Posted on 03/01/2020 2:30:58 AM PST by fwdude
As we are all told, it is wrong, wrong, wrong to stereotype gay men as sexually insatiable and indiscriminate. If you have a negative or even somewhat critical view of gay male culture, you are not entitled to notice things like this Salon article. Excerpt:
If you’ve ever pulled over to a rest area, you’ve been near men having sex. I’m one of those men, I’ve done it a hundred times; we go into the woods or a truck with tinted windows, in a stall under cold light. It never stops, not for season or time. In the winter, men trudge through snow to be with each other, in the summer, men leave the woods with ticks clinging to their legs. Have you ever stopped at a rest area and found it completely empty? There’s always one man there, in his car, waiting to meet someone new.This has been going on for a long, long time. The new ways that men meet — endlessly staring into phones, searching on hookup apps like Grindr or sites like Manhunt — haven’t changed the fact that we’re still having sex at rest areas, because they offer something different. For the man who is unsure of his sexuality, or unsure of how to tell others about it, for the man who has a family but feels new desires (or old, hidden ones) unfolding inside of him, the website and the phone apps are just too certain of themselves. They’re for gay men who want to have gay sex. Sex at the rest area, instead, abolishes identity; there’s a sort of freedom there to not be anything – instead, men just meet other men there; men who want the same sort of freedom.
The writer celebrates having sex in the bushes and public bathrooms as an existential act:
After awhile I began to develop a strange feeling at rest areas, like I was giving myself to someone. Not that I gave my full self, but that the part of myself I did give was complete. There was no pretense, no awkward conversation or dancing around whether or not I should be attracted to somebody. There was no wondering if someone was straight or gay; there was no sexual orientation at all. We were just there, together, as ourselves.
Years ago, a gay friend showed me a copy of a popular gay travel guide. It included listings for gay bars, gay-friendly hotels, gay-friendly restaurants and attractions. The usual. But it also included information about the best places for men to go to have anonymous sex in public. I thought that was so bizarre. But this was presented in the guidebook as if it were a normal thing for the gay male traveler (but not, of course, lesbians) to want to know about a city.
What I don’t get is why it is only permissible within our media culture to observe things like this guy’s celebration of the rest-stop liberty if you find it something worth celebrating, or at least morally neutral. If you read this and make a negative judgment on this guy and the culture that celebrates his kink, then you are some sort of bigot. In the past, gay friends who want nothing to do with this kind of thing have told me there’s intense pressure within the gay male community not to criticize it, at the expense of being labeled “self-hating,” or some sort of Uncle Tom.
The same dynamic happens when it comes to thug culture and young black males. It is fine to observe thug culture and celebrate its transgressive qualities (valorizing “bitches,” “hos,” pimps, murder, materialism, and so forth), but you can’t look at it and say, “That’s a degenerate way of looking at the world and other people, and anybody who embraces it is messed up.” That would be bigoted.
It all reminds me of my 16 year old self dressing up in New Wave gear, and going to the grocery store in my hometown. If anybody stared at me strangely — which would have been natural, given that most teenagers here didn’t wear get-ups like mine — I seethed inside over how prejudiced, how judgmental they were. But if they didn’t seem to notice me, that bothered me too. For teenaged me, the only acceptable response from others was some form of, “Wow, you’re so cool, you’re such a rebel. I admire you for attracting the scorn of others. They only show how bad they are by judging you negatively.”
Well, I grew up. Most of us do. And growing up means coming to understand that there are consequences for the choices we make. Of course people may judge us unfairly, but we can’t expect to defy social convention and avoid all consequences for our freely-made choices. It may strike you as unfair that the corporation you’ve applied to work for makes you put on a suit and take the ring out of your lip in the workplace, but honestly? Nobody really cares. Because we are social creatures, and have evolved to be social creatures, conformity to a certain degree is inevitable. If you don’t wish to conform, if you wish to despise and reject society and its morals and conventions, you have that right. But own it. You can’t tell ordinary people to go to hell, so to speak, and then expect them to not pass judgment on you. You can get away with that when your 16, if you have parents who love you and are willing to tolerate your nonsense, knowing that it’s just a phase, but the act wears real thin. If you dress like a thug, for example, you should not be surprised when people judge you a thug. If you seek out anonymous sex in rest stops and a significant part of your culture considers that normal and even positive, you should not be surprised when people outside your culture form a negative opinion. That’s how the real world works.
