The Oscars abandoned a great opportunity last week to honor a masterfully crafted film, as well as a social statement, in failing to award "Brokeback" Best Picture Award, and now a GLAAD group is funding ads thanking supporters of the film and asking why the fear prevails.
I have so much trouble understanding that fear. But then, I'm a woman. I've been frankly shocked at the number of really good and wise men who have told me they are a bit creeped out about watching men in love with each other. Women would not have that reaction, as a rule, and certainly not to the extent we see homophobia in men. It's a strange phenomenon, and all the more disturbing for its prevalence across virtually all cultures and all of history. Very rare exceptions, very rare.
Less than a week after Brokeback lost that Oscar, Catholic Charities shown yet another twisted angle to the pathologies riddled through that Church. Rather than grant gay couples the opportunity to adopt children, as is required by law in Massachusetts and likely California, the Catholic adoption agency will simply stop offering adoption for these children.
The ultimate in cutting off one's nose to spite one's face. Except it's those kids who lose, even more than the integrity and reputation of the Church.
Sexual activity is perhaps almost as fundamental as feeding. (When I studied for the licensing exam, one study aide referred to the limbic system as controlling the four Fs of survival: feeding, fighting, flight, and copulation.) There is something about homosexuality that raises profoundly fundamental fears, especially for men. In fact, I don't know of any women who have anything like the reaction to lesbians that men have to gay men.
Not to wax sexist in any way, but I'd like to submit for consideration that this issue of homophobia may be an important frontier in our collective struggle for human rights, in that if men can overcome their fears of homosexuals, perhaps it would signal other fears falling by the wayside, as well.
Just a thought.
Doc, I was going to send this comment to you via email, but perhaps I should take this dialogue into the public. Readers will probably scoff or take me to task, but I don't care. I want to provoke discussion.
ReplyDeleteI am convinced that the male fear of homosexuality derives from fear of rape. I am well aware of the unfortunate fact that this is a fear, a sense of vulnrabililty, that every woman knows all too well -- but men know it only in connection with homosexuality.
Am I saying that all gay men want to commit rape? No. Of course not. Only a small percentage of men -- gay or straight -- would ever commit such a crime.
But the only creature on this planet who would ever WANT to rape a young male would be a gay man within that aforementioned "small percentage."
I'll speak from experience, even at the risk of making myself laughable.
I used to be quite a walker. From my early teens to my late 20s, this was my favorite form of exercise. We're talking miles and miles, each day.
Unfortunately, a young man walking around Los Angeles in the 1970s often encountered all sorts of unwanted attention.
Cars would stop. Drivers would ask me to get in. Sometimes they would be masturbating. Right there, in their cars, in broad daylight.
It was both infuriating and unnerving. For the longest time, I thought I was doing something wrong. Was it the way I dressed, the way I walked...?
How often did this sort of thing happen? I distinctly remember keeping track during one week in 1975. Eight times. In one week. Usually on Ventura Boulevard, the main commercial avenue in the San Fernando Valley.
And remember -- I was clearly underaged.
In certain social situations, adult gay men were absolutely obnoxious about foisting their attentions on me. Imagine being a 15 years old boy, having to think up a reply to a guy in his 40s who asks you to suck his cock. That happened to me in a movie theater lobby, with other people standing around.
Let's not be so goddamned PC as to pretend that this crap doesn't happen. It does. Often. Or at least, it DID, back in the free-for-all 1970s.
You ask why straight males learn to mistrust homosexuals? I think the phenomenon I've described has a LOT to do with it. Frustratingly, society does not even permit honest discussion of this predatory behavior. A teenaged male who mentions it usually receives laughter and derisive comments.
So, yeah, I learned to HATE gays. I admit it.
It took me years to get over that antipathy, and to understand that most gay men should not be classified alongside those jerks who stopped their cars on Ventura.
I doubt that older lesbians often foist these sorts of humiliations on young straight females. But perhaps I have yet to be educated on that score.
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ReplyDeleteTo respond to Joseph, I think you're most likely onto something there. I would quibble with one point: that all the men who would rape other men are gay. In all-male settings such as prison, straight men rape other men quite frequently. But that doesn't affect your premise, I don't think.
ReplyDeleteTo respond to the original post, I believe the conventional wisdom about the origin of men's rampant fear/hatred of gay men is that men can understand Lesbians because they perceive them to be aspiring to be man-like, and that makes sense to them, since men have all the power.
But they perceive gay men to be aspiring to be woman-like and thus aspiring to give up all their male power and privilege. This is unthinkable and seems a betrayal. It frightens and angers them profoundly.
In addition, two recent studies have demonstrated pretty conclusively that there's a direct correlation between the degree of homophobia in males and their own homosexual tendencies. In other words, the most rabid, violent homophobic males are all almost certainly homosexual themselves. Most are probably not admitting it.
Anon, your comment was accidentally repeated three times. I deleted the first two iterations.
ReplyDeleteYou're quite right, I think.
Well, I would add this about lesbianism: Men understand lesbians because we can sympathize with anyone who feels an attraction to women. It's a little harder to understand what the fairer sex sees in males; ours is such a ugly gender that I'm astonished that the race ever manages to recapitulate itself.
I should say that even at my worst, I never felt a VIOLENT hatred of homosexuals. That is to say, I didn't want to see them (or anyone else) come to physical harm. I certainly never cared what consenting adults did behind closed doors.
I just wanted to be left alone.
