in men to develop a sexuality for women (or face the consequences), and it is the same mechanisms which help the men to do it, for one thing, by placing such huge social value for men in girls. This social value keeps men inspired to run after the girls. In other words, men run after the girls for the social value attached to them, and the social power attached to heterosexuality than for their intrinsic sexual value. The pleasure, and everything else is secondary, which may or may not happen. Sex is a pleasurable sensual activity in itself, and if all the other avenues of releasing sexuality are physically or psychologically closed for men, then the only avenue available automatically becomes pleasurable for you. Technically, you can also develop a sexuality for animals, if they're the only beings you can actually have sex with. It is the same principle that the Forces of Heterosexualization use to explain so-called 'homosexuality' in prisons.
The heterosexual society has created a huge socio-psychological prison for men, where sexuality between men is marginalised into a queer ghetto, severely stigmatized and kept away from the mainstream men's spaces (straight spaces). Thus a sexuality for men becomes inaccessible for normal, regular, masculine guys who are known as 'straights' (in traditional societies, they're just known as 'men' and gays are known as 'third gender'), who are conditioned to fight off and hate any such sexual feelings within them. They are trained to see their sexual need for men (which is biologically a part of being a masculine gendered male), as a burden that they must get rid of, if they want an easy life. Taking on the queer 'gay' identity is out of the question for masculine gendered males, who'd rather die than have to take it -- So, classifying sexual need for men as 'gay' is practically creating a huge wall between men and their sexual need for men, a wall that men can never break. Its a straight line that men will never dare to cross.
Straight men don't care for sexual pleasure or any pleasure
That sexual pleasure in itself means little to men over their manhood, is clear from the fact that in case study after case study, where typical young straight men became intensely but unwittingly, sexually and emotionally involved with another man, short of falling in love, they still fought off these feelings and either avoided having real sex (which in any case often doesn't involve anal/ oral sex) with their lovers (which were acknowledged as just friends) or allowed themselves to have unacknowledged sex with them, but broke off the relationship which was at its zenith, when they were faced with the pressure from the 'lover friends' to acknowledge these feelings. The avoidance of sex as well as breaking off the bond was extremely painful for them, and had it been towards a girl, they would have made quite a show of their distress, and even have contemplated suicide. However, here they just internalize their pain, move ahead and then try to seek the company of a girl to transfer all that heightened but unfulfilled sexual need. So, although, straight men make a huge show of their sexual interest in girl and the pleasure they derive from it, in reality, pleasure means little to straight men. What means is their straight identity, because the straight identity is related with manhood. And the Queer identity is related with a loss of manhood.
Also, in all of these case studies, straight men although became intensely emotionally involved, they did not fall in love with their male lover friends, some of whom were non-heterosexual straights (in non-heterosexulaized societies, masculine males who exclusively desire men are counted as striaghts) or were 'gay', fell in love (which means they were not so inhibited about a relationship with a guy). Some of these straight men went on to fall in love with girls. While some of this love was a put on, others were more genuine. But whether they were fake or genuine, one thing was for sure, they were all, especially flamboyant about their love for the girls and made a great pommp and show of it. They also seemed to be unusually involved with the girls, with unusually heightened feelings and unusual care they showed towards their female partners -- something that they constantly withheld from their male partners. However, even in the genuine cases of these male-female love, men were able to fall in love with girls because they value their relationships with girls, while they did not value their relationships with a man, and you can't fall in love unless you value something. Their lover friends, on the other hand greatly valued these relationships and had a place for it in their hearts as well as their life. Thus they allowed themselves to fall in love, while the straight men did not allow themselves to do that.
Acknowledging their sexual need for or interest in another male may have more than just the social connotations for straight men. They may actually also render the inbuilt socio-psycho mechanisms inside them useless, if they only acknowledged this sexual need even in private (like in a private survey). This is why they NEVER acknowledge their need even with the partners they're having an intense sexual relationship with, or if they, in the heat of the moment, acknowlege it, they make sure to go back on it and deny it later, when they remember to fight with the intimacy. Because, not acknowledging something that exists has tremendous implications. If you consider an existing trait as non-existing it practically ceases to exist, even when it does so. And then it ceases to affect your personal sense of identity as a 'straight' male.
Another thing that is evidenced from the case studies is that, men who naturally develop enough sexual feelings for girls, that is, they did not have to struggle a lot to achieve this, they are less macho, often softer, than those who struggle a lot to develop these feelings. But they also tend to be more open about relating sexually with other men, especially once they 'prove' their heterosexuality, and have lesser hassles in doing so than men who have had to struggle a lot, and especially those, who're still struggling.
This struggle to be heterosexual tends to take a lot of toll on the health of straight men, who tend to age much faster than males who don't have to struggle so much. This is one reason why gays tend to look younger than straight males of similar age. But, straight men are willing to pay any price to be heterosexual, as long as it is required for 'manhood'.
Sexuality for men a great threat to straight men
In inumerable case studies, where young straight men in their late teens or early twenties, with yet undeveloped heterosexuality, fell unwittingly into relationships with men -- (and this happened not only in cases where men's spaces were strong, but also in heterosexualized spaces, and even in the former cases, there was enough opportunity for young men to court women in private, although, there were lots of opportunities for close intimacies to develop between men) -- men saw their increasing involvement with a male lover, a big threat to their heterosexualization process. They realised, without anyone having to tell them that, if they allowed their sexual feelings for men to develop and gave it a 'valued' place in their lives, (a place they want to reserve for girls, because of the social pressures, even if the sexuality for girls is not fully developed yet), they may never be able to develop an adequate sexuality for girls. Because, in order to develop this sexuality your 'sexual' zone should be vacant. If it is filled up with need for a man, it would be almost impossible to change this in the future, if the sexuality for men takes root. Therefore, in 100% of these cases, men fought with their desire for their male lovers and tried to kill their growing emotional and social intimacy with them. It was an extremely painful process in all of these cases as these men really cared for their lovers at the sametime. So, it was a unique struggle where they were torn apart between a hatred of their sexual feelings for men and a very strong desire for their male lovers. Of course, in the end the social mechanisms won, and the bonds, all of which were extremely intense broke, sometimes without being 'consumated' at other times after a long sexual involvement.
Straight stated definition of 'gay' is different from straight 'practised' definition of 'gay'.
Straight men are forced to acknowledge the defintion of 'gay' given by the Forces of Heterosexualization. But for all practical purposes, they have their own functional definition of what comprises 'gay' and what comprises 'man' or 'straight' male.
When asked straight men will use the definition of 'gay' given by the formal society -- those who like men are 'gay'. However, in practise, it is not the liking of men that makes you gay. It is acknowledging that liking that does. And each straight society has different levels of freedom it allows to unacknowledged sexual acts between men. For example, in buses in Delhi, India, men can feel up other men, even masturbate them using their elbows, while making it seem casual, but using your hands is 'gay'. As 'wierd' as it may sound to western gays, no one will think of you as 'gay' if you quietly felt up another man using your elbow or any body part, except your hands. It is something straight males do to each other quietly. You will be thought of as 'gay' if you acknowledge your interest or cross the straight codes of sexual conduct with men, or showed a sexual disinterest in girls.
Spaces for straight men to give vent to some of their suppressed sexual need for men:
But men do create silent, unspoken and unacknowledged, fearful spaces within the heterosexualized spaces, where whenever they get a chance (which is rare) they give vent to some of their suppressed sexuality for men, but always taking care to camouflage their sexual acts by hiding behind socially acceptable excuses like non-presence of girls, losing inhibition after drinking, watching girl porn with guys, or just doing it because they're getting bored (always letting it be known that they have no real interest in men). These acts of giving vent to their sexual feelings for men often doesn't include things like oral/ anal sex, but rather stuff like seeing naked, feeling up or masturbation. It most certainly never involves more mushy things like kissing or embracing -- which are held decidedly 'queer' (Its clear that what the men want to do with other men sexually is determined by what is allowed within the straight identity/ manhood roles, rather than what they really desire deep within). Also, men never cease to take advantage of socially approved occasions like hazing (ragging) or handling of prisoner of wars in army, etc. to give vent to their sexual feelings for men. These excuses provide men a space where they can indulge in sexuality for men without being threatened to be burdened with the 'gay' identity. Even within the heterosexualised straight spaces, men sometimes are able to find or make for themselves pockets of men's spaces... and whenever they do, their sexual interactions with other men become more open and blatant. This is why the Forces of Heterosexualization are too keen to put girls in every personal space of men, (i.e. heterosexualize their spaces) so that they don't get any excuse or opportunity to give vent to their sexual need for men. The more they are able to suppress this sexuality for men, the more it becomes possible to channel this sexual need into 'heterosexuality'. When they attempt to 'cure' homosexuality, this is actually what they seek to do, to suppress a man's sexual feelings for men and to channelize it into women, although in most cases it is too late. You have to do it before the sexual feelings for men get too developed. Doing it after these feelings become developed is almost impossible.
Men often feel freer to indulge in their sexuality for men when they are in a position of power over other men who are in a vulnerable position. This is one situation where they would not be afraid of being 'queers' simply because they have social excuse, plus they are in a position of power over the men they are sexually exploiting, and thus more 'manly'. Queers can only be powerless, unmanly, sissies. Also, straight men have usually mutilated most of the softer, positive sides of their sexuality for men, and in any case, what they allow themselves to enjoy in these situations are hardened, negative, exploitative aspects of their sexuality for men, that has survived. The negative things often survive, when the positive aspects of a human trait have been killed by the society.
We all have images of how the Western armymen behaved with Iraqi men they captured in war. The first thing they'd do would be to strip them, to feel them up, to make them masturbate, to make them indulge in sexual acts with other men (or even with the armymen). And indeed to watch them being sexually humiliated by women, that has a special sexual value for straight men. The armymen had a perfect excuse, and they never failed to take pictures and videos of their sexual exploitation of prisoners to keep with them forever.
Stripping and sexually humiliating men before others, especially in front of girls, has immense sexual value for straight men. There are various reasons for this, which would be a topic for another analysis. Those in power in the Western society, have kept enough spaces and excuses for them to indulge in this fetish, and when it is so given sanction by the mainstream society, it ceases to be 'queer'. Therefore, in western culture, men are often made to strip down for medicals, often in public situations like army recruitments etc. when there is no apparent need for this humiliation. Women, on the other hand are not required to go through such humiliation.
Seen in this light, the stripping of four youths in full public view by the US army takes on another dimension, that the society will never want to acknowledge. Straight male sexuality for men often finds quiet, unacknowledged vent in social, non-sexual situations like stripping or feeling during medicals, in search operations, etc. There is a cover for men in such situations and the society considers only acts or men that involve anal/ oral sex to be 'queer' -- or at least an open acknowledgement of an interest in men. The social cover provided by these situations mean that men can indulge in sexuality for men without acknowledging their needs. Many of us are aware of this, but we aren't really able to conceptualize it, because it is not recognized in the society as such, and social acknowledgement/ non-acknowledgement makes a lot of difference in our ability to comprehend the reality.
Since there is no social space for normal, regular guys to talk about or acknowledge the pain that straight men go through while mutilating their sexual need for men, men too don't really lament over what they've lost or what they've suffered. There is no scope for complaining. Indeed, they don't see it as loss, they're socially conditioned to see it as a gain and a big relief from having to be queers.
Another aspect of straight male sexuality for men, is that although they feel freer to give vent to their hardened sexuality for men when in a position of power over vulnerable men, they tend to give vent to the softer side of whatever has remained of their sexuality for men, when in sexual situations with men who are more powerful, manly or macho than them. Of course, to be powerful and macho implies in heterosexual societies that neither of the two sides ever acknowledge their interest in each other. They indulge in the acts, often in the dead of night or behind an excuse, and pretend as if nothing ever happened.
PROBLEMS IN AWAKENING STRAIGHT MEN ABOUT THE ISSUE OF THEIR OWN OPPRESSION
Even when straight men are so oppressed by the mechanisms of social oppression, many of them, like a typical victim, are allegiant to these mechanisms and directly and indirectly support and strengthen them. This is ironical, yet true, and one of the biggest impediments in doing any work around this issue.
Men feel grateful to these oppressive mechanisms for being helpful to them in fighting with their own sexual needs when they are the most vulnerable against these needs. Ironically, men tend to see their own sexual feelings aS their enemy and the mechanisms that help them fight themselvs as their 'friend'. This is because, they see, the manhood = heterosexual connection as inevitable and biological -- something which is inalterable, as if they owe their manhood to these social mechanisms without which they just cannot be 'heterosexuals'.
What they don't realise is that if there were no anti-man social mechanisms, there would be no connection between manhood and heterosexuality and no need for men to fight with their real sexual needs as it is their real selves that can procure them their much needed manhood. When straight would mean not heterosexual but a male who is simply masculine gendered, although loving another male would be acknowledged as an integral part of this manhood, as it is in nature.
But most of all, men are scared to be labelled as 'gay' to associate with this sort of work/ campaign.
ENDNOTE
Its true that most men eventually develop a working heterosexuality, but even if they don't, they get the manhood status, embedded in the straight identity and that is the only thing they really care about (it would be just easier on men if they can develop a working heterosexuality, because it would be less stressful for them then). However, this is not a need that was provided by the nature, neither is this connection between heterosexuality and 'manhood' or 'sexual interest between men' and queerhood real. These connections as well as the need for being heterosexual is created by the society.
Therefore, if we can do away with the social need to be heterosexual, men will not have to feel happy about killing an important part of their own selves.
No one talks about it, but almost all straight men (except those to whom it comes more naturally) struggle quietly, without letting anyone know of this struggle, to develop a place for women in their life, because unless they do it, they're going to be queers not men. Mere talking about girls can only take them so far. When men's spaces are strong you can get away with just talking about girls till you get married. And you don't really need a sexuality for women to get married, you only need to do the needful. Marriage is more of a social responsibility. No one cares or knows whether you really enjoy the sexual company of a woman. However, the more heterosexualized the society is, the more you're under pressure to develop a sexuality for women, because they want action, not mere talking.