And yes, if you wear a Confederate flag on your shirt and walk into a black neighborhood, or even just into a public place where people may not appreciate the semiotical nuances of your garb, you should not be surprised when people think, however mistakenly, that you’re a racist redneck. That judgment, though, is acceptable in mainstream media culture, in a way that scorning Rest Stop Guy or Thug Teen wouldn’t be. Some rebels are more rebellious than others.
UPDATE: No, I’m not saying that Trayvon Martin brought his killing onto himself by the way he was dressed, if that’s what you’re thinking. I actually have no idea how he was dressed, other than the hoodie. I have a hoodie myself. My white, small-town, middle class 13 year old niece wears hoodies. That means nothing.
it was WHACKED then and is even more WHACKED now! (pun intended)
Sorry Charlie, we are not chickens or Tuna for that matter.
Yours is a typical response of repeating something you have been told without thinking about it.
When I was stationed at the Pentagon, there was a park near the marina where they all trolled. After my first to lunch time runs, I had to alter my route and started running out to the Lincoln Memorial and back.
Probably because from what I've seen, many gay men want two things at the same time: they want to be accepted during their non-sexual moments (at work, for instance) but then they want the ability to shock and horrify whenever the urge moves them. Which is why they campaign for acceptance, and then display increasingly ostentatious acts of dress and behavior.
In fact, I think the polarization of America is working to fulfill their needs: one half of America constantly assures them of their lovability and worth, and the other half is always there when they want someone to shock and disgust. That way they can run back and forth between the two groups, being offensive to religious conservatives, and running back to be reassured by the liberals. They'd be miserable without either one because they crave both kinds of attention, positive and negative. That, and the sensation of power that comes from shocking and offending people. Constantly.
That’s exactly right. Men and women have different sexual urges, the concrete proof of this is that gay men are the only ones prowling parks and rest stops at 3:00am for guaranteed free anonymous sex.
Freegards
Something I heard back in high school; women need a reason to have sex, men just need a place. Over my close to fifty years on this planet I’ve found this to be mostly true.
I’ve slept in many a rest area and never once had anyone approach my car
What You’re Not Supposed To Notice
Abnormal people and that covers a lot of people yet the liberal media,schools,Hollywood still works on it’s grooming program.
HOMOSEXUAL, because there’s nothing GAY about it.
Had Zimmerman pulled his firearm at Martin's approach, Martin would likely have fled and might be alive today. Or not; someone else eventually might have had to shoot him.
Were you aware that even “AIDS” is now considered passé? The newest term is “advance HIV infection.”
As the media, education, pop culture and political class sez, Sodomites are just like us, just like us, just like us. And if we’re not just like them, we’re bigots and homophobes.
I keep hearing that, but why did the Nazis put some homosexuals into concentration camps?
First line response: So, that’s why they call themselves gay. They know they’re not, just hopeful.
Women may not go down to the park or the rest area to pick up guys, but many if not most women I have known (who grew up during or after the sexual revolution) are still "easy" given the right circumstances.
I will add that the women I have known who are sexually aggressive are more so when they think the men they are tempting are discreet.
In thinking about this matter, I have tried to tally up mentally the times I have been propositioned by women I was not involved with romantically (including business associates). This list immediately became so large that I gave up. And BTW, the only time I considered giving in to such a proposition was when I was romantically interested in the woman and naively thought that was her intention.
You are astute in your entry. All the things in your post do lead to one finality by the people around them: things that either greatly differ or are new and aggressive in our society create mistrust. Mistrust creates fear. So as long as the topic is handled this way, it will, at best, be determined as evil and not be accepted as anything other than that. So it may be legal against the people, but with the pandering of the politicians to make it legal, it will be shunned even within the non-religious community with fear.
rwood
I keep hearing that, but why did the Nazis put some homosexuals into concentration camps?
The educated profs in China supported Mao in the early day. Then they were assigned to shovel manure in the country as they were a threat to those in power.
Make sense?
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