So speaking of feminism and men, y’know how in my pet theory of the dominant paradigm women are imagined to be a “no-sex” class, meaning they have no intrinsic sexual agency of their own and consequently their sexuality can be impounded and used by themselves, sure, but also by their custodial men as a form of currency for transactions with other men? And how the flip side of that is that men are the sex class, so single-mindedly… even no mindedly obliged to reflexively, animalistically, and irresistibly sexual that they “wake up so horny the crack of dawn ‘better watch out?”
It seems to me that if you’re sold on that view of men then homophobia is a twisted but logical outcome. Because if you’re raised to believe that you literally can’t resist sexual temptation of any sort but you’re not actually sexually oriented towards other men the… yeah, it makes sense that you’d be wildly intolerant of gay men. Because if you believe yourself part of the “sex class” then any hint of “temptation” must logically be scrubbed from one’s environment.
And similarly, if one believes men are ravenously, uncontrollably sexually impulsive then one must live in mortal paranoia that not only might one inadvertently receive an… aggressive sexual advance not only from perceptibly “homosexual” men (who are falsely presumed to be sexually interested in any possible opportunity for sex with any possible man) but equally uncontrollable straight men for whom, after all, must also believe “a hole is a hole.”
The notion itself is silly conceit mostly of straight men. Gay men, after all, having actual experience of attraction to other men, as opposed to imaginary fear of such attraction, don’t seem to have much difficulty controlling their sexual impulses at all. Or at least directing their impulses towards other gay men.
And it’s not like men aren’t mightily constrained… not like men don’t constrain themselves!... to avoid being mistaken for gay. And because of the violence and ostracism that goes with homophobia such constraint seems warranted.
And while I’d be the last to lament calls for increased tolerance and understanding of LGBT culture I’m now also one of the first to call for increased understanding of male straightness! Because, seriously, once you get over the idea that all men will impulsively “fuck anything that moves and some things that don’t,” and once you get that just like women men also have sexual agency it just seems like the need for straight tolerance of homosexuality could easily be replaced with recognition of its… I dunno… sexual irrelevance to heterosexual men.
Point being that diminished homophobia would be one more consequence of subverting the dominant sexual paradigm, and a consequence of diminished homophobia would lead to an increase in the range of expressive freedom for men, which is consequently yet another further reason why straight men (and not just men beset with “gay panic”) should be as enthusiastic about the benefits of feminism as anyone else.