Its the social mechanisms of man's oppression that have generated this need in men to develop a sexuality for women (or face the consequences), and it is the same mechanisms which help the men to do it, for one thing, by placing such huge social value for men in girls. This social value keeps men inspired to run after the girls. In other words, men run after the girls for the social value attached to them, and the social power attached to heterosexuality than for their intrinsic sexual value. The pleasure, and everything else is secondary, which may or may not happen. Sex is a pleasurable sensual activity in itself, and if all the other avenues of releasing sexuality are physically or psychologically closed for men, then the only avenue available automatically becomes pleasurable for you. Technically, you can also develop a sexuality for animals, if they're the only beings you can actually have sex with. It is the same principle that the Forces of Heterosexualization use to explain so-called 'homosexuality' in prisons.
The heterosexual society has created a huge socio-psychological prison for men, where sexuality between men is marginalised into a queer ghetto, severely stigmatized and kept away from the mainstream men's spaces (straight spaces). Thus a sexuality for men becomes inaccessible for normal, regular, masculine guys who are known as 'straights' (in traditional societies, they're just known as 'men' and gays are known as 'third gender'), who are conditioned to fight off and hate any such sexual feelings within them. They are trained to see their sexual need for men (which is biologically a part of being a masculine gendered male), as a burden that they must get rid of, if they want an easy life. Taking on the queer 'gay' identity is out of the question for masculine gendered males, who'd rather die than have to take it -- So, classifying sexual need for men as 'gay' is practically creating a huge wall between men and their sexual need for men, a wall that men can never break. Its a straight line that men will never dare to cross.
Straight men don't care for sexual pleasure or any pleasure
That sexual pleasure in itself means little to men over their manhood, is clear from the fact that in case study after case study, where typical young straight men became intensely but unwittingly, sexually and emotionally involved with another man, short of falling in love, they still fought off these feelings and either avoided having real sex (which in any case often doesn't involve anal/ oral sex) with their lovers (which were acknowledged as just friends) or allowed themselves to have unacknowledged sex with them, but broke off the relationship which was at its zenith, when they were faced with the pressure from the 'lover friends' to acknowledge these feelings. The avoidance of sex as well as breaking off the bond was extremely painful for them, and had it been towards a girl, they would have made quite a show of their distress, and even have contemplated suicide. However, here they just internalize their pain, move ahead and then try to seek the company of a girl to transfer all that heightened but unfulfilled sexual need. So, although, straight men make a huge show of their sexual interest in girl and the pleasure they derive from it, in reality, pleasure means little to straight men. What means is their straight identity, because the straight identity is related with manhood. And the Queer identity is related with a loss of manhood.
Also, in all of these case studies, straight men although became intensely emotionally involved, they did not fall in love with their male lover friends, some of whom were non-heterosexual straights (in non-heterosexulaized societies, masculine males who exclusively desire men are counted as striaghts) or were 'gay', fell in love (which means they were not so inhibited about a relationship with a guy). Some of these straight men went on to fall in love with girls. While some of this love was a put on, others were more genuine. But whether they were fake or genuine, one thing was for sure, they were all, especially flamboyant about their love for the girls and made a great pommp and show of it. They also seemed to be unusually involved with the girls, with unusually heightened feelings and unusual care they showed towards their female partners -- something that they constantly withheld from their male partners. However, even in the genuine cases of these male-female love, men were able to fall in love with girls because they value their relationships with girls, while they did not value their relationships with a man, and you can't fall in love unless you value something. Their lover friends, on the other hand greatly valued these relationships and had a place for it in their hearts as well as their life. Thus they allowed themselves to fall in love, while the straight men did not allow themselves to do that.
Acknowledging their sexual need for or interest in another male may have more than just the social connotations for straight men. They may actually also render the inbuilt socio-psycho mechanisms inside them useless, if they only acknowledged this sexual need even in private (like in a private survey). This is why they NEVER acknowledge their need even with the partners they're having an intense sexual relationship with, or if they, in the heat of the moment, acknowlege it, they make sure to go back on it and deny it later, when they remember to fight with the intimacy. Because, not acknowledging something that exists has tremendous implications. If you consider an existing trait as non-existing it practically ceases to exist, even when it does so. And then it ceases to affect your personal sense of identity as a 'straight' male.
Another thing that is evidenced from the case studies is that, men who naturally develop enough sexual feelings for girls, that is, they did not have to struggle a lot to achieve this, they are less macho, often softer, than those who struggle a lot to develop these feelings. But they also tend to be more open about relating sexually with other men, especially once they 'prove' their heterosexuality, and have lesser hassles in doing so than men who have had to struggle a lot, and especially those, who're still struggling.
This struggle to be heterosexual tends to take a lot of toll on the health of straight men, who tend to age much faster than males who don't have to struggle so much. This is one reason why gays tend to look younger than straight males of similar age. But, straight men are willing to pay any price to be heterosexual, as long as it is required for 'manhood'.
Sexuality for men a great threat to straight men
In inumerable case studies, where young straight men in their late teens or early twenties, with yet undeveloped heterosexuality, fell unwittingly into relationships with men -- (and this happened not only in cases where men's spaces were strong, but also in heterosexualized spaces, and even in the former cases, there was enough opportunity for young men to court women in private, although, there were lots of opportunities for close intimacies to develop between men) -- men saw their increasing involvement with a male lover, a big threat to their heterosexualization process. They realised, without anyone having to tell them that, if they allowed their sexual feelings for men to develop and gave it a 'valued' place in their lives, (a place they want to reserve for girls, because of the social pressures, even if the sexuality for girls is not fully developed yet), they may never be able to develop an adequate sexuality for girls. Because, in order to develop this sexuality your 'sexual' zone should be vacant. If it is filled up with need for a man, it would be almost impossible to change this in the future, if the sexuality for men takes root. Therefore, in 100% of these cases, men fought with their desire for their male lovers and tried to kill their growing emotional and social intimacy with them. It was an extremely painful process in all of these cases as these men really cared for their lovers at the sametime. So, it was a unique struggle where they were torn apart between a hatred of their sexual feelings for men and a very strong desire for their male lovers. Of course, in the end the social mechanisms won, and the bonds, all of which were extremely intense broke, sometimes without being 'consumated' at other times after a long sexual involvement.
Straight stated definition of 'gay' is different from straight 'practised' definition of 'gay'.
Straight men are forced to acknowledge the defintion of 'gay' given by the Forces of Heterosexualization. But for all practical purposes, they have their own functional definition of what comprises 'gay' and what comprises 'man' or 'straight' male.
When asked straight men will use the definition of 'gay' given by the formal society -- those who like men are 'gay'. However, in practise, it is not the liking of men that makes you gay. It is acknowledging that liking that does. And each straight society has different levels of freedom it allows to unacknowledged sexual acts between men. For example, in buses in Delhi, India, men can feel up other men, even masturbate them using their elbows, while making it seem casual, but using your hands is 'gay'. As 'wierd' as it may sound to western gays, no one will think of you as 'gay' if you quietly felt up another man using your elbow or any body part, except your hands. It is something straight males do to each other quietly. You will be thought of as 'gay' if you acknowledge your interest or cross the straight codes of sexual conduct with men, or showed a sexual disinterest in girls.
Spaces for straight men to give vent to some of their suppressed sexual need for men:
But men do create silent, unspoken and unacknowledged, fearful spaces within the heterosexualized spaces, where whenever they get a chance (which is rare) they give vent to some of their suppressed sexuality for men, but always taking care to camouflage their sexual acts by hiding behind socially acceptable excuses like non-presence of girls, losing inhibition after drinking, watching girl porn with guys, or just doing it because they're getting bored (always letting it be known that they have no real interest in men). These acts of giving vent to their sexual feelings for men often doesn't include things like oral/ anal sex, but rather stuff like seeing naked, feeling up or masturbation. It most certainly never involves more mushy things like kissing or embracing -- which are held decidedly 'queer' (Its clear that what the men want to do with other men sexually is determined by what is allowed within the straight identity/ manhood roles, rather than what they really desire deep within). Also, men never cease to take advantage of socially approved occasions like hazing (ragging) or handling of prisoner of wars in army, etc. to give vent to their sexual feelings for men. These excuses provide men a space where they can indulge in sexuality for men without being threatened to be burdened with the 'gay' identity. Even within the heterosexualised straight spaces, men sometimes are able to find or make for themselves pockets of men's spaces... and whenever they do, their sexual interactions with other men become more open and blatant. This is why the Forces of Heterosexualization are too keen to put girls in every personal space of men, (i.e. heterosexualize their spaces) so that they don't get any excuse or opportunity to give vent to their sexual need for men. The more they are able to suppress this sexuality for men, the more it becomes possible to channel this sexual need into 'heterosexuality'. When they attempt to 'cure' homosexuality, this is actually what they seek to do, to suppress a man's sexual feelings for men and to channelize it into women, although in most cases it is too late. You have to do it before the sexual feelings for men get too developed. Doing it after these feelings become developed is almost impossible.
Men often feel freer to indulge in their sexuality for men when they are in a position of power over other men who are in a vulnerable position. This is one situation where they would not be afraid of being 'queers' simply because they have social excuse, plus they are in a position of power over the men they are sexually exploiting, and thus more 'manly'. Queers can only be powerless, unmanly, sissies. Also, straight men have usually mutilated most of the softer, positive sides of their sexuality for men, and in any case, what they allow themselves to enjoy in these situations are hardened, negative, exploitative aspects of their sexuality for men, that has survived. The negative things often survive, when the positive aspects of a human trait have been killed by the society.
We all have images of how the Western armymen behaved with Iraqi men they captured in war. The first thing they'd do would be to strip them, to feel them up, to make them masturbate, to make them indulge in sexual acts with other men (or even with the armymen). And indeed to watch them being sexually humiliated by women, that has a special sexual value for straight men. The armymen had a perfect excuse, and they never failed to take pictures and videos of their sexual exploitation of prisoners to keep with them forever.
Stripping and sexually humiliating men before others, especially in front of girls, has immense sexual value for straight men. There are various reasons for this, which would be a topic for another analysis. Those in power in the Western society, have kept enough spaces and excuses for them to indulge in this fetish, and when it is so given sanction by the mainstream society, it ceases to be 'queer'. Therefore, in western culture, men are often made to strip down for medicals, often in public situations like army recruitments etc. when there is no apparent need for this humiliation. Women, on the other hand are not required to go through such humiliation.
Seen in this light, the stripping of four youths in full public view by the US army takes on another dimension, that the society will never want to acknowledge. Straight male sexuality for men often finds quiet, unacknowledged vent in social, non-sexual situations like stripping or feeling during medicals, in search operations, etc. There is a cover for men in such situations and the society considers only acts or men that involve anal/ oral sex to be 'queer' -- or at least an open acknowledgement of an interest in men. The social cover provided by these situations mean that men can indulge in sexuality for men without acknowledging their needs. Many of us are aware of this, but we aren't really able to conceptualize it, because it is not recognized in the society as such, and social acknowledgement/ non-acknowledgement makes a lot of difference in our ability to comprehend the reality.
Since there is no social space for normal, regular guys to talk about or acknowledge the pain that straight men go through while mutilating their sexual need for men, men too don't really lament over what they've lost or what they've suffered. There is no scope for complaining. Indeed, they don't see it as loss, they're socially conditioned to see it as a gain and a big relief from having to be queers.
Another aspect of straight male sexuality for men, is that although they feel freer to give vent to their hardened sexuality for men when in a position of power over vulnerable men, they tend to give vent to the softer side of whatever has remained of their sexuality for men, when in sexual situations with men who are more powerful, manly or macho than them. Of course, to be powerful and macho implies in heterosexual societies that neither of the two sides ever acknowledge their interest in each other. They indulge in the acts, often in the dead of night or behind an excuse, and pretend as if nothing ever happened.
PROBLEMS IN AWAKENING STRAIGHT MEN ABOUT THE ISSUE OF THEIR OWN OPPRESSION
Even when straight men are so oppressed by the mechanisms of social oppression, many of them, like a typical victim, are allegiant to these mechanisms and directly and indirectly support and strengthen them. This is ironical, yet true, and one of the biggest impediments in doing any work around this issue.
Men feel grateful to these oppressive mechanisms for being helpful to them in fighting with their own sexual needs when they are the most vulnerable against these needs. Ironically, men tend to see their own sexual feelings aS their enemy and the mechanisms that help them fight themselvs as their 'friend'. This is because, they see, the manhood = heterosexual connection as inevitable and biological -- something which is inalterable, as if they owe their manhood to these social mechanisms without which they just cannot be 'heterosexuals'.
What they don't realise is that if there were no anti-man social mechanisms, there would be no connection between manhood and heterosexuality and no need for men to fight with their real sexual needs as it is their real selves that can procure them their much needed manhood. When straight would mean not heterosexual but a male who is simply masculine gendered, although loving another male would be acknowledged as an integral part of this manhood, as it is in nature.
But most of all, men are scared to be labelled as 'gay' to associate with this sort of work/ campaign.
ENDNOTE
Its true that most men eventually develop a working heterosexuality, but even if they don't, they get the manhood status, embedded in the straight identity and that is the only thing they really care about (it would be just easier on men if they can develop a working heterosexuality, because it would be less stressful for them then). However, this is not a need that was provided by the nature, neither is this connection between heterosexuality and 'manhood' or 'sexual interest between men' and queerhood real. These connections as well as the need for being heterosexual is created by the society.
Therefore, if we can do away with the social need to be heterosexual, men will not have to feel happy about killing an important part of their own selves.
