One of the hallmarks of our time is an obsession with identity. Rather than simply existing and naturally carrying out the roles of life, many seek to identify with or identify as in an effort to truly know who they are. To a certain extent, this is natural. We all want to belong. Humans are no doubt tribal. But so many of us no longer find this identity in where we actually belong but rather where we
In a different Substack, I came across a comment by a straight man (in his lingo, "cis het") who was suggesting that cognitive dissonance and the fear of being considered a "poseur" keeps gay men from becoming heterosexual:
"I also suspect this is true of a lot of gay men and lesbians as well. That having gone through with coming out, being in a hetero relationship would make you somewhat of a poser."
"I also heard a reasonable argument that people who identify as gay are more likely to fully grasp their sexuality because they have put more thought into it than straight people who are essentially straight by default. On the other hand, people are really good at justifying their past decisions, especially costly decisions, especially decisions that you've announced to different people, so that may weigh in the other direction."
First, I asked him to cite reputable authority for his notion that what keeps gay men gay is the heavy burden of changing a central aspect of one's life after having made a huge personal and social investment in it.
Then I wrote:
"I don't know what circles you travel in, but the gay men I know don't get their wires crossed and talk about 'identifying' as gay. That terminology is a symptom of the gender identity fantasy that is infecting our society. I don't 'identify' as gay any more than I 'identify' as human."
"Many gay men, and I'm one of them, reject gender identity ideology. Furthermore, we want nothing to do with queer as an ideology, and we reject the involuntary affinity and allyship that's implicit in the monolithic 'LGBTQ' or the hegemonic use of the term 'queer' as a synonym for 'gay.' There are several reasons why it is not, but I won't go into that here."
"You're welcome to use any terminology you please, but bear in mind that in saying that people 'identify' as gay and using the term 'queer' when referring to gay men, you'll be causing offense, particularly to people who are members of my generation and older." [I'm in my late 60s.]
The foregoing is not intended as a criticism of the author. All he did was provide a clear and concise example of the attitudes and beliefs held by so many who see society in general and sex and sex roles through the lens of gender identity ideology.
This exemplifies the reality-distorting language and the distorted thinking of trans allyship. These are my views; I am not putting words in the mouth of the anonymous commenter. I believe it is safe to say that few if any gay men obey queer theory's mandate to queer themselves out of each and every identity they may embrace momentarily in their quest to destroy all norms involving sex and sex roles. That's what queers are said to do, at least the true believers. The gay men I met in the 80s are still gay today because they are gay, not because switching identities would be met with universal eye rolls by their college friends.
You need to deal with your 𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑛𝑎𝑙𝑖𝑧𝑒𝑑 ℎ𝑜𝑚𝑜𝑝ℎ𝑜𝑏𝑖𝑎. "Queer" is a beautiful word and it's 𝑖𝑛𝑐𝑙𝑢𝑠𝑖𝑣𝑒 of all LGBTQIA2S[this space for rent] ..."
"Get out of my house now and don't contact me anymore."
FTR, I don't give a shit about "inclusive." Anything past non-discrimination is fanaticism. I have nothing more to do with "trans" than I have to do with tapeworms. Gender is a useless idea invented by a pedophile quack and it is symptomatic of social decay and epistemological disintegration.
By the way, I've known several gay men who were married to women, not for the sex but for the companionship. I don't think this would work for me but it was working for them.
"You need to deal with . . ." is so 2020 wokespeak! At this distance it sounds quaint.
As for my supposed "internalized homophobia," if you are being sincere, don't quit your day job to go into the business of diagnosing strangers' thought crimes remotely. I already stated my critique of "queer" as synonym for "gay" so there's no need to go into that again.
Anti-queer animus is just that: queerphobia. It can't be anti-gay because queer is not a sexual orientation. If anything, queer is the anti-sexual orientation. Being gay is everything queer is not. Gay is a binary, both gay-straight and male-female. Being gay is a highly stable characteristic, whereas whatever identity the ideal queer might land can have a shelf life shorter than that of fresh shell fish and nobody in the queer community will bat an eye. Gay is inherent, whereas queer is an identity. I could go on.
