Some thoughts on Homophobia and Prison Sex from the Perspective of a Heterosexual Male:
We can, first of all (and from the feel of it: the hysteria involved, assume that it is a form of neurosis in a very Freudian sense. As I often like to joke: it always feels like someone so busy trying to convince everyone else that they’re not gay that you’re never really sure they have convinced their selves.
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Whenever confronted with it (homophobia in men, I’m always tempted to ask them to engage in a thought experiment:
If you were trapped on a desert island and knew there was no one around to witness anything you do and were physically capable, wouldn’t you at least be tempted to give yourself oral sex –that is assuming that you are either part of the 90% of males that admit to masturbation or the 5% who are liars.
(And I would digress here into Kant’s argument that masturbation is a greater evil than suicide. This assertion, of course, was likely the result of his neo-classicism (his rather sterile style (rooted in his likely genetically determined a-sexuality. It was not a product of will as he would prop his categorical imperative up on.)
Of course a lot of men, especially of the less enlightened kind, would break into a frenzy of denial because they would assume that I was asking them to admit they were, in some subconscious capacity, gay. But I wouldn’t. I would argue that actually doing so would be little more than a more pleasant form of masturbation. It would basically be prison sex. And there is a difference.
The point is that while heterosexual males tend to do a lot of giddy squirming around about sex between two men, they are completely oblivious to what the real problem is for them: the tender acts of love, the soft touches, the caressing, and pillow talk that they succumb to with women. This is why a lot of those same men will claim to be turned on when two women engage in such behavior. It just seems more natural. And when they claim to be offended by that, it will generally be because they don’t like the idea of losing a potential sex partner.
The neurotic aspect of it lies in the fact that those same type of men are prone to engaging in the same type of tender behaviors when it comes to their newborn sons or in scenarios of war.
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Getting back to point I previously made:
“As I often like to joke: it always feels like someone so busy trying to convince everyone else that they’re not gay that you’re never really sure they have convinced their selves. “
:we can see the neurosis at work by comparing two movies that addressed the issue: American Beauty and Bully. In American Beauty, the homophobic neo-Nazi neighbor (played by Chris Cooper (ended up attempting to kiss Kevin Spacy’s character. And as much as I liked the movie, this scene came off as a little heavy handed. The far more subtle and effective portrayal of it came in Bully in which the bully (played by Nick Stahl –in an excellent performance (took a lot of pleasure in forcing his friend to perform in gay clubs and videoing gay men while having no problem with raping women. He, for instance, shows the videos of gay men to a friend and laughs about it as if to say (given his obvious psychopathy (I dare you to call me a queer. His character basically struggled to make it seem like prison sex (it was about power after all (while showing signs of OCD, as well as conflict, in the obsessive way in which he washed his hands.