Dec 12, 2008
"THOSE FANTASIES": WHY STRAIGHT MEN SOMETIMES FANTASIZE ABOUT OTHER MALES
This article is bad, except that it at least acknowledges the fact that straight men are not exclusively heterosexual in their thoughts. The reasons it ascribes are only partially valid.
By A. Patcher
[A. Patcher is a JackinWorld reader and freelance writer.]This topic is not normally discussed in sex-education literature or in health classes, and probably not among most heterosexual male friends. However, in reality, it's more common than most straight guys care to admit. Straight men's fantasies about other males can be attributed to several factors; some of these are normal and very common, while others are more profound and signal a deeper sexual issue or unfulfilled social need. Note: While reading this article, keep in mind thatfantasies are very different from actions. Straight men may think of other male bodies or even sexual contact with other males while masturbating, but most are not willing or able to perform sexually with another man in real life. Usually, the fantasies remain fantasies and do not predict future actions.
Adolescent events. First are the factors that arise from events during adolescence — the period beginning at the onset of puberty, through the growing years into young adulthood, until total independence from the parents. When the body and mind are growing and developing during this period, it is very common to have fantasies about the same gender during masturbation sessions. Young men frequently wonder if their friends are developing as fast as they are. They may question whether their friends masturbate as well, or if they have had sexual intercourse. New feelings and changes in the body can create quite a bit of curiosity. This is sexually arousing to many people simply because the thoughts revolve around sexuality and sex organs. At the same time, adolescence is a time for the development of a person's identity. When developing an identity, we tend to take a very close look at those around us of the same gender. In doing so, certain males will be more appealing to us than others. The males we would like to be similar to will appear more attractive. Although we may not want to actually have sex with them, at a time in life when just about anything can be erotic, this emotion can manifest itself as sexual arousal.
Male pride. The second factor simpler: Most males really enjoy being male. Let's face it — having a penis is awesome! We all have certain physical features in common with other males. Depending on the individual, this pride of masculinity may cause a varying degree of arousal when a guy looks at another male. Even though we may have no desire for actual romantic or intimate contact with another male, it can still be an erotic image. We may wonder how a fellow male masturbates or how he has sex, because we find these things enjoyable when we do them ourselves. We may think about masturbating while looking at another guy who is doing it at the same time. However, basic admiration or "looking at another guy" can be very far from a desire to live a gay lifestyle with him. Nearly all gay men would agree there is more to homosexuality than that. When considering sexual preference one has to take into account the balance of desire for physical intimacy with the two genders, also taking into consideration the desire for emotional intimacy — love from companion-like relationships. It's important to mention, too, that many people do not develop a strong desire for opposite-sex intimacy (or same-sex intimacy, for that matter) until late in adolescence or even afterward. Overall, predictions cannot be made, because we all have individual perceptions and different feelings that contribute to our thoughts and actions.
The sexual spectrum. Sexuality is not confined to just three little categories of homosexual, bisexual, and heterosexual. The "Kinsey Scale," developed by Alfred Kinsey, has been used by sex researchers since the 1950s. The scale ranges from 0 to 6, with a person who is 100% heterosexual being 0 to a person who is 100% homosexual being 6. The original scale took into account only actual physical contact with partners — but updated versions include fantasy, love, and self-identification. This scale is necessary for scientific research, but even a 7-point scale seems a bit too rigid and defined to apply to an individual's complex personal life. (Reinisch, Kinsey Institute New Report on Sex, 1990.)
Preference vs. orientation. To better explain our own personal feelings, we should distinguish between "sexual preference" and "sexual orientation." Sexual preference considers desired sexual actions with a partner, while sexual orientation encompasses all the thoughts, feelings, fantasies, and emotions that cause us to become aroused. Although the population is about 90% exclusively heterosexual in their preference, on the spectrum of orientation most of these people fall somewhere other than entirely heterosexual. Therefore, many of us are bisexual in orientation but not in preference. To complicate matters, according to several findings (including JackinWorld Surveys) close to half of all adult males have had some kind of sexual experience with another male at some point in their life — yet most remain heterosexual in their overall lifetime preference.
Other factors. In some cases strong, recurring same-sex fantasies can indicate a deeper social or sexual need. For example, loneliness and lack of identity can cause an erotic reaction to thoughts of other men. If we are not satisfied with who we are, how we present ourselves, how we look, our degree of masculinity, or even the appearance of our genitals, it is very possible that we can develop same-sex erotic reactions.
Problems can occur when there is a lack of male friends. There's a reason why we normally have platonic male friends: They help us develop and maintain our identity. If they aren't there, a craving can develop. Everyone needs a different amount of this type of friendship and a different level of acceptance from it, and we can never say how much is enough for any particular person, because everyone is different. This is certainly not to say that if you are lonely, unhappy with your identity, or worried about the appearance of your genitals that you are going to end up gay — almost everyone has gone through these feelings at one time or another. Nor is it at all accurate to say that all gay men are gay because they were somehow deprived during adolescence. However, it's never unhealthy to get involved in activities, sports, or hobbies. Unfortunately, many males frequently seek their identity through friends in gangs or drug subcultures because there's a lack of opportunity to be involved in more socially acceptible activities.
Sometimes a "jealous passion" can develop for other males. This is when we desire to actually become another guy. The obsession can then carry over into our sexual fantasy life. Lack of acceptance of ourselves is the issue here. If this is a concern for you, it may help to fantasize about yourself or imaginary people rather than fixating on peers, celebrities, or porn stars.
An unfulfilled adolescent need in adult men can be a factor. Issues such as chemical dependency and alcoholism (either in the individual or the family) can also inhibit some individuals. Nobody has a "perfect" adolescence, and most people can deal with unfulfilled needs in their adulthood. However, these issues affect some more than others. If there is an overwhelming problem with any of these issues, consider seeking out professional therapy.
Sexuality can be thought of as a complex "spectrum of fingerprints." Every individual has a unique sexuality that's different from those of his peers. Sometimes there are things we can do to change our feelings, and sometimes we just have to learn to accept ourselves as the way we are.
Fantasies Of Straight Men: Some Thoughts about Gays in the Military
Warning:
This article uses 'invalid Western terms and concepts', including the following:
1. 'Homosexuality' for sexual desire between men
After decades of bloody battles for the fair and equal treatment of African-Americans, women and other "minorities," how can we still be so obtuse about the basic underlying principles?
Joe Sartelle
Copyright © Joe Sartelle. All rights reserved.Issue #5, March/April 1993
(AUTHOR'S NOTE: The public debate over gays in the military has mainly focused on the tensions between gay men and straight men, despite the fact that the issue is at least as important, if not more so, for lesbians in military service. The following article reflects that bias. While much of what I have to say applies to women as well as men, our cultural attitudes about women's sexuality and homosexuality are significantly different from our attitudes about men's. Detailing these differences would require making an already lengthy essay even longer. Also, I am here discussing American notions of sexual identity; obviously things are different elsewhere in time, space, and culture.)
Perhaps the most appalling thing about the deluge of hysterical fear and outright bigotry triggered by Clinton's proposal to revoke the law banning openly homosexual men and women from military service is the simple fact thatwe have been through all this before and by now we should know better. After decades of bloody battles for the fair and equal treatment of African-Americans, women and other "minorities," how can we still be so obtuse about the basic underlying principles?
Yet it seems that no matter how many times someone points out that the arguments against allowing open homosexuals in the armed services are virtually identical to the arguments used in the 1940s against racial integration of these same armed services, you still have people irrationally insisting that "this is completely different." And actually, despite the fact that the most vocal supporters of the ban on homosexuals are usually reactionary conservatives, I think they've got a point here: the gay issue is a little different. After all, extended intimate contact with black people isn't going to make a white person black; however, the same sort of extended intimacy with gay people just might make a few "straight" people into bisexuals. Maybe more than a few...
Of course, in making a statement like that I realize that I am flying in the face of the orthodox dogma that holds that homosexuality is not a choice, that we can't help feeling these desires, it's out of our control, and so on. Interestingly enough, though, it is generally homosexuals and sympathetic heterosexuals who most strenuously assert this position; the right wing, on the other hand, often displays a more generous evaluation of the fluidity of human sexual desire, as well as an unfortunately much more openly repressive response to that fluidity. Paradoxically (although somewhat predictably), we find "progressives" arguing that individuals are essentially powerless victims of their sexual orientations (the "no choice" position), while the "conservatives" recognize that under the right circumstances, anyone might be seduced into practicing the love that dare not speak its name.
So, for example, we find the Republican Senator from Indiana, Dan Coats, writing an editorial in the San Francisco Examiner against lifting the ban on homosexuals and quoting David Hackworth, "America's most decorated living veteran," who tells us why open homosexuality is such a threat to military discipline. Hackworth says, "During my Army career I saw countless officers and NCOs who couldn't stop themselves from hitting on soldiers. ...The objects of their affection were impressionable lads who, searching for a caring role model, sometimes ended up in gay relationships they might not have sought." While Hackworth is ostensibly talking about sexual harassment here, he also confesses, no doubt unwittingly, that sometimes what can make the difference between a "straight" man and a "gay" man is nothing more than the right circumstances at the right time.
Hackworth's comment also serves as an example of the extremely active imaginations of the opponents of ending the ban on homosexuals in the military. Indeed, a pattern quickly emerged in the public debate on the issue: those who favored lifting the ban supported their position with arguments rooted in the established American tradition of civil rights and equal opportunity (individuals should be judged according to their performance and abilities), while those who favored continuing the ban based their arguments in fantasies of predatory gays menacing innocent young straights. The comments of Specialist Fourth Class Jared Hopkins, quoted in an article in the San Francisco Chronicle, are typical of the paranoid scenarios conjured by supporters of the ban. "Out on the battlefield," said Hopkins, "I'm going to have enough to worry about without thinking about the guy next to me. If you're out there a long time, you worry the guy might have sexual feelings toward you, might come on to you."
Now who exactly is it, we might want to ask, who's preoccupied with thinking about the guy next to him? As others have pointed out before me, there's at least one thing that both homosexuals and homophobes have in common, which is an intense preoccupation with homosexual desires. The comments of Specialist Hopkins and others like him assume as a kind of unconscious given that gay men will find the (straight) speaker so irresistible that they will ignore the mortal dangers of battle in order to come on to him. In other words, this particular soldier has evidently already constructed a whole imaginary scenario of attempted homosexual seduction with himself at the center of attention. Perhaps he is just assuming, as so many straight men do, that gay men look at other men the same way that straight men look at women, in which case we can read the hysteria among straight men about serving with gays as a kind of confession of the disrespectful, predatory (hetero)sexuality traditionally encouraged by military culture. On the other hand — and without invalidating or replacing that possibility — perhaps we are dealing with unconscious homosexual desire, conveniently projected onto a fantasized gay man and thus disavowed.
Consider, for example, the approach to the issue taken by Angelo Codevilla, a senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution who also served in the U.S. Navy. In his editorial in the San Francisco Examiner, Codevilla argues against lifting the ban by reminding us of just how much intimacy with his comrades the average serviceman is already forced to experience: "Moving fast and tired in every state of undress and sometimes full of bloody bruises, he bumps and rubs up against his fellows innumerable times." The homoeroticism of this observation is so transparent that if we didn't have a context for it, we might think we were reading the outline of a scene from a gay porn flick (an impression that is reinforced near the end of the editorial when Codevilla speciously raises the possibility of "the use of taxpayer funds for military hospitals to treat oral gonorrhea or the consequences of such practices as 'fisting' and 'rimming' "). Codevilla goes on to tell us, "Sex is an explosive part of military life. Young men are at the peak of desire. ...To say that the atmosphere aboard ship is sexually charged is an understatement." Since these young men are presumably heterosexual, one has to wonder where so much sexual tension is coming from — of course it couldn't be from all that running around naked and rubbing up against each other, could it?
It seems to me an obvious point to make, that the vicious homophobia typical of military culture must be directly related to the fact that military life is by its very nature incredibly homoerotic. What I am referring to with the term "homoerotic" is the simple fact that, as Eve Sedgwick puts it in her book Between Men, "what goes on at football games, in fraternities, at the Bohemian Grove, and at climactic moments in war novels can look, with only a slight shift of optic, quite startlingly 'homosexual'..." The imaginations, at least, of both Codevilla and Specialist Hopkins seem to recognize this fact, and both are thus concerned with seeing to it that Sedgwick's "slight shift of optic" is suppressed as a possibility. Both men's comments are representative of the conservative fear — also seen in the nervously energetic homoerotics of buddy movies like Lethal Weapon — that the good, clean, sexless and often brutal "normal" homoeroticism of straight male culture might at any moment cross over into the forbidden zone of actual homosexuality. Instead of sexual tension and "accidental" half-dressed bumping and rubbing, guys might decide to simply have sex; as in the case of conservative fears about the pleasures of casual drug use, one thing might lead to another... This is the premise, of course, of an awful lot of gay sexual fantasies. Locker rooms, fraternities and military life are staples of gay pornography because these places are already in some basic sense "homosexual": everyone is the same sex, and there's a great deal of physical intimacy.
So what is quite striking about the debate over gays in the military is that the stereotypical imaginary scenarios of gay fantasy are appearing with such regularity in the paranoid fantasies of straight men who oppose lifting the ban, such as the two men I've already quoted. Opposition to the open presence of homosexuals in the military (or anywhere, for that matter) is grounded in the wish to prevent these scenarios from becoming realities to the fullest extent possible. In other words, in much of the support for maintaining the ban on gays in the military we find straight men defending themselves against their own anxious homoerotic fantasies through the active repression and suppression of actual gay men, who are blamed for their intrinsically disruptive presence, in exactly the same way many straight men blame attractive women. The current controversy about gays in the military has more than a little in common with the ongoing controversy about the sexual harassment of women in the military. For example, both the gay man in military service and the sexy woman in the presence of a group of military men are perceived as "asking for it," the difference being that sexy women are supposedly invitations to Getting Laid, while sexy gay men are invitations to that other time-honored ritual proof of manhood, Beating Someone Up. Fag-bashing, like the sexual violation of women, should be recognized as a form of rape: both are violent physical attacks directed intentionally at someone's sexuality.