Perhaps we can all agree that gay and straight men have one thing in common: They're men. And men are DAWGS. Not all of us, although most of us will lapse into dawg-like behavior at one point or another. (And we feel damned embarrassed about it the next day.) On the other hand, being on the receiving end of unwanted male attention does have the salutary effect of teaching you not to make an ass of yourself in pursuit of the ladies.
That's another advantage lesbians have. They're well-behaved and civilized. At least, that's true of the lesbians I've met; I presume that the same can be said generally.
Regarding the study linking violent homophobia to latent homosexuality: There is some possibility that this factor may play a role in the strange story of noted gay-basher Claude Allen. I'll let you know if the source I've contacted can confirm certain rumors...
interesting responses, deserving of more than just this comment, especially since i've been giving it even more thought, and engaged in some conversation about it.
ReplyDeleteif there are no objections, i'll work on a more thoughtful post for sooner/later, but for now, allow me to offer just a couple of comments.
first, joseph, your sharing these stories (and thanks so much for your candor) suggests at least that you were a comely lad (and may well be a handsome guy, but you spoke of these things in the past tense, and few but old ladies look vulnerable as we age). i say this because attractive women go through precisely what you described ALL their lives, at least their young lives. and i include the driveby masturbation, explicit public suggestions, the near stalking phenom of it all. right down to men throwing themselves prostrate at the feet, thrusting faces into crotches, stripping in the bathroom at a business meeting, etc., ad nauseam.
you're right; men can be dawgs. women put up with this crapola way too much. and women do not fear being raped by a woman, though that's not outside the realm of possibility. and, as i suggested in my original post, women do not have anything like the same reaction to viewing women in love with women on the screen. no revulsion, certainly not in the same way we observe so many men reacting to this film.
i'd really like to explore this further, but each of you offers some clues to understanding this. i have no doubt that joe is on to something in that many boys are approached a lot, and some are in such vulnerable situations that the approach achieves rape. this has to create an incredible amount of fear.
but still, we do not see the same kind of hate filled fear of rapists in women as a gender as we see in the male homophobia. so i'm inclined to suspect that there is more to it.
there are likely more impulses than fear of rape that feed homophobia, as it appears to be quite a complex sentiment. fear of being raped by another male would certainly trigger all sorts of dominance issues that predate humanity, fear of losing one's rank and station, one's power. but most animals, humans included, just know their station in life and go about their business, putting fear of rape on the back burner. it seems to me a larger fear would be the fear of one's own feelings of affection and submission to another male, to give of these affections willingly. what an impossibly conflicted dilemma.
which leads to my second comment: what we do see, as anon points out, is that the most hate-filled homophobes actually show the most signs of homosexual tendencies. i think i shared my revelation from 'brokeback,' that it exposed to me for the first time the tremendous guilt and confusion that accompanies homosexual feelings, far larger than being black or female for victims of racism or misogyny, or being white and male for the perpetrators.
women are far more comfortable with feelings of affection toward other women, whether they are sexual or not. and society accepts expressions of those affections. men are not comfortable with them, though i cannot believe they don't ever have them. society does not allow for them, though, and in fact denies them by forbidding them. even when they are real.
the repression of such real feelings and inclinations only forces them to the surface in ugly, distorted ways. which is why matthew shepard happened. which is why jake and ennis suffered so much.
but compare the two, jake and ennis. (joe, if you didn't see it, you really must, at least for this to make any sense. besides, the cinematography is spectacular!) ennis appeared more relaxed with his inclinations and feelings than jake did. he was the first one to approach, and he was the one who kept saying they could just live their lives together. but ennis wore his guilt on his sleeve, threw the first punch, and ran from any and every sign of happiness that came his way, most of all in jake.
now compare their lives. jake's mother, in that one scene near the end, gave more information about jake than the whole film combined did; his mother knew about him, may well have known about ennis, and she clearly loved him without judgment. ennis on the other hand, was very early in his youth shown a horrifying expression of homophobia that haunted him his whole life. among other things.
my final question concerned the possibility, given how primal and primary is our sexual urge, and how our individual identities are so intrinsically wrapped up in it, that much of the male aggression - as expressed in dominance and rape and war and possession and oppression and all that - could be linked to homophobia. if that is true, then perhaps a lot of what the world suffers as a result of this male aggression could stand a chance of being overcome if men can come to understand and accept and allow not just homosexuality itself, but the natural affections we all feel for each other, whether they are for different or the same gender.
just a thought. but there are more along this vein. for instance, the issue of the predator, regardless of sexual orientation, and how predators - being dysfunctional and pathological - likely do not have healthy sex lives in any sense. so any homosexual behaviors would not be the same as your happy gay couple at all, but would cross all boundaries of gender to afflict any vulnerable victim. these were more the type you encountered years ago, joe. beasts, if you will. that's how women who are 'dawged' by such men see them: beasts.
anyway, pretty complex stuff. definitely food for thought, and maybe another post.
Joseph, when I was a young man in San Francisco (and previous to that, as a teen in the NY East Village), I was frequently propositioned by older gay men. Never experienced the masturbation in the car routine, fortunately.
ReplyDeleteBut yeah, too many occasions of attempted seduction to recall them all. The thing is, it never did bother me. Not at all. And in all those events, no older male ever crossed over the line and tried to force his attentions.
Two or three of those men became life-long friends.
I'm sorry your experiences were ugly. It doesn't have to be like that. Anyway, please go easy on the gays.