Hey ___,
Tonight I bore witness to two hardcore East L.A. vatos passionately kissing each other; their heavy silver chains clanking, their (previously crisp, one imagines) wifebeaters rumpled and sweaty, their neck tattoos sheened with sweat, their shell-topped feet softly shuffling, their shaved heads bumping, cooing and grunting with desire.
Watching them, jaw agape, I revisited one of my favorite musings about our culture’s concepts of masculinity as applied to homosexuality. I always felt that the ‘effeminate’ character that the world-at-large applies to gay men was strange given their stated and clear preference for the absence of women in the bedroom. Perhaps it’s because one appears less masculine when put into contrast with another man – or maybe people adopt the effeminate thing to better understand and communicate the sexuality they are engaging in- making it easier to place themselves into the familiar construct of the male-female paradigm.
Tho often self-perpetuated, obviously, I always nonetheless thought that it was a strange sort of stereotype. Tonight I felt slightly vindicated, as I used to when I quakingly served pints of bitter to my old boss @ the gay pub I worked at in London (he was one of those Souf’ Londoners, a very violent and particularly surly gangster, scowl-lined face, with an angry stance and big fucking boots. His gayness did not affect his masculinity at all- in fact, quite to the contrary, he used it as a sort of weapon, an extra-masculinity: He was so macho, in fact, that women disgusted him- weak and pathetic creatures that they are).
All is not always as it seems, no?
Love,
Saskia
Filed under: dispatches , emails to people i love, gender assignation, homosexuality
Men and women always end up acting all reasonably, balancing needs, using judgement, medicating the bipolar. I’ve imagined that being outside that it might be easier to say ‘fuck it all’, but I’m resigned to never knowing.
I am often asked if I chose my heterosexuality, but answering questions like this will not advance better understanding. Even if I were genetically preconditioned to heterosexual attraction, it wouldn’t (in itself) legitimize the attraction. The question is designed to trace origins of sexual orientation but knowing sources behind human desire and behavior will not necessarily lead to moral assessments of right and wrong. Sources are usually more complex.
Origins of behavior can include genetic, cultural, experiential and social contributors. But, while possibly exerting strong influence, these sources usually cannot force one to behave in a certain way. This means that we must look elsewhere for deciding matters of right and wrong.
If an adulterous woman complains that her adultery (i.e. her wrongful heterosexual behavior) was because of her distant and uncaring husband, one might be sympathetic toward her, but I could not endorse her behavior. For someone tempted by homosexual desire, the answer is not: “You must become heterosexual.” The answer is the same for all sexual temptation: resist it and obey God’s moral will.
http://www.thinkpoint.wordpress.com