However, fag-bashing, despite being an intimately physical experience of sexual humiliation, is not commonly perceived as a sex crime in the same sense as rape, presumably because the fag-bashers are "straight," and "straight" men don't feel sexual desire for other men (that's what makes them different from gays, right?). So fag-bashing, according to this reasoning, is essentially different from woman-raping because there can be no sexual motivation to the attack on a gay man. But at the same time that we as a culture strive to maintain this useful fiction as a kind of "official" ideology about the fundamental difference between hetero and homo sexualities, we also routinely confess to the strong suspicion that fag-bashers are "really" gay themselves, or maybe they're "confused, " and are just, as the saying goes, not dealing with it very well.
Given how often we hear of or know people who have experienced at least some degree of "confusion" about their sexual orientations before settling into their "true" identities, it's amazing that we are still in so much denial — culturally, socially, individually — about the implications of that common confusion. "Confusion" about one's sexual identity can only come from conflicting desires, from feeling varying degrees of attraction to both sexes. What I know of my own experience and others' suggests that such "confusion" is in fact so common as to be a normal aspect of human development, particularly during adolescence.
However, because we live in a culture that teaches us that heterosexual desire is not just natural, desirable, and normal but also completely incompatible with homosexual desire, we are encouraged to regard our bisexual potential as "confusion" rather than a normal human sexual response. Our current "common sense" about sexual identity tells us that a certain degree of homosexual attraction is normal, but that sexual identity is a matter of being eitherstraight or gay, and in either case it's just the way you are, not something you "choose" — so anything else is just "confusion." In my experience, some version of this understanding is shared by most gays and straights alike.
It should be easy to see, then, how an integral part of our "sexual identities," whether straight or gay, is a kind of search-and-destroy program that continually scans for signs of the "opposite" orientation so that these "confusing" impulses can be neutralized through the usual array of psychological defense mechanisms. The "success" of the program is measured by how effectively it blocks conscious recognition of any attraction to the "wrong" sex, attractions that "confuse" our sexual identities. The search-and-destroy mission is especially important, of course, in the construction of "normal" heterosexual masculinity; seen in this light, fag-bashing is merely the outward and visible expression of an interior psychological conflict.
Returning to the specific issue of the debate over gays in the military, we can see now why, in Angelo Codevilla's editorial, an emphasis on the sexually tense and homoerotic atmosphere of military service would quickly yield to warnings about the inevitability of violent attacks against openly gay servicemen. Indeed, this movement has characterized the shifts in emphasis of the larger public debate: first the paranoid fantasies of predatory gays and the "discomfort" of straights at the idea of having openly gay men around them, and then the threats of violent harassment of gay servicemen. Since the fears about how gays will actually behave if they were allowed to come out about their sexuality are easily answered by already-existing codes of conduct that will work equally well — if enforced — for gays as well as straights, the opposition to lifting the ban seems to be left with basing its case on assurances of morale problems (again, no matter that this is exactly what the opponents of racial integration of the military said, too). Straight servicemen will be offended and uncomfortable, and gay servicemen will get beat up.
So we are left with only one meaningful question, which is, what are these guys so afraid of? After all, we're talking about military personnel — rough, tough super-macho guys, men intimate with guns, trained killers. Yet these are the people whose sensibilities are so sensitive that the possibility that they are merely being looked at with sexual interest by another man is supposedly intolerable to them. But why? If a gay soldier, say, were to make an unwanted pass at a straight comrade, why can't the straight man politely and firmly refuse, the way one refuses any unwanted friendly advances? A refusal to take "no" for an answer would constitute sexual harassment, and could be dealt with accordingly. But all that changes, of course, if what is truly intolerable in this situation is the straight man's unthinkable and unspeakable interest in saying "yes."
As I have tried to suggest, the open presence of homosexuals is considered intolerable within the already extremely homoerotic context of military life because it undermines what we might call the "heterosexual alibi," the security "straight" men can feel despite the constant homoeroticism of their lives because of the belief that gay men arefundamentally and identifiably different from themselves. Without that alibi to protect them, the obvious pleasure many straight men get from homoerotic situations (if you doubt this, spend some time in a gym) begins to look too much like what it actually is, a covert and sublimated way of gratifying forbidden "homosexual" desires. Straight men spend so much time nervously identifying and parodying "gay" mannerisms (as in the case of Ollie North's much-publicized recent "joke") in order to reassure themselves and others that they couldn't possibly be gay themselves, since they don't act like that. The heterosexual alibi is perpetuated by any and every insistence that there is an objectively measurable difference between "heterosexuals" and "homosexuals" that goes beyond the specifics of their genital relations — which also means, as I shall discuss shortly, that it's not just straight people who buy into the heterosexual alibi.
Without the heterosexual alibi of the essential difference between straight and gay, heterosexuals are faced with the reality that there are people who seem just like themselves, but who not only openly admit to forbidden homosexual attractions, but even go so far as to act on them with pleasure and satisfaction! If you were someone who had invested a lot of energy in the psychological work of repressing and denying your own homosexual attractions — and in the case of military service, this work would be a full-time job — with all the necessary frustration and unpleasure that entails, you'd probably find the presence of open homosexuals intolerable, too. Who wants to find out that all that hard work wasn't necessary? And if you couldn't get rid of them, you might find a safe outlet for your own frustration — sorry, I mean confusion — in tormenting them, "proving" your own essential difference even as you unconsciously mirror their interest in homosexual arousal.
So finally my point is simply that the opposition to gays in the military is really about trying to preserve the heterosexual alibi. When there are gay men in the locker rooms, so to speak, behaving pretty much just like the straight men do, then suddenly all that innocent, playful homoeroticism — that "typical guy behavior" — might not look so innocent any more, simply because we can recognize its erotic dimensions. And now it's time to confront the fact that the only reason there is any problem here at all is because of the entrenched belief that homosexual desires are unnatural and bad (the more liberal version being that the desires are bad but OK, so long as you don't act on them, but it amounts to the same thing). If we accepted homosexual desire as a normal component of human sexuality that varies in strength in each individual — which is what experience as opposed to ideology tells us — then same-sex attractions wouldn't be a problem, and neither would gays in the military.
Unfortunately, it is not just homophobic straights who seek to preserve and strengthen the heterosexual alibi. The ways in which gay people commonly understand and define our own "sexual identities" are also often deeply complicit with the heterosexual alibi. Partly the insistence upon the essential difference of gay identity has been useful for both our political and psychological survival. If gays are indistinguishable from straights in everything but our sexual practices, then we are invisible, and invisibility leads to isolation, fear and weakness. Adoption of a number of common "markers" of gayness — in the ways we dress, talk, consume, etc. — helps us find each other and thus support each other. However, in my experience gay people are perhaps even more likely than straights to forget that these markers have been attached to our sexual orientation and are not, therefore, necessary functions of our homosexuality. In other words, we tend to act as though we believe, in accord with the heterosexual alibi, that there is an essential and thus absolute difference between gay and straight, which manifests itself in more than just our choice of sexual partners.
If such a constitutional difference exists, it must exist across the board; it must be something common to all gays but absent from all straights if it's going to serve as a reliable indicator of sexual preference. Obviously, this is going to be hard to establish as long as we're dealing with things like a taste for leather or Julie Andrews records, or a knack for interior decorating. What we need, according to the dominant thinking on the subject, is something more scientific, so that we can finally prove the difference! As many of you know, the other big news about gays in the mainstream media recently has been a series of reports about medical research into the question of whether homosexuality is biologically or socially produced.
The most widely-publicized study has been the "gay brain" research conducted by Simon LeVay at the Salk Institute. LeVay claims to have found a meaningful difference in the size of the hypothalamus in gay men and straight men. I am not going to go into the details of his work, or the numerous objections that have been raised about his very questionable methodology — all that has been detailed elsewhere. What I am interested in here are the underlying motivations for his research, which are shared by others seeking to prove that homosexuality is biologically-determined. LeVay, like many others who are committed to this theory, is himself a gay man. The interest in establishing a biological basis for homosexuality, according to public statements from LeVay and his supporters, comes from the wish to help gay people by showing the world that we can't help being gay, that it's part of our biological make-up and thus "out of our control."
While I am sympathetic to the idea that if the straight world would just accept that we do not "choose" to be attracted strongly and primarily to individuals of our own sex, then we stand a better chance of gaining acceptance and toleration, I find the implications of this reasoning to be dangerously self-defeating. For in defending our sexuality by saying that "we have no choice," aren't we implying that if we did have a choice, we both shouldn't and wouldn't choose to be gay? That therefore, in some deep sense, it really is "better" to be straight, and abnormal to be gay? I think that gay people would better serve their interests by insisting, firmly and unequivocally, that there issimply nothing wrong with homosexuality and that therefore all questions of where it comes from are irrelevant.
As I observed near the beginning of this essay, the position that we have "no choice" about our sexual desires is objectionable not least because it is an extension of the victim-oriented logic that currently dominates "progressive" or "liberal" thinking. To say that gay people do not choose their sexual preferences is to make them into victims of their desires; and however titillating it may be to think of ourselves as thralls to our passions, it is hardly a responsible position to take. As victims of repression and oppression, gay people have an obvious stake in expanding our human sexual freedom, not further restricting it by building limitations into our biology.
And it is also the case that arguments which seek to establish a biological basis for sexual preference are fully complicit with the heterosexual alibi, since both are efforts to establish some absolute difference between gay and straight. The theory that one is biologically constituted as either heterosexual or homosexual — that the two are mutually exclusive rather than complementary — is just as likely in practical terms to make it easier for straight people to dismiss their "confusions" and to consolidate their homoerotic-homophobic identities as it is likely to make them more sympathetic to gays. Since the basis of sympathy is some sort of identification, a recognition of one's self in another, I have to say that I think the cause of liberating ourselves as gay people would be better served by liberating the gay potential in everyone (as well as the straight potential in ourselves). Only then would "straight" people come to realize that in attacking us they are attacking something within themselves.
Finally, I do not wish to be understood as arguing that we are all "really" bisexuals. Rather, more precisely I am arguing that we are all, as human beings, potential bisexuals who have been taught, through an elaborate system of social rewards and punishments, to see ourselves as "heterosexuals" and "homosexuals." The fact that bisexuals are in a very real sense the most invisible "sexual identity" makes perfect sense in these terms: the existence of functionally bisexual individuals radically undermines any belief in the exclusivity of heterosexual and homosexual attractions. And as I have also tried to point out, what we know about how human beings actually experience their sexual desires supports the position that bisexuality is the norm, while both hetero- and homosexuality are learned restrictions of that potential.
This does not mean that when either gay or straight people say that they feel like they are "really" heterosexual or homosexual that they are being untruthful. It just means that they have so successfully conformed to dominant ideas of sexual identity that whatever bisexual potential they once had has atrophied, even to the point of its effective extinction. In other words, just because our identities are socially constructed doesn't mean that they aren't, in a very real way, "authentic." However, just because my own sexuality has been crippled by my socialization doesn't mean I want to promote my limitations as the "natural" standard for others, such as the future generations of humanity. I know that it feels like I have no choice in my sexual orientation toward men; but I also know that I am capable of attractions to women that, if they had been handled differently earlier in my development, might have led to my being bisexual rather than homosexual (I doubt I could ever have been "straight").
What I am talking about is a fully human sexuality, rather than the pre-human "sexual identities" that now afflict us. The people we now call "homosexuals" are most likely, seen in this light, that relatively small minority of individuals whose homosexual attractions are so much stronger than our heterosexual attractions as to render those latter feelings almost invisible. In that sense we "have no choice." Similarly, we would expect to find a comparable minority of people for whom the opposite is true, who "have no choice" but to be heterosexual. But I think that in a fully human society, the overwhelming majority of people would fall somewhere in the middle, more or less indifferent to the biological sex of their partners, attracted instead to the qualities of individuals as humans and not as sexes. Of course there would be varying degrees of bisexuality, with some people tending to choose one sex rather than the other. But the important point here is that it would be a choice, and thus an affirmation of our freedom — and freedom to choose is what makes us human.
We are a very long way from such a world, but even if it's a fantasy, at least it's a compelling one, certainly more worth believing in than the ideology of the heterosexual alibi that dominates both gay and straight thinking about sexual identity. For despite everything we know about the complexities of human sexuality, the debate over gays in the military shows us how much we persist in denying that complexity, invested as we all are in fantasies of straight men, perfect heterosexuals uncontaminated by any sexual interest in their fellow men. It may be that the hysteria over gays in the military is really only the last gasp of the old conceptions and attitudes; certainly today's young people are growing up in a sexual landscape very different from what has come before. The ongoing hype surrounding The Crying Game is one sign of this, like the popularity of androgynous styles and the omnipresence of sexually objectified male bodies. Perhaps what we are witnessing, as others have suggested, is the liberation of sexuality from reproduction and thus from "nature" — and along with it the nervous and tentative recognition that once sexual pleasure doesn't have to be tied to making babies, there's no longer any pressing reason to enforce heterosexuality, or to suppress homosexuality. As Marx observes in the third volume of Capital, the realm of freedom begins only where the realm of necessity ends. So long as we insist that we have no choice about our sexuality, whether we define it as gay or straight, we cannot be free, and we will remain something less than fully human.
Joe Sartelle is a graduate student at UC Berkeley and Co-Editor of Bad Subjects.
Oct 30, 2008
Male-Male Intimacy in Early America: Beyond Romantic Friendships
By William Benemann
New York: Harrington Park Press, 2006. 322 pp. ISBN: 1-56023-345-1
Reviewed by Edward J. Tejirian, Ph.D.