It is difficult to tell if your comment about "queer" being an inclusive term is sincere. This comment assumes it is. According to the Cambridge Dictionary (that happened to be the first that popped up), inclusivity is: "the fact of including all types of people, things or ideas and treating them all fairly and equally." The operative phrase is "all types of people."
From the standpoint of the lumper/splitter dichotomy, "inclusive" is about as splitty as it gets. Queer is not inclusive of gay men because a queer and a gay man are not the same type of person. Among other things, while some self-identified queers are gay men, not all gay men consider themselves queer. Also, while queers can be any sex or gender under the sun, I adhere to the radical and, in some quarters, reprehensible, view that gay men are always natal males. Sorry gals. Shoving gay men and queer under the umbrella of "queer" or "LGB etc." excludes gay men by not identifying them by type.
You need to get some psychiatric help for a clearly pathological predilection to seeing everything as All About You.
I was recounting a hypothetical conversation assembled from bits and pieces of many I had before I walked away from gay politics in 1996. I was not responding to you, though I could see how you might misconstrue my post as a response since it was nested under yours. You might not be aware that there is a bug in substack's post nesting.
If I was responding to you (I can't remember) then it was a shared revulsion to "queer" and to "inclusivity."
Thanks for the lesson in the current state of Cool Kids vernacular but there are very few things I care about less.
The notion that you can discover your 'authentic' self by opting for elective surgery and hormones and pronouns and narcissism is so patently oxymoronic on its face that I've wondered how people can parrot this language without noticing how idiotic they sound. If your idea of community mostly involves a narcissistic obsession with your genitalia, then I think that's a problem. In order to be who you really are--your authentic self--you need to go on hormones and have surgery, because a mistake was made and you were born into the 'wrong' body? If a mistake was made, when? At conception? At three months? After birth? And who, or what, made this mistake? God? A random universe? Not God, obviously, so the random universe gave you the 'wrong' body? How is that possible? Mind-boggling. Ugh.
Good reminder.
Identity as an a la carte process is the opposite of authentic.
Sometimes I wonder if gaming and social media opened up people's minds to a type of repatterning based on the ability to create your character.
Ratchet up the boobs, change the hair colour, you can be anything on the screen and the screen is real life.
I believe you are correct.
In a different Substack, I came across a comment by a straight man (in his lingo, "cis het") who was suggesting that cognitive dissonance and the fear of being considered a "poseur" keeps gay men from becoming heterosexual:
"I also suspect this is true of a lot of gay men and lesbians as well. That having gone through with coming out, being in a hetero relationship would make you somewhat of a poser."
"I also heard a reasonable argument that people who identify as gay are more likely to fully grasp their sexuality because they have put more thought into it than straight people who are essentially straight by default. On the other hand, people are really good at justifying their past decisions, especially costly decisions, especially decisions that you've announced to different people, so that may weigh in the other direction."
First, I asked him to cite reputable authority for his notion that what keeps gay men gay is the heavy burden of changing a central aspect of one's life after having made a huge personal and social investment in it.
Then I wrote:
"I don't know what circles you travel in, but the gay men I know don't get their wires crossed and talk about 'identifying' as gay. That terminology is a symptom of the gender identity fantasy that is infecting our society. I don't 'identify' as gay any more than I 'identify' as human."
"Many gay men, and I'm one of them, reject gender identity ideology. Furthermore, we want nothing to do with queer as an ideology, and we reject the involuntary affinity and allyship that's implicit in the monolithic 'LGBTQ' or the hegemonic use of the term 'queer' as a synonym for 'gay.' There are several reasons why it is not, but I won't go into that here."
"You're welcome to use any terminology you please, but bear in mind that in saying that people 'identify' as gay and using the term 'queer' when referring to gay men, you'll be causing offense, particularly to people who are members of my generation and older." [I'm in my late 60s.]
The foregoing is not intended as a criticism of the author. All he did was provide a clear and concise example of the attitudes and beliefs held by so many who see society in general and sex and sex roles through the lens of gender identity ideology.
