Chapter Two We Are Different, Against Assimilation.
Assimilation is destructive. A foundation against trans aggression and Alphabet Soup initialism.
Why this chapter and book.
The following is Chapter 2 of the book I am writing. I don’t know what the next chapter will be. It was hard enough writing this chapter. However, this is one of the foundation stones.
One of the reasons transmen are enabled to appropriate Gays and our institutions is that we don’t have an identity of a different Gay community with a right to our own norms and culture. Instead we are individuals defined by social workers and psychologists in an assimilationist context of being different from straights only in private sexual practice.
If we don’t know who we are, then others will attempt to define us. Like transmen.
The word queer is applied since all the letters in the initialism, the LGBTQXYZ are seen as just private individualist differences.
Also, with these assimilationist ideas, without a Gay conscious community we aren’t forming a coherent compact united community to resist the aggressions of the Alphabet Soup (LGBTQXYZ). We will be letting the neoliberals manage who we are.
Chapter Two starts below the following divider. It is a first draft.
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CHAPTER TWO
Gays are different than others. It isn’t so much that it is same-sex attraction itself or the mechanics of Gay sex that make us different, but the consequences of being same-sex attracted which make us radically different than the others as well as the nature of our origins and how we exist in the larger society.
If we are just variants of straight people the current neoliberal agenda of civil rights in housing and jobs, same-sex marriage and the right to adopt children, to assimilate and to be just like the straight people as much as possible makes sense. Also, the promotion in media and theater of the idea Gay life being a monogamous couple, married, with adopted children might be a credible ideal to promote. (Though since marriage is in decline with straight people, there are other reasons that it is not a credible ideal, but that won’t be discussed here.)
If on the other hand we are fundamentally different, then the agenda of assimilation cuts us off from other possibilities of who and what we might be as Gay persons and how we might live and think as Gay people. The agenda of assimilation truncates us, cuts us, imprisons us and limits us from developing in directions that would be our full development as individuals and full realization as Gay people.
The agenda of assimilation has been so dominant there hasn’t really been much discussion at all of the possible ways Gay people might exist. The author of this essay can very clearly see how in his life being Gay has opened up opportunities and a significantly different life than if he was straight, but he doesn’t have good concepts of what the alternatives might be for other Gay people who are different from the author.
Once we realize that we are different and start realizing what ways we can exist, what trajectories in life we might have, we will realize how devastating the current neoliberal agenda is.
Before discussing what makes Gays different, we need to recognize one issue and discuss a common assimilationist issue. A lot of Gays would like to believe and have straights believe that Gays are just like straight people are fearful if straights thought otherwise. The assimilationist agenda is directed towards Gays being like straights. Popular liberal civil rights are based on the idea that we are all the same and should be treated the same. A popular slogan is “One Love,” that essentially, we are all the same, straight and Gay, is the basis of advocating civil rights for Gays. This idea we are like the straight people is generally applied to all the letters in the initialism by the LGBTQXYZ establishment.
As a result of the anxieties about being perceived as different and widespread investment in the agenda of assimilation by many Gays, there is often a strong reaction to the idea of Gays being different and the consideration of different life trajectories. One of the most common misrepresentations should be discussed before going forward, that is the misrepresentation that we are trying to dictate how people should live. We aren’t dictating anything. What the purpose of this book is to discuss possibilities, the lack of discussion of possibilities, and how one possibility, assimilation, has been promoted such that it is implied it is the logical choice for Gays as if there weren’t any other choices to consider. However, if you want to get married, adopt children, possibly have a white picket fence, and model your life after straight people you certainly have a right to do so. We are just discussing that there might be alternatives. Also, the choices made assimilationists doesn’t preclude others from evaluating possibilities and coming to different conclusions than assimilationists.
These are the things that make Gays different.
1. Gays are not part of all the social customs, beliefs, systems, expectations, and gender roles that manage heterosexuality. Heterosexuality pervades the running of the world. Just by this we exist out outside the straight world and heterosexual gender roles.
2. Gays are men and are generally ready to have sex and have casual sex as well as sex as part of romance. They generally explore and develop their sexuality and are part of communities which are much more sexually active than society in general. Further their sexual activities are often outside straight male gender roles, most notably Gay men cock sucking or getting fucked.
3. Gays are born everywhere, geographically, in all social classes, in all religious backgrounds, in all political backgrounds and are brought into contact through its institutions, in particularly those which facilitate sexual contact.
4. Gays are not involved with reproduction and not directed by society towards raising children. They have available both the time and the resources that might be used to raise children to pursue other goals. They will be able to take risks and chose paths that those responsible for children are unlikely to take.
5. Gays face some degree of prejudice everywhere, if not outright persecution. Homosexual acts are illegal in many places both now and historically. Major religions and political movements denounce homosexual acts and have programs to persecute Gays.
6. Gays are nearly always born to non-Gay parents and it is very likely that none of the Gay person’s relatives are Gay, given that Gays are about 3% of the male population. It is very common for the parents and relatives to be hostile to Gays and hostile even when they realize that the Gay person in their family is Gay. Even when there isn’t hostility, the word best describing the parent’s attitude is “acceptance.” Often Gays keep their identities secret from their families. These families can’t teach them anything about being Gay.
7. Gays aren’t born knowing they are Gay. They come to realize it at some point later in life often with struggles in accepting their identity.
8. Gays have as nearly a universal life path of “coming out,” where it is at all possible to not have to entirely conceal identity. The term “coming out,” often is a path in life in terms of self-realization, then ending secrecy with the family, friends, and relatives, and then society. Straight people don’t have coming out as an experience in their lives. The default assumption is that you are straight.