In Male-Male Intimacy in Early America William Benemann has woven a complex tapestry of male-male bonding in colonial America and the early days of the republic. The result is a book that is comprehensive without being pedantic. In fact, it ranges beyond the strict boundaries of its title to consider male to male sexuality in Enlightenment Europe, especially England, Prussia under Frederick the Great, and post-revolutionary France. Meanwhile, back on American soil, it encompasses such home-grown sexual eccentrics as the Shakers, the Mormons, and the Oneida community.
In his preface, Benemann cites several factors that have impeded understanding of the place of sexuality in American history. Among these are the reluctance to abandon restrictive labels such as “homosexuality” and “heterosexuality” and an inability to move beyond negative preconceptions about the “gay lifestyle.” Even while accepting that men formed passionate attachments (the “romantic friendships” of the sub-title of the book) he says that there has been a resistance among historians to drawing the not unreasonable conclusion that these might have included an erotic component, sometimes latent but not infrequently manifest.
Perhaps a contributing factor to this confusion are a number of paradoxes evident in colonial and Enlightenment America with regard to sex between men. So-called “sodomy,” which appeared to apply to anal intercourse was never referred to except in the most sanctimonious terms of horror—“detestable” almost invariably turns up, while the more genteel reference to “the Grecian vice” also occasionally makes an appearance. Nevertheless, while sodomy was illegal and thoroughly condemned, it seems that punishment for it was relatively rare. Not only was punishment for it rare, even naming it was so offensive to the delicate sensibilities of the general public that it seems the authorities much preferred to turn a blind eye to it.
This reader was interested to learn that Philadelphia was not only the premier American city of the 18th century but also a pretty wide-open town , with plenty of brothels and street walkers as well as one tavern per 140 residents. However, prosecution for sexual offenses of any kind was also rare. Meanwhile, among sailors whose tours aboard ship were usually three years in length, sex aboard ship was tacitly understood to be routinely prevalent. However, the form it usually seems to have taken was mutual masturbation, which was not considered sodomy. Furthermore, if anyone should have the poor judgment to complain about it, he would be far more likely to incur the wrath of the captain than would the person or persons he was complaining about. It seems the motto was, “We won’t ask, and you’d better not tell.”
But in contrast to present day conventions—and this fact has been well known—men in early America could express their feelings of affection for each other in the most explicit terms of love and even longing. Here is an excerpt of a letter by Alexander Hamilton to John Laurens—both had been aides-de-camp to Washington and at one point on the staff of Baron Friedrich von Steuben, a Prussian officer with the rank of general in the Continental Army. Hamilton wrote: “Cold in my professions, warm in [my] friendships, I wish, Dear Laurens, it [might] be in my power, by action, rather than words, [to] convince you that I love you” (p. 99). Two young officers, William North and Benjamin Walker, also on the staff of Von Steuben formed with him a tightly bonded group in which each felt deep ties of affection to the other two. The younger men married—as all men were expected to do (though the older Von Steuben was without a wife.) It was after they married but still young, when North wrote to Walker, “...I have known you, Ben for twelve years-—When I began to love you, I know not…but ‘tis no matter—I love you.”(p.116).
In contemporary America, such declarations of love between men would imply an overtly sexual relationship. But it appears that such an inference was not drawn in early America. Rather, there was a space between two men in a committed friendship that seemed to remain private and out of bounds for public speculation. Declaring one’s love for another man was not necessarily seen as a declaration of sexual intent and certainly not of sexual identity.
Consider the following excerpt from what Benneman describes as a “fictionalized” encounter with Indians of the West on the part of writer Theodore Winthrop, a descendent of Puritan governor John Winthrop: “The Adonis of the copper-skins!” I said to myself. “This is the ‘Young Eagle,’ or the ‘Sucking Dove,’ or the ‘Maiden’s Bane,’ or some other great chief of the cleanest Indian tribe on the continent. O Fenimore, why are you dead? ….What a poem the fellow is! I wish I was an Indian myself for such a companion; or better a squaw, to be made love to by him.” (pp.174-175).
This excerpt is from a book published in 1862, somewhat beyond the boundaries of “early America” as loosely defined by author Benemann. But it seems noteworthy that the open envy of the woman to whom the copper-skinned Adonis might make love appeared to carry with it no stigma of sodomy or, of course, no implication of “identity.”
Were early American men more comfortable with the erotic component in their feelings about each other than are contemporary men? It would seem so. However, my guess is that, the awareness of such an erotic component is nevertheless just as prevalent among contemporary American men. My own research (Tejirian, 2000) with men in their early twenties to early thirties has led me to infer that some degree of conscious erotic feeling toward their own sex probably characterizes a substantial percentage of American men (42% in my sample.) But the men who disclosed their feelings to me almost never discussed them openly with others because, as men who did not consider themselves to be gay, they had powerful social incentives to present a “pure” heterosexual persona to the external world. Nevertheless, when these feelings were directed towards a particular man, he was almost always a very good or best friend. This fact harks back to the romantic friendships or “passionate attachments” of which Bennemann speaks, while the continuity of these feelings across a span of two hundred years points to it as a fundamental aspect of male psychology.
Brokeback Mountain,” is a wonderful and accurate portrayal of a contemporary “passionate attachment” between men . Its tragic denouement, however, reflects contemporary sensibilities. In contrast, in early America as Benneman describes it, a romantic friendship between two young sheepherders that included an erotic component would have been neither the cause for personal anguish nor the object of social scrutiny.
Benneman says that he chose the phrase “male intimacy” for the title of his book because, not only can it imply both a psychological and physical closeness, but also an intense affectional bonding that includes sexual attraction, whether acknowledged or not. I think, in fact, that his choice of title is a good one. Yet, one wonders if it is really possible for us today to grasp how the relation between the erotic and the affectionate was experienced by the men of early America. Martin Duberman (1989) cites, in an essay on the youthful friendship between James H. Hammond and Thomas J. Withers—described by him as two “great men” of the antebellum South—a letter dated 1826 attesting to a playful sexual intimacy between them. The twenty year-old Withers wrote to Hammond, “I feel some inclination to learn whether you yet sleep in your Shirt-tail, and whether you yet have the extravagant delight of poking and punching a writhing Bedfellow with your long fleshen pole—the exquisite touches of which I have often had the honor of feeling?” (p. 155). I think the ease with which their nocturnal frolics are referred to and the apparent lack of conflict about them would be harder to come by in a contemporary setting.
Benneman points out that, although terminology such as “homosexual”—not to mention “gay”—were not in use in early America, there were unquestionably men whose erotic orientation was primarily or exclusively toward their own sex. But my reading of his excellent book indicates that in early America, as in Europe, Enlightenment attitudes toward sexuality had for a time shouldered aside the strictures of medieval and Puritan religious doctrines with respect to sexuality. In America, vestiges of those strictures remained in the law, but were rarely enforced. The late 18th century in Europe was a time that saw the publication of racy novels such as “Tom Jones” in England, and the rollicking infidelities in Mozart’s operas. The late 19th century, on the other hand, saw the persecution of Oscar Wilde in England and the early 20th century saw the official criminalization of homosexuality in a recently unified Germany. After two world wars that fell just short of destroying its civilization, a united Europe is trying to re-incorporate the Enlightement values that the “isms” of the 20th century had trampled on. Contemporary America, where religious zealots and cynical politicians have entered into an unholy pact, might do well to look back to its own early past and find there a basis on which to build a more realistic and enlightened sexual future.
References
Duberman, Martin A. (1989) “Writhing Bedfellows in Antebellum South Carolina: Historical Interpretation and the Politics of Evidence. In: Duberman, M., Vicinus, Martha & Chauncey, G., Jr., Eds. Hidden from History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past. New York, Meridan,
Tejirian, Edward J. (2000) Male to Male: Sexual Feelings Across the Boundaries of Identity. New York: Harrington Park Press.
New York: Harrington Park Press, 2006. 322 pp. ISBN: 1-56023-345-1
Reviewed by Edward J. Tejirian, Ph.D.
In Male-Male Intimacy in Early America William Benemann has woven a complex tapestry of male-male bonding in colonial America and the early days of the republic. The result is a book that is comprehensive without being pedantic. In fact, it ranges beyond the strict boundaries of its title to consider male to male sexuality in Enlightenment Europe, especially England, Prussia under Frederick the Great, and post-revolutionary France. Meanwhile, back on American soil, it encompasses such home-grown sexual eccentrics as the Shakers, the Mormons, and the Oneida community.
In his preface, Benemann cites several factors that have impeded understanding of the place of sexuality in American history. Among these are the reluctance to abandon restrictive labels such as “homosexuality” and “heterosexuality” and an inability to move beyond negative preconceptions about the “gay lifestyle.” Even while accepting that men formed passionate attachments (the “romantic friendships” of the sub-title of the book) he says that there has been a resistance among historians to drawing the not unreasonable conclusion that these might have included an erotic component, sometimes latent but not infrequently manifest.
Perhaps a contributing factor to this confusion are a number of paradoxes evident in colonial and Enlightenment America with regard to sex between men. So-called “sodomy,” which appeared to apply to anal intercourse was never referred to except in the most sanctimonious terms of horror—“detestable” almost invariably turns up, while the more genteel reference to “the Grecian vice” also occasionally makes an appearance. Nevertheless, while sodomy was illegal and thoroughly condemned, it seems that punishment for it was relatively rare. Not only was punishment for it rare, even naming it was so offensive to the delicate sensibilities of the general public that it seems the authorities much preferred to turn a blind eye to it.
This reader was interested to learn that Philadelphia was not only the premier American city of the 18th century but also a pretty wide-open town , with plenty of brothels and street walkers as well as one tavern per 140 residents. However, prosecution for sexual offenses of any kind was also rare. Meanwhile, among sailors whose tours aboard ship were usually three years in length, sex aboard ship was tacitly understood to be routinely prevalent. However, the form it usually seems to have taken was mutual masturbation, which was not considered sodomy. Furthermore, if anyone should have the poor judgment to complain about it, he would be far more likely to incur the wrath of the captain than would the person or persons he was complaining about. It seems the motto was, “We won’t ask, and you’d better not tell.”
But in contrast to present day conventions—and this fact has been well known—men in early America could express their feelings of affection for each other in the most explicit terms of love and even longing. Here is an excerpt of a letter by Alexander Hamilton to John Laurens—both had been aides-de-camp to Washington and at one point on the staff of Baron Friedrich von Steuben, a Prussian officer with the rank of general in the Continental Army. Hamilton wrote: “Cold in my professions, warm in [my] friendships, I wish, Dear Laurens, it [might] be in my power, by action, rather than words, [to] convince you that I love you” (p. 99). Two young officers, William North and Benjamin Walker, also on the staff of Von Steuben formed with him a tightly bonded group in which each felt deep ties of affection to the other two. The younger men married—as all men were expected to do (though the older Von Steuben was without a wife.) It was after they married but still young, when North wrote to Walker, “...I have known you, Ben for twelve years-—When I began to love you, I know not…but ‘tis no matter—I love you.”(p.116).
In contemporary America, such declarations of love between men would imply an overtly sexual relationship. But it appears that such an inference was not drawn in early America. Rather, there was a space between two men in a committed friendship that seemed to remain private and out of bounds for public speculation. Declaring one’s love for another man was not necessarily seen as a declaration of sexual intent and certainly not of sexual identity.
Consider the following excerpt from what Benneman describes as a “fictionalized” encounter with Indians of the West on the part of writer Theodore Winthrop, a descendent of Puritan governor John Winthrop: “The Adonis of the copper-skins!” I said to myself. “This is the ‘Young Eagle,’ or the ‘Sucking Dove,’ or the ‘Maiden’s Bane,’ or some other great chief of the cleanest Indian tribe on the continent. O Fenimore, why are you dead? ….What a poem the fellow is! I wish I was an Indian myself for such a companion; or better a squaw, to be made love to by him.” (pp.174-175).
This excerpt is from a book published in 1862, somewhat beyond the boundaries of “early America” as loosely defined by author Benemann. But it seems noteworthy that the open envy of the woman to whom the copper-skinned Adonis might make love appeared to carry with it no stigma of sodomy or, of course, no implication of “identity.”
Were early American men more comfortable with the erotic component in their feelings about each other than are contemporary men? It would seem so. However, my guess is that, the awareness of such an erotic component is nevertheless just as prevalent among contemporary American men. My own research (Tejirian, 2000) with men in their early twenties to early thirties has led me to infer that some degree of conscious erotic feeling toward their own sex probably characterizes a substantial percentage of American men (42% in my sample.) But the men who disclosed their feelings to me almost never discussed them openly with others because, as men who did not consider themselves to be gay, they had powerful social incentives to present a “pure” heterosexual persona to the external world. Nevertheless, when these feelings were directed towards a particular man, he was almost always a very good or best friend. This fact harks back to the romantic friendships or “passionate attachments” of which Bennemann speaks, while the continuity of these feelings across a span of two hundred years points to it as a fundamental aspect of male psychology.
Brokeback Mountain,” is a wonderful and accurate portrayal of a contemporary “passionate attachment” between men . Its tragic denouement, however, reflects contemporary sensibilities. In contrast, in early America as Benneman describes it, a romantic friendship between two young sheepherders that included an erotic component would have been neither the cause for personal anguish nor the object of social scrutiny.
