So many young men (and older men, but I won't focus on them) claim to be "disgusted" or "repulsed" by the thought of homosexual acts between two males. These men are from a variety of geographic and socioeconomic backgrounds.
Personally, I think its not all bullshit, but that men should get over themselves. I can understand the male uneasiness towards homosexuality, but not its total extent and severity. When I was a child the thought of kissing another man made me squirm. Why? I'm still not sure. Maybe it was because I had never seen such an act before or that homosexuality was not at all talked about by my immediate or extended family. One reason for sure, had to be my heterosexuality. I was not wired to be attracted to the male gender. But before long, as I became a teen, the idea of homosexual sex stopped bothering me at all. I accepted it as readily as I accepted the idea of heterosexual sex. I reasoned that the two acts were really not so different mechanically, even if they were different in application.
This is where me and many males seem to differ. While my uneasiness with homosexuality was purely based on my own heterosexuality, there seems to be an additional conditioning element with many young men. They have never let go of that uneasiness with homosexuality and they have added on top of that the idea that homosexual behavior is "unnatural," "perverse," and "disgusting."
Why? Are these men prudes? Surely not. Although most of the men I know are pretty sexually inexperienced, presented with all sorts of kinky suggestions from any attractive women I'm sure they would jump at the chance (at least in private).
What does that mean? I'm not completely sure. Many who I have talked to, when asked to actually expand upon their repulsion of homosexuality, are unable to do so in any thoughtful or articulate manner. Their usual and banal response (if i may articulate it for them) is only to reiterate that the thought of two men having sex makes them physically and mentally shudder and that gay sex is not natural because only a man and a women can have a child.
I believe that, in truth, their communities are the author of their own beliefs. They believe what they are supposed to believe. They live (or grew up) in closed off societies, where gay people are not openly out in public. They belong to a boys club where "manliness" is put on a pedestal and any signs of homosexuality (synonymous with weakness) is totally frowned upon.
How did these communities form these beliefs? The source was probably fear. A heterosexual man's fear of a gay man coming onto him or his offspring. Fear of the stories they had heard of the stereotypically flamboyant gay man. Fear of anything different than the current order. Fear of the gay man borne out of a mix of ignorance and conservatism. Because gay people are traditionally so few in number relative to straight people, it is easy to see how straight men (who like the way things are) would single them out as a potentially subversive element to the local order.
However, those who fear the gay man. You must change your ways, you cannot keep your beliefs! Just as many racists from the 1950s and 1960s were not able to hold onto their own racism or pass it on to their children, you and your seed will be forced to change because that is the power of the tide! As gay people unify to increase their strength and rallying power, they cannot be ignored for much longer.
Don't fear gay people! Sure they make life more complicated, less uniform. But, they are just like us in the most important of ways. They too can be some of the most intelligent of human beings. And they too can be some of the most petty, ignorant, and callous. They too can love and care and grow and raise. They may be sexually different, but tis "no worse, than what's goin on in your parents' bedrooms." We must accept them just as they in turn, accept us.
Basically, accept. Don't be a bitch. Man up, you heterosexual sissies.
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