ASK A MAN #104: ABOUT HOMOPHOBIA
“Why are so many men homophobes? Why do they feel so threatened by gay men?”
–Andra
“It can only be seen as funny that demagogues give speeches denouncing men who insert their penises into other men’s anuses – and then go home to insert their own penises into their wives’ vaginas!”
–Wallace Shawn
I hail from the Bible Belt where we don’t cotton much to sexual education. Everything I know about sex I learned from Japanese cartoons and Sunday school. Penis monsters don’t want to ravish schoolgirls but they just can’t help themselves and Baby Jesus comes down and sends them all to Heck for doing it. Then the schoolgirls will summon the penis monsters back out from Heck on the night of the full moon. This is because the girls are actually werewolves and won’t be able to do their homework on account of they have to be running around on all fours in their sexy schoolgirl outfits all night. At first the demon ghosts of the penis monsters will try to help out with the advanced trigonometry but invariably end up in an accidental orgy of hyperbolic werewolf schoolgirl rape. The next day the headmaster becomes enraged because none of the girls have done their homework and he has to tie them up for discipline and the rope makes him break out in hives so he gets even madder and he takes out his whip but he must be allergic to that as well because his hives get worse and worse and worse until he turns into a penis monster. Then Baby Jesus comes down and sends everybody to Heck, even those of us who were just watching the cartoons for educational purposes.
So really the marital act in all its many iterations and permutations is just a bunch of horrifying hairy gooey swollen abominations that make Baby Jesus cry unless it takes place in the sanctity of the marriage bed. There, in the marriage bed, the same miracle of transubstantiation that turns saltines and grape juice into the body and blood of Jesus Christ also transforms the smelly gruntings, the swellings, the humid orifices, and ungainly herky-jerks of animalistic copulation into the soft-focus roseate sunsets, the burgeoning orchids, the smooth jazz, and delightful conversation over brunch at one of the better hotel restaraunts that’s known as lovemaking. This is why there have been so many crazy weather disasters lately: God is pissed because we haven’t married up enough gays. Having all the gays and lesbos running around and living in sin distracts God from the important work of inventing new guns for us to shoot the French with.
But none of this answers your question about the homophobia. Here’s the deal: we’re not really afraid of the gays. We’re afraid of being gay or, worse, being mistaken for gay. Because for many straight people gayness is the grown-up version of cooties or herpes. There aren’t necessarily any symptoms but once you have it you can never un-have it and if people find out you have it or just think you have it you’re subjected to fear, revulsion, and humiliation. As every kindergartner knows tolerance of people with herpes is the fastest way to get herpes yourself so whatever you do don’t be nice to the gay kid with cooties and herpes.
Also because when you’re chilling with your bros, drinking beers, farting, and cracking dick jokes while watching a bunch of animated penis monsters running amok in the all-girl werewolf high school, having a gay dude there would just make things weird and uncomfortable.
Question answered.
© 2011 Anthony Robert Russo
FOLLOW-UP QUESTIONS for A MAN:
1. If a spirited bout of jazz-infused roseate burgeoning results in one or both partners catapulting off the marriage bed, does the sanctity zone extend to the floor and/or other furniture directly adjacent? Or is there a 5 second rule like when you eat food you dropped on the floor because dirt isn’t dirty until it touches something for 6+ seconds? (I.e. can a quick remount prevent a downgrade of the act from “miraculous transubstantiational lovemaking” back to “hairy gooey swollen abomination”?)
2. When you say “God is pissed because we haven’t married up enough gays”, do you mean “married up” as in “assigned them all beard spouses and beard offspring because what we pretend god doesn’t know can’t hurt us”? Or do you mean “married up” as in “let all the ones who want to pair off and sit home together pay the state for a paper legally signifying that from this day forward they’ll keep their abhorrent shenanigans off the street and out of the sight of god, Dr. Marcus Bachmann, and everybody”?
