CRS
Chandler, Arizona, United States

There's an old saying. If you don't want someone to join a crowd, you ask them, "If everyone were jumping off of a cliff, would you?" Well, I have. So my answer would be "Yes". True story.
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A Few Thoughts on Homosexual Men

Sunday, October 22, 2006

this entry brought brought to you by thom yorke, "the eraser"


There's a guy that sits near me at work that is very openly gay. He wears fruity smelling perfume, has his head stuck in tabloids often ("Don't you think Julia Roberts is faaaaaabulous?" he asked me once. "I just love her.") He enthuses about the clothing people wear, he is loud and flamboyant, limp-wristed and animated, bites his lower lip and clucks his tongue when he disapproves of everything, calls everyone "girlfriend", when someone says something unexpected he says "Shut up, girlfriend!" and when someone does something he approves of he says "You go girlfriend!"

In short, he is as stereotypically gay as gay can be. And annoys the shit out of me. In fact, most gay men make me uncomfortable.

To clarify, I've known and enjoyed the company of men who are gay that don't act like the stereotypical gay man, and I appreciate them. On a larger scale, I love the attitude of being out and saying with affirmation "I'm a gay man". Despite "Will & Grace", "Queer Eye", "America's Next Top Model", and the entirety of the state of California, there's still a stigma to being a gay man. Lesbians are fine. Lesbians are en vogue. Society still doesn't know what to think of gay men, though, so to be out, whether flamboyantly out or stoically out is great, it's cool, it's both a personal and a political statement, and to accomplish both is much trickier than it sounds... But I am still uncomfortable with flamboyant gay men. Now, I understand what makes me uncomfortable. I don't like flamboyant women, either. I don't like Drama Queens, I don't like divas, I don't like when women are over-the-top and flamboyant, so there's no reason to like that behavior in a man. I find it obnoxious. But what makes me feel guilty is that while I don't dislike them because they're gay, everything I dislike about them is because of their gayness. I don't dislike them for their gender preference, I dislike them because they're gay.

Here's where confusion and guilt sets in. I would never say I dislike a thuggy hip-hop kid because he was black-- I'd say I disliked him because he was ghetto. Race and culture are very closely linked, but they're not the same thing. Color of skin has nothing to do with your behavior-- culture, however, does. But wouldn't this also ring true of gay men? Shouldn't their gender preferences, something that, like race, a person can't control-- not make any difference in behavior? Yet clearly this is not the case. Large numbers of gay males that you and I know are openly flamboyant, just like the kid that I work with. But there is no gay culture. Of course, anyone that's ever been to a gay pride parade may argue against that, but there is a gay lifestyle, not a gay culture. The kid that I work with didn't grow up across the tracks in Gay Town, where everyone listens to throbbing disco music and lavish show tunes and talks about how faaabulous Julia Roberts is. Clearly, flamboyance isn't a learned behavior. Of course, people that know nothing about homosexual would argue the opposite, that it's our society that makes them gay, they turn on the TV and are inundated by the liberal media's homosexual agenda, see that it is "cool" and "hip", and all turn into Julia Roberts worshipping Queenies. But if this were true, a lot more women who'd ever seen Bette Midler, Barbara Streissand, or Liza Mennelli would also be fuh-laming. And this does nothing to mention the stoic homosexual who is just as "out" as the flamer, goes out grocery shopping with his partner, calls him "honey", and gets a casual hand squeeze in return. He watches the same media we all do, yet chooses to live a different sort of gay lifestyle than the stereotypical ones.

I understand what it is about flamboyant homosexual that I don't like. But it's difficult to say that I don't like the gayness of gay men, because it is difficult to discern exactly why gay men that behave this way do so. It's difficult for me to not feel guilty for feeling this, because to a gay male that is flamboyant, part of being "out" is embracing this side of themselves, the Queen side, and saying "I don't like flamboyant homosexuals" sounds an awful lot like "I don't mind gay people so long as I don't know they're gay." Of course, I scoff at black people that argue embracing your "blackness" by acting a certain way, but that's because it's an argument that's easy for me to disperse. But in the case of gay people-- what if flamboyance is because they're gay? What if even stoic, down-to-earth gay men really do want to, deep down, be flaming queens, and any straight-laced behavior is an attempt at self-repression? It's easy for me to counter arguments about being black, because of who I am. But I'm not gay. What if saying, "I don't like gays that are flaming queers" is the same as saying "I don't mind fags, so long as they keep their fagness away from me." What if... I really don't like gays?
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yesterday last year the title pretty much says it all: why i hate the word "nigger". a black person michelle knows read it and disagreed, saying that while she didn't personally she didn't know what the big deal was, and i think she is as much of the problem as everything described in this entry. please read.

on this day last year have you ever downloaded a bootlegged movie? if you give a shit at all about movies, it's not worth the time to download them, and the mpaa has nothing to worry about.
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with love from CRS @ 6:59 PM 

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