Jack Malebranche comments on reviews of ANDROPHILIA
—————– Bulletin Message —————–
From: ANDROPHILIA
Date: Dec 1, 2007 6:14 PM
Originally posted to Jack Malebranche.com
Critical reactions to Androphilia tend to validate my most damning indictments of gay culture. If they’d read the book, they’d probably be a bit more crafty and sidestep making my points for me so directly, but my most vocal critics generally don’t read beyond the marketing blurbs.
One repetitive theme in Androphilia was that gay males socialize each other to remain the perpetual victims of their straight male oppressors. Any suggestion that this oppression is a bit overblown will regularly be met with a barely lucid tirade of hysterical truisms and xenophobic exaggerations designed to maintain group identity and solidarity by reminding the objector that he will always be secretly despised by heterosexual men, and that his place is and will always be with the queens, whether he likes it or not.
Case in point. Jeffrey Ferrente. (His letter to the GLT was a response to this review by Matt Moody.)
I’ve been dealing with people online long enough to find Critical Thinking 101 vocab more than a little tiresome, but the catch-all-straight-man-as-secretly gay-hating homophobe is a major fucking straw man.
My book was published by straight guys who came to me and said, “we think what you’re saying needs to be said,” before the book was ever written. My happily married publisher will validate that claim any day of the week.
Many (though not all) straight men will tell you that while they don’t find homosexual sex appealing and would rather not hear about it in vivid detail, they really don’t care what people do in bed so long as their own sexual boundaries are respected. They do, however, object to pretentious, attention-whoring effeminate behavior. They find effeminate gay behavior degrading, if occasionally amusing, and would not want to associate themselves with such overt expressions of weakness and submission in males. They reject victim-based identity politics—because such strategies involve working from a position of weakness. Identity politics are reliant on polite language and evoking sympathy, not earning esteem through action, strength and objective achievement. They find gay culture and gay parades silly, funny, disgusting and pointless, in roughly equal measures—though if you seem to be sensitive about the topic they might be polite enough to censor that opinion down to something like, “whatever floats your boat, I just don’t get it.”
Here’s the thing, Jeffreys and Sister Queen Fatty Fatty Boom Booms of the world:
The boundaries of your prison, and THE MAN holding the keys, are for the most part products of YOUR own imagination.
YOU haven’t been rejected by all men. YOU opted out.
Your oppressor is a caricature of people who either made fun of you personally, or who you have seen attack others whom you perceived to be somehow “like you.” Your “straight man” is as much a stereotype as any turn of the century blackfaced coon, and he belongs in a teen movie or a goofy TV sitcom, not in any sort of rational discourse or worldview. His main concerns in life—since HE is really all about YOU—are drinking beer, sucker-punching, farting, gay bashing and date raping.
YOU decided that you were going to be an effeminate outcast. So you are.
YOU decided your were going to be defined by your “oppression” (which is a joke by almost any sane definition of oppression). So you are.
YOU protect those decisions because you are afraid to deal with the real world on its own terms.
Being a gay man is easy. No one expects anything from you. As long as you make a show of being witty and cute—and you keep up with current fashion—you will always be able to find a woman or a gay male to affirm and validate your behavior, no matter how adolescent it is.
Growing up and being a man is hard. Men don’t think you are witty or cute. They don’t care about your great new outfit. They will expect more from you. They will test you and tease you, just to see if you can take it. They won’t respect you “just because you’re you.” You will have to earn their respect, and they will measure you against other men.
You know this. And it scares the shit out of you. So you opted out.
I know you are full of shit, because I used repeat the same nonsense.
I know you are full of shit, because I work with straight men every day in a virtually all male environment.
Here’s a recent scene between myself and a straight co-worker, who is a father of four, after he caught a familiar twinkle in my eye as I glanced at some random guy.
Straight guy: Just say it. You know you want to say it. You’ll feel better if you say it.
Jack: I would so fucking hit that.
Straight guy: **uncontrollable laughter** “I KNEW IT. I KNOW THAT FACE!”**uncontrollable laughter**
Yes, I feel deeply oppressed by his blatant homophobia. Actually, I’m consistently impressed by how well we get along and how much we have in common, given the fact that, on paper, we couldn’t appear to be more different.
This is what your relationship with straight men could be like. Some guys, some people will always be assholes, but in many cases you could end your “oppression” right now, because 75% of it is in your own head. You can enjoy a sense of camaraderie with plenty of regular guys and leave them with a better impression of homos than they had before.
But you have to make the first move. You have to build that. You have to deal with your own bullshit and be the big one. You have to acknowledge the fact that YOU are the one who is different, and that THEY don’t owe you any special considerations.
You can dream of some politically correct Star Trek future where gender has become meaningless and where everyone treats everyone else with respect and dignity and empathy no matter what. But that is and has always been a space cadet’s dream, untethered to even the most basic understanding of human nature.
What, exactly, ever made you think that 95% of the male population was going to change to accommodate your special needs, in deference to some moral obligation that you invented?
To put it in your own vernacular: “Bitch, please.”
I’ve been saying this for a while, but if homosexual men really want to feel like valued members of society, if they want to take the next logical step in the process of homosexual liberation, they need to build bridges with straight men.
C’mon. Let’s be real. You boys know you can wrap half the women in the world around your little finger without even trying. Straight women can’t wait to “girlfriend up” with and any dude they even think might be a homo. Aligning yourself with women is hiding. And it’s easy. And you know it.
You’re going to have to prove to men that you’re worthy of their respect. You’re a male; you can’t wield feminine power over them, and they won’t cut you the same slack. You will always be on the “boys” team, whether you like it or not. You can’t train all of the straight men in the world to think you are fabulous. You have to make a conscious decision to put your gay identity aside and allow yourself to be socialized by them. You have to drop the pretense of being some special gay snowflake and learn deal with men as they deal with each other.
If you do, I guarantee that your perception of both who you are and who straight men are will change dramatically.
And then maybe, just maybe, you’ll see this “oppression” for the self-reinforcing hype that it is.
“Feminine-identified” gay males who reinforce the division between gay males and straight males are working against acceptance of homosexuality in society, not for it. Alienating and demonizing 50% of the population is no strategy for winning “hearts and minds.”
And so long as you can only deal effectively with a small portion of the population—ghetto gays and their female admirers and a few extremely liberal cherry-picked straight men—YOU are the one who is handicapped. YOU are the one who is missing out. The world is what it is.
It is in your rational self interest to learn how to socialize effectively with the other 95% of males. This should be obvious.
Your idea of what freedom should be is your cage. You classify yourself as “oppressed” according to some half-baked utopian vision. Your problem lies in your flawed assumptions about what the world ought to be like and how people ought to treat you.
I am often accused of attempting to “limit” gay males, because I criticize them and advocate a masculine ethos.
But the truth is, no one limits gay males more than…gay males.
Jack Malebranche
jackmalebranche.com
Click here to order Androphilia from Amazon.com.