Benneman says that he chose the phrase “male intimacy” for the title of his book because, not only can it imply both a psychological and physical closeness, but also an intense affectional bonding that includes sexual attraction, whether acknowledged or not. I think, in fact, that his choice of title is a good one. Yet, one wonders if it is really possible for us today to grasp how the relation between the erotic and the affectionate was experienced by the men of early America. Martin Duberman (1989) cites, in an essay on the youthful friendship between James H. Hammond and Thomas J. Withers—described by him as two “great men” of the antebellum South—a letter dated 1826 attesting to a playful sexual intimacy between them. The twenty year-old Withers wrote to Hammond, “I feel some inclination to learn whether you yet sleep in your Shirt-tail, and whether you yet have the extravagant delight of poking and punching a writhing Bedfellow with your long fleshen pole—the exquisite touches of which I have often had the honor of feeling?” (p. 155). I think the ease with which their nocturnal frolics are referred to and the apparent lack of conflict about them would be harder to come by in a contemporary setting.
Benneman points out that, although terminology such as “homosexual”—not to mention “gay”—were not in use in early America, there were unquestionably men whose erotic orientation was primarily or exclusively toward their own sex. But my reading of his excellent book indicates that in early America, as in Europe, Enlightenment attitudes toward sexuality had for a time shouldered aside the strictures of medieval and Puritan religious doctrines with respect to sexuality. In America, vestiges of those strictures remained in the law, but were rarely enforced. The late 18th century in Europe was a time that saw the publication of racy novels such as “Tom Jones” in England, and the rollicking infidelities in Mozart’s operas. The late 19th century, on the other hand, saw the persecution of Oscar Wilde in England and the early 20th century saw the official criminalization of homosexuality in a recently unified Germany. After two world wars that fell just short of destroying its civilization, a united Europe is trying to re-incorporate the Enlightement values that the “isms” of the 20th century had trampled on. Contemporary America, where religious zealots and cynical politicians have entered into an unholy pact, might do well to look back to its own early past and find there a basis on which to build a more realistic and enlightened sexual future.
References
Duberman, Martin A. (1989) “Writhing Bedfellows in Antebellum South Carolina: Historical Interpretation and the Politics of Evidence. In: Duberman, M., Vicinus, Martha & Chauncey, G., Jr., Eds. Hidden from History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past. New York, Meridan,
Tejirian, Edward J. (2000) Male to Male: Sexual Feelings Across the Boundaries of Identity. New York: Harrington Park Press.
Oct 19, 2008
Men Holding Hands, and Other Macho Sightings in South India
Men holding hands, and other macho sightings in Southern India
The first time, you are shocked. Eventually, you get used to it. In between, you go through various stages of reaction—puzzlement, wonder, curiosity, disgust, grudging acceptance, repulsion, etc. The sight is a common enough one in these parts--- grown men and teenaged boys holding hands in public like lovers that cannot bear physical separation from each other. This, in the same society where even incidental contact between the opposite sexes is still taboo. But men cannot stop pawing each other. The way they carry on is enough to unleash the latent homophobe in most of us. Do they kiss when we are not watching?
Yet, I suppose I grew up in the same society, and even perhaps held hands with a male cousin or two when crossing a street. I suppose I never gave it a second thought until my overseas sojourn gave me a different perspective on such matters (although I know it shouldn’t, given that some of my adoring public believe that any new perspective gained during nor-residency renders me a traitor to my place of birth). Now, if I were to see a boyfriend grasp my son’s hand, I’m likely to rush out there and break it up before it got too intimate. On the other hand, I find the sight of boys holding girls’ hands, and vice versa, very wholesome, very non-threatening to a traditional way of life. On college campuses, you see these “macchans”, clearly the leaders of the pack, holding their dearest lieutenant in an arm-lock that would not be out of place on a Lovers’ Lane. On the streets, you see these “goondas” engaging in passionate arm-holding and palm-squeezing, even as they prepare to launch a major offensive against the neighborhood tea-shop that refuses to serve them free chai. You see auto rickshaw drivers walking hand-in-hand, comparing notes on 10 best ways to fleece customers. You see professional colleagues clasping hands with a fervor that borders on the obsessive. Once, I saw a guest speaker at a conventions held in a death-grip by the organizer for nearly thirty minutes; he escaped by severing his hand at the elbow. On the beach, it appears as if every male stroller is linked to another by the arm. Why is this male physical intimacy considered natural in a society where pre-marital male/female contact is still stigmatized? It is amazing what men can get away with in India without having their masculinity questioned. And yet, you accompany your wife to one Bharatanatyam recital, and it’s open season on your manhood.
Females, of course, are touchy-feely in all societies, Western or Eastern. I recall reading somewhere that all women are lesbians at heart. I believe that is true at least to some extent. Women are constantly obsessing over other women’s physical attributes. I asked a few female acquaintances of mine the following question: “If a naked man and a naked woman were to appear in front of you, whom would you look at first?” The unanimous answer was that they would examine the woman first, from head to toe, with a few lingering stops in-between. They may spare the man a glance or two, but almost as an after-thought. This may explain why a naked woman, in any form of art, is sexy, whereas a naked man is… comic. Women can spend hours comparing their looks with those of, say, supermodels. You cannot do that unless the interest spills over from the cosmetic to the prurient regime.
Friendship in India takes other strange forms, such as eating off one plate. Heart-warming display of closeness & togetherness, but has anyone considered the hygienic aspects? Friends drink from the same glass of juice, or same bottle of a soft-drink, sipping away with their straws. They take bites off the same fruit. They borrow each other’s hankies. They play kabaddi. They go to movies. For all I know, they probably hold hands there also. I’m not saying that males should not engage in any activities where females are excluded. My point is, why is male bonding appropriate, whereas male/female bonding is not? Because the latter would lead to premarital sex? If that’s the sole reason, why do people gawk at a wife and husband smooching or holding hands? In India, we actively suppress all outward signs of hetero-sexuality, thereby limiting displays of camaraderie to same-sex encounters only. I guess this is less evil than the Western suppression of homo-sexual acts in public, but not by much. Many newly-weds experience needless anxiety and angst because they are not used to being friendly with the opposite sex. They seek out their own sex for friendship and company, to the extent that the holy institution of marriage is reduced to a seal of approval on sex and reproduction. No wonder that in India, after work and on weekends, the hubby goes to play with his male buddies , and the wifey goes shopping with her female cronies. And the children are left to torment Grandma and Grandpa….
The first time, you are shocked. Eventually, you get used to it. In between, you go through various stages of reaction—puzzlement, wonder, curiosity, disgust, grudging acceptance, repulsion, etc. The sight is a common enough one in these parts--- grown men and teenaged boys holding hands in public like lovers that cannot bear physical separation from each other. This, in the same society where even incidental contact between the opposite sexes is still taboo. But men cannot stop pawing each other. The way they carry on is enough to unleash the latent homophobe in most of us. Do they kiss when we are not watching?
Yet, I suppose I grew up in the same society, and even perhaps held hands with a male cousin or two when crossing a street. I suppose I never gave it a second thought until my overseas sojourn gave me a different perspective on such matters (although I know it shouldn’t, given that some of my adoring public believe that any new perspective gained during nor-residency renders me a traitor to my place of birth). Now, if I were to see a boyfriend grasp my son’s hand, I’m likely to rush out there and break it up before it got too intimate. On the other hand, I find the sight of boys holding girls’ hands, and vice versa, very wholesome, very non-threatening to a traditional way of life. On college campuses, you see these “macchans”, clearly the leaders of the pack, holding their dearest lieutenant in an arm-lock that would not be out of place on a Lovers’ Lane. On the streets, you see these “goondas” engaging in passionate arm-holding and palm-squeezing, even as they prepare to launch a major offensive against the neighborhood tea-shop that refuses to serve them free chai. You see auto rickshaw drivers walking hand-in-hand, comparing notes on 10 best ways to fleece customers. You see professional colleagues clasping hands with a fervor that borders on the obsessive. Once, I saw a guest speaker at a conventions held in a death-grip by the organizer for nearly thirty minutes; he escaped by severing his hand at the elbow. On the beach, it appears as if every male stroller is linked to another by the arm. Why is this male physical intimacy considered natural in a society where pre-marital male/female contact is still stigmatized? It is amazing what men can get away with in India without having their masculinity questioned. And yet, you accompany your wife to one Bharatanatyam recital, and it’s open season on your manhood.
Females, of course, are touchy-feely in all societies, Western or Eastern. I recall reading somewhere that all women are lesbians at heart. I believe that is true at least to some extent. Women are constantly obsessing over other women’s physical attributes. I asked a few female acquaintances of mine the following question: “If a naked man and a naked woman were to appear in front of you, whom would you look at first?” The unanimous answer was that they would examine the woman first, from head to toe, with a few lingering stops in-between. They may spare the man a glance or two, but almost as an after-thought. This may explain why a naked woman, in any form of art, is sexy, whereas a naked man is… comic. Women can spend hours comparing their looks with those of, say, supermodels. You cannot do that unless the interest spills over from the cosmetic to the prurient regime.
Friendship in India takes other strange forms, such as eating off one plate. Heart-warming display of closeness & togetherness, but has anyone considered the hygienic aspects? Friends drink from the same glass of juice, or same bottle of a soft-drink, sipping away with their straws. They take bites off the same fruit. They borrow each other’s hankies. They play kabaddi. They go to movies. For all I know, they probably hold hands there also. I’m not saying that males should not engage in any activities where females are excluded. My point is, why is male bonding appropriate, whereas male/female bonding is not? Because the latter would lead to premarital sex? If that’s the sole reason, why do people gawk at a wife and husband smooching or holding hands? In India, we actively suppress all outward signs of hetero-sexuality, thereby limiting displays of camaraderie to same-sex encounters only. I guess this is less evil than the Western suppression of homo-sexual acts in public, but not by much. Many newly-weds experience needless anxiety and angst because they are not used to being friendly with the opposite sex. They seek out their own sex for friendship and company, to the extent that the holy institution of marriage is reduced to a seal of approval on sex and reproduction. No wonder that in India, after work and on weekends, the hubby goes to play with his male buddies , and the wifey goes shopping with her female cronies. And the children are left to torment Grandma and Grandpa….
Oct 6, 2008
Confessions of an American - My Life in a New Delhi Gym
Cultural confusions of a desi gym having non-desi aspirations.
“What’s different about living in Delhi compared to America?” friends back home keep on asking me. It’s one of those questions that leave one unsure where to begin, and even after a year of living here, I’m still not certain how best to respond. The main reason is that a list of differences can quickly devolve into a catalog of gripes and frustrations, as the mention of the USA reminds me of the ways in which, by comparison, Delhi is still very much the capital of a developing country. Yet I find myself increasingly reluctant to reduce my India experience to a list of complaints, because my initial culture shock has given way to a more relaxed curiosity about what is different here. As much as possible, I try to feel amusement rather than annoyance when things don’t go quite as I might wish or expect.
Saying that India is irreducible to a series of neat observations is as obvious to those of us who live here as it is unsatisfying to my American questioners, but another way in might be to give them one snapshot, describing an activity here that they are familiar with at home. And what could be easier for many of my friends to grasp than that favorite Californian urban-suburban pursuit - going to the gym?
Yes, there are gyms in Delhi, I tell them, even though the work-out culture here isn’t as widespread as it is on the coasts of the U.S. I’ve no doubt that Delhi gyms, like their LA counterparts, range from the grungy to the glitzy. LA’s gym culture is well enough developed that there is a healthy competition for members, and while you can pay a lot there to join a more exclusive joint, a membership at a mid-range gym needn’t cost more than the equivalent of about Rs. 20,000 a year. Or you can join a gym in Delhi that is one-eighth the size of my old LA club, and often much more crowded – and for nearly two and a half times the price. I could probably have found somewhere cheaper than my current gym, but I chose it simply because it’s close to where I live. Ease of access is half the battle for those whose motivation is as underdeveloped as their stamina. But more interesting than the painful price differential are the cultural differences that I noticed – some immediately, some gradually – when I started my thrice-weekly regimen.
First, it has to be said that the clientele at my gym does not represent a cross-section of Delhi society. Gym-goers in Los Angeles by definition must have some disposable income, but the steep membership fees at my Delhi club mean that it caters basically to well-off locals, with a smattering of ex-pats like myself. So the people I chat with briefly on the floor or in the locker room are kids whose parents have money, or young professionals, and very occasionally someone (like me) almost old enough to be one of their parents. Everyone seems to be studying finance, aiming for an MBA, or working in the family business. The crowd is not just young but often conspicuously well dressed, whether in their work-out clothes or in the street clothes they change into afterwards. No old shorts, ratty t-shirts and beat up tennis shoes here. This is also the only gym where I’ve ever seen someone working out in cargo pants and a designer tee-shirt and shoes: even the most stylish work-out clothes seem too infra dig for some people.
The class difference extends to locker room etiquette, in a way that was initially rather disconcerting. Many a gym member hands his clothes wordlessly to the locker room attendant, who hangs them up or folds and puts them away in their bag; or the member just casts his clothes onto the bench with the assumption that they will be dealt with. Pleases and thank-yous are clearly not required. Some people do chat cordially with the attendant, but it’s the frequent master-servant attitude that is striking, all the more so because it seems to be accepted by both parties as a given. On my way out of the locker room I usually say “Thank you” to the attendant, regardless of whether or not he’s helped me directly that day. In return, I get a smile that’s hard to interpret: is it friendliness, appreciation – or just a certain amusement that I should cluelessly waste my time and his on a superfluous pleasantry?
Of course, the gym should ultimately not be about what you wear or how you behave, but about what you do, and there’s no disputing that everyone seems pretty intent on having a proper work-out. They’re not there just to show off, and from my position at the upper end of the client age scale, I can’t criticize their energy levels. Perhaps they are inspired by the music, which is usually so loud as to make idle conversation impossible. Or maybe it’s the lyrics being pounded into their brains that energize them: the compilations chosen by my gym include a considerable number of rap and other songs with graphic and vulgar descriptions of sex. I haven’t yet figured out whether multiply-repeated lines like “You already know I wanna fuck you” have the advantageous aerobic effect of making the heart beat faster, or whether to those gym members who are also dance club denizens they’re simply too familiar to be noticed.
