Ex-gays

I've been taking part in discussions on the website of the "Fraternal Order of Androphiles", men who identify themselves in line with Jack Malebranche's manifesto, Androphilia: Rejecting the Gay Identity, Reclaiming Masculinity. Jack invited me in, even though I remain gay, since I am so sympathetic...well, that sounds femmy, so let me rephrase :-)...supportive of the book.

Not a huge number of fellas and with about a half dozen doing most of the posting, including me.

Interesting context in which to find myself. These men are all homosexual and have no problem with that. But while some of them have never had much contact with or identification with Gay Culture, a few of them are real Ex-Gays, guys who have been in the thick of it for years and have now resigned entirely.

"Ex-gay" is usually associated with the Christian programs to help unhappy homos outgrow their behavior...if not their desires. These guys are definitely ex-gays, but the object of their erotic interest remains clear and unproblematic. What's problematic for them is that they never felt at home, or eventually felt alien, in Gay Culture because they are...men. And they resisted the anti-male ethos that feminism inflicts on gay men, the victimist stance that encourages us to live on resentment and entitlement, and the lefty politics that is orthodoxy, enforced by an invisible but omnipresent Homintern. Common ground for me.

What it means to be a man...this has been part of my personal and professional headgear for some years now. The amateur psychoids will say, "Well, you must have some kind of insecurity about it or you wouldn't care about it." God, I hate psychology sometimes. It can totally subvert thinking.

So, am I insecure about it? Of course!

Two things. First, I grew up a tall skinny introverted smart kid with ancient homosexual urges and a massively Catholic environment. And what is the primary slur aimed at such homosexual males? That we are not real men at all. Kinda makes an impression. Second, manhood is essentially, essentially, an achievement, not a gift or a self-appropriated title. You can fail at it. Many do. It's not promised; it's earned. So you'd better be a bit insecure about it.

Are athletes insecure about victory because they get all anxious over it? Yup, and good thing. Otherwise they'd never win.

Two, of many, interesting themes come up on this site. One is that performance of deeds is more important than expression of self or intention to act. The second is that being a man is not a do-it-yourself enterprise, in that you can't, like Napoleon, crown yourself. Too much room for self-deception. Being a man includes being recognized as a man by other men.

The first one seems obvious until you look around and realize how much of life is idle self-congratulation without any reason for it. And the second one, now that's pretty counter-gay-cultural, at least on the surface. If I say that I am a man because I decide I am, outside the oppressive straight norms, I will be applauded. But a funny thing happens, if I say that I am a gay man outside the oppressive leftliberal norms, I will be told that I am a self-deceiving self-loathing fraud. I guess recognition by peers does have some value.

Funny how that happens.