Tom of Finland

One of the strands of gay is hypermasculinity: big blokes in leather or uniform, with cropped hair and buff to the power 3 bodies.  Tom of Finland was the artist who made his and our  fantasies of those sorts of guy real, in fact who defined our images of the leather stud, the soldier, the sailor, the manly queer.   I confess to enjoying his drawings and cartoons, even though I know they are quite unrealistic, and that in fact this very hypermasculinity is probably a product of internalised homophobia  ("we're not homos -- look how manly we are!")  But at least the hypermasculine don't retreat into self pity.  They work out instead.  And buy leather.

I'll be posting a series of Tom of Finland's images.  I like this one especially.  Just look at the look in this guy's eyes!  I can't work out what he's thinking with any certainty, but I know that if a guy looked like that at me, I should be both apprehensive and incredibly turned on.

Deep Secrets

It's a staple of all the conversations we have, gay men and straight women, that straight men are emotional pygmies, that they don't want intimate friendships, that they can't express their feelings, that they don't love other men.

It's worse than that, actually.  They do, when they're young.  It's only as they grow up that they deliberately step away from intimacy into emotional indifference.  This newly released book , Deep Secrets: Boys' Friendships and the Crisis of Connection, makes the the point that intense intimacy among boys in early and middle adolescence is very common, but it is replaced by competition, mistrust and loneliness as they grow into men.

As the publisher's puff says:

“Boys are emotionally illiterate and don’t want intimate friendships.” In this empirically grounded challenge to our stereotypes about boys and men, Niobe Way reveals the intense intimacy among teenage boys especially during early and middle adolescence. Boys not only share their deepest secrets and feelings with their closest male friends, they claim that without them they would go “wacko.” Yet as boys become men, they become distrustful, lose these friendships, and feel isolated and alone.

Drawing from hundreds of interviews conducted throughout adolescence with black, Latino, white, and Asian American boys, Deep Secrets reveals the ways in which we have been telling ourselves a false story about boys, friendships, and human nature. Boys’ descriptions of their male friendships sound more like “something out of Love Story than Lord of the Flies.” Yet in late adolescence, boys feel they have to “man up” by becoming stoic and independent. Vulnerable emotions and intimate friendships are for girls and gay men. “No homo” becomes their mantra.

These findings are alarming, given what we know about links between friendships and health, and even longevity. Rather than a “boy crisis,” Way argues that boys are experiencing a “crisis of connection” because they live in a culture where human needs and capacities are given a sex (female) and a sexuality (gay), and thus discouraged for those who are neither. Way argues that the solution lies with exposing the inaccuracies of our gender stereotypes and fostering these critical relationships and fundamental human skills.

At sixteen, my best friend and I loved each other completely.  It had nothing whatever to do with sex and everything with intense friendship.  It was entirely innocent.  It never struck me that perhaps we grew apart because we were both "manning up" -- though we were an unusual pair, neither of us sporty, both of us fascinated by ideas.  I always thought that the reason we grew apart was because he found girlfriends and I, well, I didn't, not really, not like him.  After all, it is the expected path of our society that the intense friendships of 12 or 14 or 16 are replaced with the intense emotion of marriage.  You are expected to love your best friend less than you love your wife.  Because loving another man  -- even non-sexually -- is simply not kosher.  It's something you might indulge when you're sixteen, but real men end up loving their woman more than their man.  That's the way it is.

I never had a problem being intimate with my friends.  But the men I tried to befriend did.  They were uncomfortable with intimacy, even when they didn't know my sexuality.  They found it hard to talk about their fears and weaknesses, their loneliness, their need for love and empathy.  I'm told by blokes who have navigated the rapids of male friendship more successfully than I have that sportsmen (o happy breed!) can bond, and ultimately can talk about those things which are dear to their heart.  For me this is an alien world.

Men are afraid to be intimate, to show their pain, to discuss their lives because, as the blurb above says, "human needs and capacities are given a sex (female) and a sexuality (gay), and thus discouraged for those who are neither".  

In this context there is no more sinister phrase than "you have to man up" or "making a man of you."  The users of these baggage-loaded horrors have someone like John Wayne in mind, taciturn, noble, violent, suffering in silence, a loner who doesn't even connect to his women.   Real men are strong, of course they are.  And noble.  And brave.   But they're also empathetic, caring, compassionate, loving, supportive, generous, and friendly.  Straight or gay.  And our culture takes sensitive teenage boys and turns them into lonely, unconnected automata.  As my elder son says:  so much of the sex obsession men have is really about trying to connect in the only way they know.   And that is desperately sad.

Shoon (under bed)

Yum.  His name's Jeff.  He can put his shoon under my bed any time.

(Pic from the Ozzie gay-shaded magazine DNA)

Flamers

A little while ago I read a remarkable blog post, from a blog which shall remain nameless. In it, the blogger described how he'd been approached by a effeminate (but very muscular) guy. This guy suffered from a -- shock! horror! -- lisp. Repelled, our intrepid blogger assaulted the "queen" and then vomited. There followed a diatribe against feminine guys.