The impression I have is that elements like those songs are part of a blasé-seeming attitude towards sex cultivated by the gym to appeal to the majority of its clients: we’re hip, westernized and contemporary, it tries to say. Unfortunately, the façade begins to crack when exposed to a native western pair of eyes. Look at the buff trainers, their biceps and pecs nicely outlined by their tight t-shirts. In their masculinity they’re identical to their American counterparts – until you notice that they can’t seem to keep their hands off each other. The easy physical contact which many Indian males have with their friends reaches its apogee at the gym, whose raison d’être is after all the body beautiful. As they pass each other, the trainers touch each other’s hands or chests, or they walk through the workout area together with their arms slung round each other’s shoulders. By contrast, in the men’s locker room there reigns an almost universal painful modesty about nudity, which leads to much contorted divesting and vesting of underwear from beneath towels wrapped tightly around the waist.
All of these goings-on are gazed upon by ultra-defined muscular males in photos that grace the walls of the establishment, including in the locker room a large poster of a male nude, who is presumably meant to rouse us to greater heights of disciplined exercise. All perfectly normal, one might think, and impeccably heterosexual – except that the pictures are predominantly by Herb Ritts, one of the most prominent gay American photographers. Ritts is known for works that slyly subvert heterosexual conventions by depicting hyper-masculine men in a way that is particularly appealing to gay viewers. In other words, his photos are homoerotic, and several of the ones at my gym are prime examples. It’s probably the case that a lot of Americans don’t quite cotton on to this – Ritts shoots models for the Abercrombie and Fitch clothing catalogs, after all – but I’m pretty sure that an American gym would steer nervously clear of displaying his photographs on their walls.
It seems to me that my gym has adapted some of the trappings of American gym culture without completely understanding the subtle, often blurred lines that define heterosexual and homosexual male identities in the west. Transposed to India, these western traits and affectations mix haphazardly with the very different ways in which Indian men relate to one another in terms of physical appearance and contact. The result is that notwithstanding the pounding macho music, the muscular trainers and the atmosphere of serious intent to exercise, through my western eyes my gym seems very gay!
Male sexual anxiety in the USA still often revolves around wanting to have a good-looking body while simultaneously not being mistaken for being gay. In Delhi, it seems to me that appearing gay is literally inconceivable to most men, who focus on a good physique because it is a component of the social, professional and romantic success that, to judge by their behavior, they feel they’re entitled to. “You already know I wanna fuck you,” they may be singing along in their heads – but only to the woman of their dreams. To my western eyes, however, it doesn’t always look that way. It’s just one small example of how life in Delhi is often confusing – but equally amusing.
“What’s different about living in Delhi compared to America?” friends back home keep on asking me. It’s one of those questions that leave one unsure where to begin, and even after a year of living here, I’m still not certain how best to respond. The main reason is that a list of differences can quickly devolve into a catalog of gripes and frustrations, as the mention of the USA reminds me of the ways in which, by comparison, Delhi is still very much the capital of a developing country. Yet I find myself increasingly reluctant to reduce my India experience to a list of complaints, because my initial culture shock has given way to a more relaxed curiosity about what is different here. As much as possible, I try to feel amusement rather than annoyance when things don’t go quite as I might wish or expect.
Saying that India is irreducible to a series of neat observations is as obvious to those of us who live here as it is unsatisfying to my American questioners, but another way in might be to give them one snapshot, describing an activity here that they are familiar with at home. And what could be easier for many of my friends to grasp than that favorite Californian urban-suburban pursuit - going to the gym?
Yes, there are gyms in Delhi, I tell them, even though the work-out culture here isn’t as widespread as it is on the coasts of the U.S. I’ve no doubt that Delhi gyms, like their LA counterparts, range from the grungy to the glitzy. LA’s gym culture is well enough developed that there is a healthy competition for members, and while you can pay a lot there to join a more exclusive joint, a membership at a mid-range gym needn’t cost more than the equivalent of about Rs. 20,000 a year. Or you can join a gym in Delhi that is one-eighth the size of my old LA club, and often much more crowded – and for nearly two and a half times the price. I could probably have found somewhere cheaper than my current gym, but I chose it simply because it’s close to where I live. Ease of access is half the battle for those whose motivation is as underdeveloped as their stamina. But more interesting than the painful price differential are the cultural differences that I noticed – some immediately, some gradually – when I started my thrice-weekly regimen.
First, it has to be said that the clientele at my gym does not represent a cross-section of Delhi society. Gym-goers in Los Angeles by definition must have some disposable income, but the steep membership fees at my Delhi club mean that it caters basically to well-off locals, with a smattering of ex-pats like myself. So the people I chat with briefly on the floor or in the locker room are kids whose parents have money, or young professionals, and very occasionally someone (like me) almost old enough to be one of their parents. Everyone seems to be studying finance, aiming for an MBA, or working in the family business. The crowd is not just young but often conspicuously well dressed, whether in their work-out clothes or in the street clothes they change into afterwards. No old shorts, ratty t-shirts and beat up tennis shoes here. This is also the only gym where I’ve ever seen someone working out in cargo pants and a designer tee-shirt and shoes: even the most stylish work-out clothes seem too infra dig for some people.
The class difference extends to locker room etiquette, in a way that was initially rather disconcerting. Many a gym member hands his clothes wordlessly to the locker room attendant, who hangs them up or folds and puts them away in their bag; or the member just casts his clothes onto the bench with the assumption that they will be dealt with. Pleases and thank-yous are clearly not required. Some people do chat cordially with the attendant, but it’s the frequent master-servant attitude that is striking, all the more so because it seems to be accepted by both parties as a given. On my way out of the locker room I usually say “Thank you” to the attendant, regardless of whether or not he’s helped me directly that day. In return, I get a smile that’s hard to interpret: is it friendliness, appreciation – or just a certain amusement that I should cluelessly waste my time and his on a superfluous pleasantry?
Of course, the gym should ultimately not be about what you wear or how you behave, but about what you do, and there’s no disputing that everyone seems pretty intent on having a proper work-out. They’re not there just to show off, and from my position at the upper end of the client age scale, I can’t criticize their energy levels. Perhaps they are inspired by the music, which is usually so loud as to make idle conversation impossible. Or maybe it’s the lyrics being pounded into their brains that energize them: the compilations chosen by my gym include a considerable number of rap and other songs with graphic and vulgar descriptions of sex. I haven’t yet figured out whether multiply-repeated lines like “You already know I wanna fuck you” have the advantageous aerobic effect of making the heart beat faster, or whether to those gym members who are also dance club denizens they’re simply too familiar to be noticed.
The impression I have is that elements like those songs are part of a blasé-seeming attitude towards sex cultivated by the gym to appeal to the majority of its clients: we’re hip, westernized and contemporary, it tries to say. Unfortunately, the façade begins to crack when exposed to a native western pair of eyes. Look at the buff trainers, their biceps and pecs nicely outlined by their tight t-shirts. In their masculinity they’re identical to their American counterparts – until you notice that they can’t seem to keep their hands off each other. The easy physical contact which many Indian males have with their friends reaches its apogee at the gym, whose raison d’être is after all the body beautiful. As they pass each other, the trainers touch each other’s hands or chests, or they walk through the workout area together with their arms slung round each other’s shoulders. By contrast, in the men’s locker room there reigns an almost universal painful modesty about nudity, which leads to much contorted divesting and vesting of underwear from beneath towels wrapped tightly around the waist.
All of these goings-on are gazed upon by ultra-defined muscular males in photos that grace the walls of the establishment, including in the locker room a large poster of a male nude, who is presumably meant to rouse us to greater heights of disciplined exercise. All perfectly normal, one might think, and impeccably heterosexual – except that the pictures are predominantly by Herb Ritts, one of the most prominent gay American photographers. Ritts is known for works that slyly subvert heterosexual conventions by depicting hyper-masculine men in a way that is particularly appealing to gay viewers. In other words, his photos are homoerotic, and several of the ones at my gym are prime examples. It’s probably the case that a lot of Americans don’t quite cotton on to this – Ritts shoots models for the Abercrombie and Fitch clothing catalogs, after all – but I’m pretty sure that an American gym would steer nervously clear of displaying his photographs on their walls.
It seems to me that my gym has adapted some of the trappings of American gym culture without completely understanding the subtle, often blurred lines that define heterosexual and homosexual male identities in the west. Transposed to India, these western traits and affectations mix haphazardly with the very different ways in which Indian men relate to one another in terms of physical appearance and contact. The result is that notwithstanding the pounding macho music, the muscular trainers and the atmosphere of serious intent to exercise, through my western eyes my gym seems very gay!
Male sexual anxiety in the USA still often revolves around wanting to have a good-looking body while simultaneously not being mistaken for being gay. In Delhi, it seems to me that appearing gay is literally inconceivable to most men, who focus on a good physique because it is a component of the social, professional and romantic success that, to judge by their behavior, they feel they’re entitled to. “You already know I wanna fuck you,” they may be singing along in their heads – but only to the woman of their dreams. To my western eyes, however, it doesn’t always look that way. It’s just one small example of how life in Delhi is often confusing – but equally amusing.
Sep 19, 2008
The Conspiracy against men
This is a post that one of our members made at a discussion net forum:
IT IS NOT not man-woman sexual interest that defines men, rather its a sexual inclination towards men. It is only too evident in nature, where (in mammals: read Bruce bagemihl, Johann Roughgarden, etc.) from 90% to 100% of males have been found to indulge in sexual relations with other males, while male-female sex happens only during the breeding season, and only a handful of males indulge in it at any given time. In other mammalian species, a handful of males control big harems of females, while most males live in male only groups and have sex largely with other males. Also, there is hardly any sexual/ emotional and romantic bonds between male-female, and any committed, lifelong sexual-romantic bonds exist only between males.
That is how humans lived at the beginning of the human civilisation, as is evident from several initial tribes that survived till the beginning of the modern era (e.g. the Melanisian tribes). In their society, males and females live in separate spaces, and meet only for reproductive sex, once a year... while 'marriage' happens only between men. In such societies, the reproduction is quite less -- but as per the rules of nature, but not to supply for human greed.
In nature, only a small portion of males ever breed, and even a smaller fraction does so with any regularity (i.e. in every reproductive season).
Long ago, societies decided to force its men (And it were the rulers, both men and of the third sex, who did that in what they thought was in the interest of the society) into reproductive sex with women, in order to increase their population -- It was necessitated because humans had started to migrate to far off, uninhabited lands, and they wanted people to inhabit their emerging civilisations. It soon evolved into a competitive situation where societies had to keep up their population levels to much more than what nature had intended, in order to survive the rivals.
In the beginning they invented the man-woman marriage, but male-bonds were so strong that they wouldn't leave them to live with women. Eversince, there has been a struggle by those who control the society (the rulers) and men's spaces. The rulers have been conspiring to:
a) break men from men
b) force them into sex with women
Men will not be forced into sex with women, unless they are broken from each other. The concept of 'homosexuality' is only the latest addition to theh conspiracy to break men from men. And if you look at how Western men are even afraid to hold each other's hands, and how they're scared of uniting on men's issues, for the fear of thought of as 'gay', you will understand that the conspirators have been really successful.
The rulers, iniitally, while they forced the common men into sex with women, kept themselves free from this pressure. So, for a large part of the history, man to man relations was thought to be fit only for the nobility but not for the common man, who had to be forced into reproductive sex, especially in a time when both child and adult mortality was high.
In any case... till the times of the Greeks, man to man sexual/ romantic bonds continued paralled to man-woman marriage, and while the first half of a man's life was devoted to bonds with men, the second half was for the society, to breed for it and to form a family. In the entire world, marriage is seen by men as a social duty, rather than something they really want to do. And men have been traditionally running away from marriage, as can be seen by innumerous marriage jokes, men have made to deal with this pressure.
Now, were all these men 'gay' -- certainly not... gay means queer, out of the ordinary, while straight means something that is normal, done by the majority. And, thus it was male-male sexual bonds that were straight, while it was male-female romantic bonds (that was indulged in by less than 3% of males, who were also effeminate) was 'gay'.
In any case... this fight against men's spaces, to break them from men, especially sexually, and to force them with women... is a contnuous fight, because nature exerts itself, the moment the rulers (that I call, the forces of heterosexualisation (FOH)) get lax. So, inspite of the fact that the FOH have heavily invested into building huge 'fixed' infrastructures, in the form of mechanisms, and into making these infrastructure 'invisible', especially by denying a space to talk about them,... they have to build new infrastructures in each age... as men's spaces find ways to fight the old ones.
Thus, by the time of the greeks, the man to man bonds were again resurfacing and had become strong. So, the FOH developed the concept of Religion by organising faith into an institution... and pronounced Sex between men as a Sin against God. And then, that gave them the authority and the power to persecute men (and not just gays), to keep them from forming relations with other men.
In fact, more than religion, the most important tool for the FOH to control men's sexuality was to manipulate and politicise 'manhood'. Because, manhood signified men's spaces -- the most important thing for men, biologically as well as socially. So, first they changed the definition of 'manhood' to say only those who reproduce are 'men'. In fact, they associated 'manhood' with penetration, which meant men could penetrate women, men as well as members of the third sex without losing their manhood.
Side by side, they also changed the definition of 'third sex', which originally was an identity for feminine gendered males without any consideration to their sexuality -- which was, unlike men, largely towards women. Third sex used to be a respectable group, but after politicisation, became a punishment space for outcaste men, who rebelled against social manhood... of course no one did.
Thus, while straight men loved other men, they disowned receptive anal sex, which the third sex took up as an identity.
After they brought in god, all kinds of sex with men became bad, it still remained 'masculine' although, only anal sex was a sin.
