"UNLEASH THE QUEEN" - Queer Nation motto, circa 1990
There's a lot to unpack when trying to talk about hatred of gays WITHIN the gay community.
First a few observations: it happens, just as it happens among women, among Blacks, among Latinos - all who have been taught this aversion.
Second, man and male are two different things, of course. Male is a biological distinction; man being a social one. Males come in embryos, much of the plant world, other species, and you and me. Man is more of less a human being over 18 [vs. a boy or infant]. I say all this because masculinity and manhood are social constructs not Natural ones, and as social constructs they change over time. Acting like a MAN/being masculine is not something from Nature but from the political world. Too many men and women have NO appreciation of this fact, but think our behaviors are set in nature by God. Rubbish. Just as we have been taught by dominant culture to hate Blackness, so too we've been taught to hate women [gay or straight], darker skin among non-white peoples, and certain characteristics deemed threatening by dominant culture. Some may acknowledge this and insist their preference for MAN/MASCULINE is just a preference.
More rubbish. These values were instilled, taught to us, often by entities that did not have our best interest in mind: this fact demands we examine our Views and take noting for granted.
Dominant culture found best our current arrangement of one man-one women in holy matrimony to control laborers and to assure property was bequeathed ONLY to the man's offspring. At one time in human history, believe it or not, there was no such arrangement and women bore children from different men without controversy. When property became central - more or less when nomadic cultures settled into farms and settlements - men wanted their land to go only to their children for the preservation of the community so it was deemed necessary to control women's sexuality. Homosexual sex was initially disparaged among groups whose numbers were threatened, as in Jews in biblical times. It was not disparaged among the dominant culture of the day - Roman and Greek. So among assaulted tribes, homosex is a threat to the perceived preservation of the group.
For reasons I cannot fathom, just as we have kept an early 18th century pubic school structure right into the present day, our society is obsessed with a post-nomadic, agricultural era morality around gender and sexuality - I speak directly to the obsession with the Bible as more than a beautiful history but a blueprint for a post-industrial, postmodern, post feudal society. Again, this is equally absurd as relying on old modes of public education, yet we do! This is ALL reinforced by a dominant culture which - as the victors - lends out rewards and meets punishments, which most docile people accept, swallow, and think their own "preferences." So, Black gay men lack reverence for other gay men [feminine, Black] because they have been taught to do so as a subtle means of controlling their compliance within the culture, to keep them more likely to stay within the flock - which is producing babies and being a docile worker who must provide for house and home for said babies (a few generations ago, a bachelor had no hope of being promoted in major companies since the companies thought a married, father was less likely to rock the boat).
Ultimately, endowed with such stupid prejudices/preferences, these narrow-minded Black gay men will not grow into a revolutionary cadre - this phenomenon transcends race/ethnicity, of course, functioning the exact same way among other wage-slave, working class peoples. This is a conversation that has run through my gay/queer existence since high school in the early 80's and met documentation in my Queer Nation/SF 90's .
There's a lot to unpack when trying to talk about hatred of gays WITHIN the gay community.
First a few observations: it happens, just as it happens among women, among Blacks, among Latinos - all who have been taught this aversion.
Second, man and male are two different things, of course. Male is a biological distinction; man being a social one. Males come in embryos, much of the plant world, other species, and you and me. Man is more of less a human being over 18 [vs. a boy or infant]. I say all this because masculinity and manhood are social constructs not Natural ones, and as social constructs they change over time. Acting like a MAN/being masculine is not something from Nature but from the political world. Too many men and women have NO appreciation of this fact, but think our behaviors are set in nature by God. Rubbish. Just as we have been taught by dominant culture to hate Blackness, so too we've been taught to hate women [gay or straight], darker skin among non-white peoples, and certain characteristics deemed threatening by dominant culture. Some may acknowledge this and insist their preference for MAN/MASCULINE is just a preference.
More rubbish. These values were instilled, taught to us, often by entities that did not have our best interest in mind: this fact demands we examine our Views and take noting for granted.
Dominant culture found best our current arrangement of one man-one women in holy matrimony to control laborers and to assure property was bequeathed ONLY to the man's offspring. At one time in human history, believe it or not, there was no such arrangement and women bore children from different men without controversy. When property became central - more or less when nomadic cultures settled into farms and settlements - men wanted their land to go only to their children for the preservation of the community so it was deemed necessary to control women's sexuality. Homosexual sex was initially disparaged among groups whose numbers were threatened, as in Jews in biblical times. It was not disparaged among the dominant culture of the day - Roman and Greek. So among assaulted tribes, homosex is a threat to the perceived preservation of the group.
For reasons I cannot fathom, just as we have kept an early 18th century pubic school structure right into the present day, our society is obsessed with a post-nomadic, agricultural era morality around gender and sexuality - I speak directly to the obsession with the Bible as more than a beautiful history but a blueprint for a post-industrial, postmodern, post feudal society. Again, this is equally absurd as relying on old modes of public education, yet we do! This is ALL reinforced by a dominant culture which - as the victors - lends out rewards and meets punishments, which most docile people accept, swallow, and think their own "preferences." So, Black gay men lack reverence for other gay men [feminine, Black] because they have been taught to do so as a subtle means of controlling their compliance within the culture, to keep them more likely to stay within the flock - which is producing babies and being a docile worker who must provide for house and home for said babies (a few generations ago, a bachelor had no hope of being promoted in major companies since the companies thought a married, father was less likely to rock the boat).
Ultimately, endowed with such stupid prejudices/preferences, these narrow-minded Black gay men will not grow into a revolutionary cadre - this phenomenon transcends race/ethnicity, of course, functioning the exact same way among other wage-slave, working class peoples. This is a conversation that has run through my gay/queer existence since high school in the early 80's and met documentation in my Queer Nation/SF 90's .