This exemplifies the reality-distorting language and the distorted thinking of trans allyship. These are my views; I am not putting words in the mouth of the anonymous commenter. I believe it is safe to say that few if any gay men obey queer theory's mandate to queer themselves out of each and every identity they may embrace momentarily in their quest to destroy all norms involving sex and sex roles. That's what queers are said to do, at least the true believers. The gay men I met in the 80s are still gay today because they are gay, not because switching identities would be met with universal eye rolls by their college friends.
"Please don't refer to me or us as 'queer'."
You need to deal with your 𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑛𝑎𝑙𝑖𝑧𝑒𝑑 ℎ𝑜𝑚𝑜𝑝ℎ𝑜𝑏𝑖𝑎. "Queer" is a beautiful word and it's 𝑖𝑛𝑐𝑙𝑢𝑠𝑖𝑣𝑒 of all LGBTQIA2S[this space for rent] ..."
"Get out of my house now and don't contact me anymore."
FTR, I don't give a shit about "inclusive." Anything past non-discrimination is fanaticism. I have nothing more to do with "trans" than I have to do with tapeworms. Gender is a useless idea invented by a pedophile quack and it is symptomatic of social decay and epistemological disintegration.
By the way, I've known several gay men who were married to women, not for the sex but for the companionship. I don't think this would work for me but it was working for them.
"You need to deal with . . ." is so 2020 wokespeak! At this distance it sounds quaint.
As for my supposed "internalized homophobia," if you are being sincere, don't quit your day job to go into the business of diagnosing strangers' thought crimes remotely. I already stated my critique of "queer" as synonym for "gay" so there's no need to go into that again.
Anti-queer animus is just that: queerphobia. It can't be anti-gay because queer is not a sexual orientation. If anything, queer is the anti-sexual orientation. Being gay is everything queer is not. Gay is a binary, both gay-straight and male-female. Being gay is a highly stable characteristic, whereas whatever identity the ideal queer might land can have a shelf life shorter than that of fresh shell fish and nobody in the queer community will bat an eye. Gay is inherent, whereas queer is an identity. I could go on.
It is difficult to tell if your comment about "queer" being an inclusive term is sincere. This comment assumes it is. According to the Cambridge Dictionary (that happened to be the first that popped up), inclusivity is: "the fact of including all types of people, things or ideas and treating them all fairly and equally." The operative phrase is "all types of people."
From the standpoint of the lumper/splitter dichotomy, "inclusive" is about as splitty as it gets. Queer is not inclusive of gay men because a queer and a gay man are not the same type of person. Among other things, while some self-identified queers are gay men, not all gay men consider themselves queer. Also, while queers can be any sex or gender under the sun, I adhere to the radical and, in some quarters, reprehensible, view that gay men are always natal males. Sorry gals. Shoving gay men and queer under the umbrella of "queer" or "LGB etc." excludes gay men by not identifying them by type.
You need to get some psychiatric help for a clearly pathological predilection to seeing everything as All About You.
I was recounting a hypothetical conversation assembled from bits and pieces of many I had before I walked away from gay politics in 1996. I was not responding to you, though I could see how you might misconstrue my post as a response since it was nested under yours. You might not be aware that there is a bug in substack's post nesting.
If I was responding to you (I can't remember) then it was a shared revulsion to "queer" and to "inclusivity."
Thanks for the lesson in the current state of Cool Kids vernacular but there are very few things I care about less.
The notion that you can discover your 'authentic' self by opting for elective surgery and hormones and pronouns and narcissism is so patently oxymoronic on its face that I've wondered how people can parrot this language without noticing how idiotic they sound. If your idea of community mostly involves a narcissistic obsession with your genitalia, then I think that's a problem. In order to be who you really are--your authentic self--you need to go on hormones and have surgery, because a mistake was made and you were born into the 'wrong' body? If a mistake was made, when? At conception? At three months? After birth? And who, or what, made this mistake? God? A random universe? Not God, obviously, so the random universe gave you the 'wrong' body? How is that possible? Mind-boggling. Ugh.