A psychiatrist or psychologist would surely find the whole episode remarkably revealing. To me, it indicates a very strong internalised homophobia. Ah, many will reply, but what if you don't find effeminate men sexy? Well, what of it? If it had been a straight guy responding to a gay one in this way, the conclusions would have been obvious. It would have been seen as a gay hate crime. And let me make it quite clear: I'm not saying that you have to have it off with someone you find unappealing just to be politically correct. Some blokes prefer busty brunettes, others brunets with muscly pecs. Each to his own. But to hit the other guy and then vomit? C'mon! Whatever happened to Sorry, I have a headache?

So why do I call it a kind of (internalised) homophobia? Because what is going on here is a comparable to what happens in race-obsessed societies. In apartheid South Africa, the "whites" were the most desired, the "blacks" the least. The "coloureds" (mixed-race South Africans, who ironically spoke Afrikaans*, the language of the dominant "white" minority) were considered superior to the "blacks" but inferior to the "whites", and the "whiter" your skin was the higher your social standing. Manufacturers of (dangerous and ineffective) skin-whitening pastes and hair-straightening liquids did a roaring trade. Self-hatred brought on by the perverted values of society.

But how is this relevant to the spectrum of gays from queens through to clones? The most acceptable gays (to gays and straights) are those who can "pass". They're "masculine" and "straight-acting". When last did you see an ad in the hook-up section of the personals columns for a "gay-acting" partner?

It's not for nothing that one of the biggest story themes on Nifty is about straight guys turning gay. There are all sorts of reasons why this trope is so powerful to us, and I'll talk about them in a later post, but one of them clearly is that a despised and discriminated-against sexual alternative is embraced by the "real man" (gays, by definition, cannot be "real men"). A straight man turning gay validates us. And the machoer, the straighter, the more masculine the other man is before he turns to the dark side, the better. Hell's teeth, even in my own writing, I use these archetypal stories. In Footy, a straight man falls for his gay best friend.

The least acceptable gays are the "femmes", the "queens", the "gay-acting", the "flamers". When straight society talks disdainfully about "homos", this is mostly what they mean. Effeminate men are despised by most straights and gays. And it's worth asking why. 'Just because' is not an answer. Consider how many gays wish that drag queens would keep away from the gay parades. "They perpetuate stereotypes" is the politest comment I've heard. Why is it more acceptable for a woman to do "manly things" than for a man to do feminine things? Why is it OK for women to wear pants but not for men to wear dresses? Why is being a macho sportsman (even if from time to time you have a mutual blow job with your teammates) acceptable but being a male ballet dancer not?

Think of all the gay icons. Gays are turned on by construction workers and tradies, marines (but not, curiously to the same extent by other kinds of soldiers), cowboys, firefighters, bikies and the leather-clad, policemen, and of course, sportsmen. One can understand the attraction in each case, especially for sportsmen, who must be fit, healthy and muscular just to follow their calling. But so much of the attraction is for a kind of off-hand, totally self-confident, unthinking maleness. Men who don't gel their hair, who don't wear designer label undies, who sprawl in a masculine way in front of the TV to watch the game, who emerge filthy from under a car they've just fixed (competence is a very male virtue), who don't wear deodorant or aftershave. Real men. The kind of men we want to be. So, since we are homos not straights, we indulge in the equivalent of skin-lightening creams and hair straighteners. Even the term "clone" is horribly revealing.

The irony is that I myself am not immune to the attraction of these archetypes. And that I had to spend a lot of time and thought to getting over my own internalised homophobia which made me despise myself because I wasn't real man enough, and made me deeply uncomfortable with flamers. But the first step to coming to terms with this is to recognise it for what it is.

I'm sure I'll get heaps of emails and comments, saying stuff like "but that's just what I like/dislike, it's not homophobia." Fair enough. But the question is: why do we have these likes and dislikes? Our personal values don't happen in a vacuum. They are affected, coloured, driven by societal values. We must understand, because if we end up disliking ourselves because we don't conform to some outdated sexist stereotype than we will just get hurt. Effeminate gay men are us, too. Flamers have feelings. Until they/we are whole-heartedly accepted, gay liberation will not be complete.

[This is the third of a linked series of posts. The previous two are Darl and Homophobia and Behaviour Modification. These articles I wrote for Wilde Oats also consider some of the issues I touch on here: The End of Gay and Gay, Then and Now.]

The Village People, making fun of the stereotypes.

*the first book written in Afrikaans was written in Arabic script to convert the "Malay" (Indonesian) Muslim slaves in Cape Town in the early 19th century. Ironic that their creole of Dutch became the language of the apartheid regime. Now there's self-hatred for you! And apartheid is pronounced apart+hate. Easy to remember.

Darl

Darl.  That's Ozzie for 'darling'. I've had a whole series of thoughts arising from this article, about perceptions and stereotypes and how we gay-shaded blokes like to think we're unjudgemental and unprejudiced. About how being constantly put down by others eventually breaks your spirit. But it's going to take me ages to write, so.... tomorrow, or the next day. Meantime, consider why firemen, tradies, policemen, cowboys and leather men are considered sexy by so many gay blokes. Why is the story of a straight man turning gay is so compelling (and such a Nifty trope?) Why is "slash" such a popular genre? Why do so many gays advertise for "straight-acting" men in the gay dating smalls?

I'll give you my answers soon. Meanwhile I'll share with you some pics of hot tradies, from a nationwide competition to choose the sexiest tradie. Frankly, these blokes'd be hot even if they weren't tradies. But something about khaki trousers and sweaty torsos. . . .