Saturday, December 3, 2005

Repulsive?

Brokeback Mountain and The 'Yuck' Factor

Jared Wilson writes on the wingut website WorldViews about his belief that everyone in the country shares his bigotry:
For all of our modern cultural "enlightenment," and despite the pervasiveness of gay characters and stories all over American media, and regardless of the success of shows like "Will & Grace" and "Queer Eye," by and large Americans -- blue state, red state, Christian and non -- innately find homosexuality repulsive. [...] To be blunt, we know anal sex is gross, and we especially know anal sex between men is repulsive. Even for most of those who have no basis for which to call it a sin find the act itself "gross." [...] Like Homer Simpson, we like our homosexuals flaming. So they can joke about sex and they can swish their way from the silver screen to the TV screen, they can even pontificate about their rights and move us to tears with their experienced repression and persecution. We'll sympathize with them on "Oprah" and laugh at them on "Will & Grace" and appreciate their good fashion sense on "Queer Eye" and nod our heads with the "Seinfeld" gang that there's not anything wrong with that. [...] Brokeback Mountain may win awards, but it will not have an audience who is not attending either out of perverse curiosity or some sense of liberal duty. [...] America likes her gay cowboys standing on stage with others in costume, singing "YMCA." Beyond kitsch, beyond sentimentality, the reality is yucky.
Wilson defines homosexuality as an activity: anal sex between men. It seems to me that millions of lesbians would be surprised to learn that they aren't in fact gay as they had been led to believe. I am confident that Wilson would be a strong supporter of female same-sex marriage, since there is no homosexuality involved. And as long as two men never have anal sex, countless hours of kissing and and blowjobs would be completely heterosexual. It's also rather amusing that he says that "we" know anal sex is gross, when 40% of men and 35% of women aged 25-40 have had anal sex. It is also routinely featured in pornography enjoyed by countless straight people. There are large numbers of people who don't find it gross at all.

What Wilson and other bigots social conservatives always forget is that lesbians and gay men are people and subject to human emotion. Regardless of its origin, homosexuality only orients where love and attraction are directed. It does not proscribe a certain activity. Gay men have anal sex because it can feel good, the same reason every third person you see walking down the street has had it. They happen to have it with other men because those are the people they are attracted to. But it does not define them any more than saying that a heterosexual is one who has vaginal sex, excluding all virgins from being straight.

[via Pandagon]

2 comments:

  1. a-fuckin-men.

    *you can take that however you want*

    Another great post.

    ReplyDelete
  2. You so easily write what I think, but can't put into words.

    ReplyDelete