However, feminine gendered males, the third sex, was now heavily organised around receptive anal sex, and the FOH, to serve their nefarious designs allowed them space. Naturally, the third sex combined the desire for anal sex with their femininity and feminine lifestyles, and the two became synonymous. Of course, the majority of third gender who liked women, went underground, just like straight male sexual desire for men.
The sexual bonds between men however flourished underground. That means that although they could not accept indulging in such relations or to have the desire (not because it was feminine but because it was BAD and a sin) in formal spaces, in men's spaces, they openly talked about it and indulged in it.
When the modern times came, the power of religion started to vain, and Science started gaining power. The FOH, quickly gained control of the institution of science, and through it, invented the concept of Homosexuality (originally a disease) a term which was used for the feminine gendered males who indulged in receptive anal sex. They ignorend their feminine gender (also because Christianity had wiped out the concept of third sex from its society, at least formally) and their third sex status and defined them as 'men'. And that too 'men' who had sexual interest in men.
It was common knowledge that all men have a strong sexual interest in men. However, because of the immense religious and social hostility, men could not come up and say, hey, its not only these third sex people who like men, we like men too. They just couldn't. Soon, they were afraid to say this also because, they would be thought of as femininie or third sex themselves.
And the FOH, side by side, also started to destroy the men's spaces by bringing women into it, and increasing to the extremes, the pressure on men to bond sexually and socially with women. It was these men's spaces that were the power of men, and the FOH wanted to destroy them long ago, but it was only through science that they could finally do it.
They threatened any stragiht man who resisted this destruction as being outcasted as 'gay'. Some men were better 'heterosexualised' and fitted better in the new heteroseuxal set ups than the others and these men became the vested interests. But these men were not really the masculine ones, but rather the 'meterosexual' ones. The masculine ones became truly disempowered and to this day strive to fit into heterosexual roles with all sincerity.
The 'homosexual' or 'gay' space became strong as a lot of meterosexual guys, apart from the extremely transgendered guys who originally made up the gay space, took to it, and what helped them was the fact that formally, the concept of 'homosexuality' did not acknowledge the femininity of its members, and defined them only in terms of their sexual need for men. It also helped remove the stigma around receptive anal sex, by bringing all kinds of sexual interest under the stigma, and making it much wider. So, now the burden was equally shared, at least formally, by those who penetrated and those who did not indulge in anal sex at all. Any kind of sexual or emotional or romantic interest in men now became 'gay' or indirectly became 'feminine' or 'third sex'.
Because, these meterosexual 'gays' have a strong femininity in them, and because the society also acknowlegdes 'sexual interest between men' as feminine, the gays strongly feel that liking men and femininity are synonymous. And, they fuel the stereotypes.
While, all through the middle ages, and in contemporary non-westernised societies, manhood is still dependant on reproduction, and if you have a baby, you're straight... actually, you don't even need to actually have a baby, if you can prove that you are physically capable of having a child, you're straight. The Western societies have renamed 'manhood' as 'straight', and defined it in terms of exclusive sexual interest in women, which is not only illogical, its anti-man, anti-nature and without any precedence in history. Third sex, too was renamed as 'gay' and redefined in terms of a male sexual interest in men.
The third sex space for long has been a place for males who have been debarred from manhood, and 'gay' is the modern West's version of that space. That is why men are so scared of it.
So, straight men are continually pitted against their own nature, to love men... and to develop or pretend a sexual interest in women, so that they are not thrown into the third sex 'gay' group. And the society makes this pressure really strong. Most gays do not understand the straight male fear or phobia against 'gays'... They think its because of the religious or social stigma... well, its not... its a very personal thing... and this has to do with the 'third sex' angle, the politics of misdefining manhood and third sex.
So, straight men still indulge in sex with men ... but those who really do and talk about it, even secretly, are a miniscule. The majority of straight men never get down to actually doing it. But, their continuous struggle with a deep rooted sexual need for men, that they don't allow to grow and keep cutting off psychologically, manifests itself indirectly, in small spaces that they can still find to give vent to some of that need -- e.g. in hazing practices or in jokingly stripping each other... or doing masti (sexual fun) with each other. In India, before its extreme heterosexualisation recently, it was accepted as an integral part of manhood for men to like doing masti with other men. But now, men don't acknowledge that because of fear of being labelled gay.
In fact, I'm observing two college friends of mine closely who are straight and who are trying their best to fit into the new heterosexual roles by forcing themselves to be with girls and to cut off themselves from guys sexually and emotionally. Its a pressure we did not have to feel about seven years ago.
I am observing them closely, and seeing how they don't have much interest in women, and how uncomfortable they feel in the company of girls, yet they make all kinds of webs in order to have a straight image (there's no concept of straight as yet... but all they want is to avoid being 'gay'), and that they'd really like to be involved with a man.
IT IS NOT not man-woman sexual interest that defines men, rather its a sexual inclination towards men. It is only too evident in nature, where (in mammals: read Bruce bagemihl, Johann Roughgarden, etc.) from 90% to 100% of males have been found to indulge in sexual relations with other males, while male-female sex happens only during the breeding season, and only a handful of males indulge in it at any given time. In other mammalian species, a handful of males control big harems of females, while most males live in male only groups and have sex largely with other males. Also, there is hardly any sexual/ emotional and romantic bonds between male-female, and any committed, lifelong sexual-romantic bonds exist only between males.
That is how humans lived at the beginning of the human civilisation, as is evident from several initial tribes that survived till the beginning of the modern era (e.g. the Melanisian tribes). In their society, males and females live in separate spaces, and meet only for reproductive sex, once a year... while 'marriage' happens only between men. In such societies, the reproduction is quite less -- but as per the rules of nature, but not to supply for human greed.
In nature, only a small portion of males ever breed, and even a smaller fraction does so with any regularity (i.e. in every reproductive season).
Long ago, societies decided to force its men (And it were the rulers, both men and of the third sex, who did that in what they thought was in the interest of the society) into reproductive sex with women, in order to increase their population -- It was necessitated because humans had started to migrate to far off, uninhabited lands, and they wanted people to inhabit their emerging civilisations. It soon evolved into a competitive situation where societies had to keep up their population levels to much more than what nature had intended, in order to survive the rivals.
In the beginning they invented the man-woman marriage, but male-bonds were so strong that they wouldn't leave them to live with women. Eversince, there has been a struggle by those who control the society (the rulers) and men's spaces. The rulers have been conspiring to:
a) break men from men
b) force them into sex with women
Men will not be forced into sex with women, unless they are broken from each other. The concept of 'homosexuality' is only the latest addition to theh conspiracy to break men from men. And if you look at how Western men are even afraid to hold each other's hands, and how they're scared of uniting on men's issues, for the fear of thought of as 'gay', you will understand that the conspirators have been really successful.
The rulers, iniitally, while they forced the common men into sex with women, kept themselves free from this pressure. So, for a large part of the history, man to man relations was thought to be fit only for the nobility but not for the common man, who had to be forced into reproductive sex, especially in a time when both child and adult mortality was high.
In any case... till the times of the Greeks, man to man sexual/ romantic bonds continued paralled to man-woman marriage, and while the first half of a man's life was devoted to bonds with men, the second half was for the society, to breed for it and to form a family. In the entire world, marriage is seen by men as a social duty, rather than something they really want to do. And men have been traditionally running away from marriage, as can be seen by innumerous marriage jokes, men have made to deal with this pressure.
Now, were all these men 'gay' -- certainly not... gay means queer, out of the ordinary, while straight means something that is normal, done by the majority. And, thus it was male-male sexual bonds that were straight, while it was male-female romantic bonds (that was indulged in by less than 3% of males, who were also effeminate) was 'gay'.
In any case... this fight against men's spaces, to break them from men, especially sexually, and to force them with women... is a contnuous fight, because nature exerts itself, the moment the rulers (that I call, the forces of heterosexualisation (FOH)) get lax. So, inspite of the fact that the FOH have heavily invested into building huge 'fixed' infrastructures, in the form of mechanisms, and into making these infrastructure 'invisible', especially by denying a space to talk about them,... they have to build new infrastructures in each age... as men's spaces find ways to fight the old ones.
Thus, by the time of the greeks, the man to man bonds were again resurfacing and had become strong. So, the FOH developed the concept of Religion by organising faith into an institution... and pronounced Sex between men as a Sin against God. And then, that gave them the authority and the power to persecute men (and not just gays), to keep them from forming relations with other men.
In fact, more than religion, the most important tool for the FOH to control men's sexuality was to manipulate and politicise 'manhood'. Because, manhood signified men's spaces -- the most important thing for men, biologically as well as socially. So, first they changed the definition of 'manhood' to say only those who reproduce are 'men'. In fact, they associated 'manhood' with penetration, which meant men could penetrate women, men as well as members of the third sex without losing their manhood.
Side by side, they also changed the definition of 'third sex', which originally was an identity for feminine gendered males without any consideration to their sexuality -- which was, unlike men, largely towards women. Third sex used to be a respectable group, but after politicisation, became a punishment space for outcaste men, who rebelled against social manhood... of course no one did.
Thus, while straight men loved other men, they disowned receptive anal sex, which the third sex took up as an identity.
After they brought in god, all kinds of sex with men became bad, it still remained 'masculine' although, only anal sex was a sin.
However, feminine gendered males, the third sex, was now heavily organised around receptive anal sex, and the FOH, to serve their nefarious designs allowed them space. Naturally, the third sex combined the desire for anal sex with their femininity and feminine lifestyles, and the two became synonymous. Of course, the majority of third gender who liked women, went underground, just like straight male sexual desire for men.
The sexual bonds between men however flourished underground. That means that although they could not accept indulging in such relations or to have the desire (not because it was feminine but because it was BAD and a sin) in formal spaces, in men's spaces, they openly talked about it and indulged in it.
When the modern times came, the power of religion started to vain, and Science started gaining power. The FOH, quickly gained control of the institution of science, and through it, invented the concept of Homosexuality (originally a disease) a term which was used for the feminine gendered males who indulged in receptive anal sex. They ignorend their feminine gender (also because Christianity had wiped out the concept of third sex from its society, at least formally) and their third sex status and defined them as 'men'. And that too 'men' who had sexual interest in men.
It was common knowledge that all men have a strong sexual interest in men. However, because of the immense religious and social hostility, men could not come up and say, hey, its not only these third sex people who like men, we like men too. They just couldn't. Soon, they were afraid to say this also because, they would be thought of as femininie or third sex themselves.
And the FOH, side by side, also started to destroy the men's spaces by bringing women into it, and increasing to the extremes, the pressure on men to bond sexually and socially with women. It was these men's spaces that were the power of men, and the FOH wanted to destroy them long ago, but it was only through science that they could finally do it.
They threatened any stragiht man who resisted this destruction as being outcasted as 'gay'. Some men were better 'heterosexualised' and fitted better in the new heteroseuxal set ups than the others and these men became the vested interests. But these men were not really the masculine ones, but rather the 'meterosexual' ones. The masculine ones became truly disempowered and to this day strive to fit into heterosexual roles with all sincerity.
The 'homosexual' or 'gay' space became strong as a lot of meterosexual guys, apart from the extremely transgendered guys who originally made up the gay space, took to it, and what helped them was the fact that formally, the concept of 'homosexuality' did not acknowledge the femininity of its members, and defined them only in terms of their sexual need for men. It also helped remove the stigma around receptive anal sex, by bringing all kinds of sexual interest under the stigma, and making it much wider. So, now the burden was equally shared, at least formally, by those who penetrated and those who did not indulge in anal sex at all. Any kind of sexual or emotional or romantic interest in men now became 'gay' or indirectly became 'feminine' or 'third sex'.
Because, these meterosexual 'gays' have a strong femininity in them, and because the society also acknowlegdes 'sexual interest between men' as feminine, the gays strongly feel that liking men and femininity are synonymous. And, they fuel the stereotypes.
While, all through the middle ages, and in contemporary non-westernised societies, manhood is still dependant on reproduction, and if you have a baby, you're straight... actually, you don't even need to actually have a baby, if you can prove that you are physically capable of having a child, you're straight. The Western societies have renamed 'manhood' as 'straight', and defined it in terms of exclusive sexual interest in women, which is not only illogical, its anti-man, anti-nature and without any precedence in history. Third sex, too was renamed as 'gay' and redefined in terms of a male sexual interest in men.
The third sex space for long has been a place for males who have been debarred from manhood, and 'gay' is the modern West's version of that space. That is why men are so scared of it.
So, straight men are continually pitted against their own nature, to love men... and to develop or pretend a sexual interest in women, so that they are not thrown into the third sex 'gay' group. And the society makes this pressure really strong. Most gays do not understand the straight male fear or phobia against 'gays'... They think its because of the religious or social stigma... well, its not... its a very personal thing... and this has to do with the 'third sex' angle, the politics of misdefining manhood and third sex.
So, straight men still indulge in sex with men ... but those who really do and talk about it, even secretly, are a miniscule. The majority of straight men never get down to actually doing it. But, their continuous struggle with a deep rooted sexual need for men, that they don't allow to grow and keep cutting off psychologically, manifests itself indirectly, in small spaces that they can still find to give vent to some of that need -- e.g. in hazing practices or in jokingly stripping each other... or doing masti (sexual fun) with each other. In India, before its extreme heterosexualisation recently, it was accepted as an integral part of manhood for men to like doing masti with other men. But now, men don't acknowledge that because of fear of being labelled gay.
In fact, I'm observing two college friends of mine closely who are straight and who are trying their best to fit into the new heterosexual roles by forcing themselves to be with girls and to cut off themselves from guys sexually and emotionally. Its a pressure we did not have to feel about seven years ago.
I am observing them closely, and seeing how they don't have much interest in women, and how uncomfortable they feel in the company of girls, yet they make all kinds of webs in order to have a straight image (there's no concept of straight as yet... but all they want is to avoid being 'gay'), and that they'd really like to be involved with a man.
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