Please clarify so Jesus’ soldiers can incorporate the new strategy into their crusade against homo-genital misuse. We gotta get back on His good side ASAP, cuz FEMA’s out of money and the damnable supersexy French procreate like rabbits…
I’m sorry I asked.
jlynn:
I can tell you’re smart because
1. you enumerate things,
2. you spell and grammar good, and
3. your first query indicates you understand that it’s way more important to follow the letter of the law than the spirit of the law, especially in matters of morals, ethics, religion, and assembling Swedish furniture. Now if you had ever been married, you wouldn’t have asked this question because you’d know first hand that married couples do not go catapulting anything, let alone out of the marriage bed. Clearly your hypothetical couple are abominating like crazy, pausing just long enough to snack on whatever edibles they find lying on the floor.
As for your second question, I’m pretty sure that God doesn’t care who marries what as long as there’s paperwork involved. Have you ever read the book of Genesis? Half of it is mind-numbingly thorough lists of who married and begat whom, really OCD bureaucratic stuff. This is why I want to be buried with all my tax returns and receipts; St. Peter doesn’t let anyone in who, like all the French illegals pouring over the Canadian border, doesn’t have proper documentation.
In regards to Dr. Bachmann, as decent human beings we should pray for him and for everyone who’s been driven into the shadow lands of denial and neurosis just because they’re surrounded by a bunch of idiots who believe in cooties.
Andra – Hahahahahaahahhahahahaha!
Romeo – It is too late to pray for Dr. Bachman, in my heathen opinion.
Perhaps in the zero-sum game that is tolerance of homosexuals those homophobes accidentally used up all their approval on lesbians.
Wow. I mean wow. Really, all these stuck up geniuses PhDs I work with would be totally stumped by the level of this discussion. Admittedly, they have PhDs in economy, not human sexuality, theology, sociology etc., but still!
Judging by what I read about last news from the Vatican and some undertakings by the Polish clergy, I agree with Romeo. Abiding by the letter of the law (and to hell with the spirit of the law) is essential if you don’t want to make Baby Jesus cry.
As for the French illegals pouring over our border, we keep a close eye on them. It’s tough, the moment they slip in they start to pretend that they are “pure laine” Quebeckers and their many times grand-grand-grand grandma was sent to Quebec in XVII century as a “fille du Roi”.
“There are things that are more contrary to nature than homosexuality, things humans alone do, such as having religion or sleeping in pyjamas.”
– Magnus Enquist, professor of ethology, Stockholm university.
I, toom, am sorry Andra asked.
This post + the responses are priceless.
Andra, I’m glad this contrived series exists solely for your responses.
andra is a greek word for “man”
Eliza, huh? What do you mean exactly?
I searched the Google for “contrived” and this was the first result out of an alleged 10.4 million possibilities: “1. Deliberately created rather than arising naturally or spontaneously.”
The problem I’m having with this definition arises from knowing how these things come about. I hesitate to claim that these “bits” or “routines” or “semi-coherent rants” or “digital turds” arise accidentally from the 10.4 millionth monkey at the 10.4 millionth keyboard, but the amount of revision, while enough to cause consternation and confusion for my editor, is pretty minimal as is the amount of thought put into them. Over-thinking stuff is, objectively speaking, gender neutral, but from the inextricable whatevers of culturally biased subjectivity we’re going to call it effeminate and as such would be inherently inappropriate for allegedly answering questions in an allegedly manly way.
So where was I? Oh yeah, while I deliberately set out to write these things, they’re only marginally less spontaneous than this here response. Although Eliza does not seem to know the alleged definition of “contrived,” she is, I believe, attempting to be insulting while expressing her distaste or displeasure or bloated sense of self importance or, merely, her bloatedness. Whatever the case, good on her for expressing herself and calling them like she sees them! It’s always so refreshing to find someone online willing to break free of the constraints of social propriety and the actual meanings of words that I am literally contriving a phrase that isn’t literal at all in order to approximate the refreshingness of it! High five!
Adj. 1. contrived – showing effects of planning or manipulation; “a novel with a contrived ending”
planned – designed or carried out according to a plan; “the planned outlays for new equipment”
2. contrived – artificially formal; “that artificial humility that her husband hated”; “contrived coyness”; “a stilted letter of acknowledgment”; “when people try to correct their speech they develop a stilted pronunciation”
stilted, artificial, hokey
affected, unnatural – speaking or behaving in an artificial way to make an impression
That’s the most contrived definition I’ve ever had the displeasure to read.