9. Gays will always struggle to have a cultural inheritance. Parents are extremely unlikely to know anything about the Gay past or be able to direct their Gay son towards any resources. The schools won’t be having it in their curriculum. The only place where it will be in the curriculum might be in some Queer studies course in college, focused on the whole initialism, (LGBTQXYZ), and that will be limited to those who go to college. Historical amnesia and Gay cultural illiteracy are common.
10. Gays will always be a minority everywhere attached to the larger straight society. There isn’t a home country where they are a majority. At most there will be some neighborhood which at some time in its development has a concentration of Gays, even then that might just be a contemporary historical phenomenon which won’t occur in the future.
THE HETEROSEXUAL MATRIX
There are endless social customs, practices, gender roles expectations that are a part of heterosexuality and subject to endless contentious or angry debate. From who should pay for a meal, to what the relative levels of education of the spouses should be by sex, to what the income of the spouses should be by sex, and who should be paying the bills according to sex. There is the supposed “weaker” sex and expected behaviors by men in regards to that and conflict with how these beliefs might be contrary to equality for women. (I am not saying there is or is not, I am just observing what straight people believe.)
There is the popular template of dating and then marriage and then children and then there being grandchildren and all sorts of customs built around that with various roles assigned by sex. The assignment of tasks and responsibilities in the marriage, usually, though not always, is based on the sex of the spouse. Often women clean the house and men mow the lawn. There is still a belief that is held by some that the best arrangement is where the man works and the woman maintains the home. It is often believed that the man should be the head of the family.
They are dimorphic in dress and grooming and hair styles. Women wear makeup, men generally don’t. Women wear one type of clothing, men another. The dimorphic difference is so different that drag performers use it to do drag. Men and women relative to each other are referred to as the “opposite” sex.
Many women feel they have failed in life if they haven’t gotten married, men not so much. Even though Gays now get married, even wearing tuxedos, even a cursory review of wedding magazines show that that Gay marriage is not straight marriage. The issue of pre-marital sex isn’t even a concept in Gay life, nor is the issue of living together before marriage. No doubt the assimilationists can find some Gay couple that will triumphantly announce how they imitated straight life, but in general, almost entirely, this isn’t a concept in Gay life.
Men tend to be older than women in their relationships and generally this is what straight people expect to be the norm. When women are older than the man, they often get labels such as “cougar,” a predator.
Heterosexuality is endlessly structured around the fact that heterosexuality is heterosexual, that is it is between men and women with the idea of difference between the two sexes and different roles for the two sexes. The author doesn’t criticize heterosexuality, since he isn’t a part of it, he just states the reality of it.
There are technical differences also, for example, in retirement with one spouse generally substantially outliving the other based on their sex. More significantly women bear children, men don’t. Gay men won’t be getting pregnant.
Regarding sexual activity, there is an extensive set of cultural practices with contestation and often involving anger. However, that will be discussed in the next section.
It might be argued that not every straight person follows all these rules, but I don’t think you will find very many straight people that don’t accede to any of these customs. Even then, even if it is a refusal to follow some or all of these customers, they are done in opposition to prevailing straight norms and a part of an active contestation of those norms.
It isn’t going to be the goal of this section to describe in detail how heterosexuality is emmeshed in numerous social practices and customs, no doubt the reader can observer easily customs not mentioned here by even a cursory glance to the topics discussed on social media. The goal here is to show that heterosexuality is emmeshed in social practices based on sex identity.
The point is that nearly all, if not all, of these customs related to gender roles in heterosexuality don’t apply to Gay men because we are homosexual.
Just on the basis of this alone, the customs related to gender roles in heterosexuality, Gays are substantially different from straights and the differences are much more than the differences in the social customs between nationalities.
Some will argue that the author is basing his argument based on society as it is now with its practices, but in some utopian better world these practices wouldn’t exist and Gays would be like straight people. This is used by assimilationists to deny the present real world, by the invention of an imaginary world in which assimilation might make sense. I think discussing an imaginary world which not only doesn’t exist presently, has never existed in the entire historical record, and further shows no signs of coming into existence while any of us are alive is just nonsense and a misdirection. Like everyone else we exist in the here and now and Gay people’s strategies need to be relevant to the real world and not designed for an imaginary world. That this type of argument is actually made by assimilationists and not immediately thought nonsensical, is the desperation by assimilationists to be just like the straight people.
There is an opportunity to just not participate or imitate heterosexuality, but the opportunity to develop our own ways of living or even multiple different ways of living that suit our own needs and desires and situation. This discussion needs to really get started and move forward.
SEX
Sex in in straight society is emmeshed in a variety of customs, practices and taboos, many of which involve gender roles. Further men and women often have conflicting objectives and expectations regarding the practice of sex. Men generally would be willing to have sex for sexual gratification itself. Women generally want sex to be part of some relationship though not always. Even in the year 2022 you can see on social media women saying, “Men only want one thing.” The old expression, “Battle of the Sexes,” seems inadequate to describe the conflict observed on social media. Battles, are that between sovereign nations, but observing heterosexuality in the media one is more remined of some fratricidal war. Gay men do get upset with each other over issues of sex, but it isn’t a bipolar conflict and the discourse is not shaped by viewing the other sex as alien. There is a popular book, “Men are from Mars, Women from Venus,” as if they were extraterrestrial aliens relative to each other. Perhaps Gay men are on Ganymede. (A moon of Jupiter.)
One leading woman sexologist, Peggy Orenstein, condemns blow jobs done for men by women with the article, “It’s a ‘blow job’ because it’ work: How guys push women to make oral sex as shaking hands,” published in the liberal online publication Salon.
In popular culture women who want sex for sexual gratification are called “sluts,” though this is now being contested and rejected by some women.
With straight couples, generally, a relationship involves sexual monogamy. Whereas with Gay relationships it might or might not involve monogamy and that might change over time. The author has known xenogamous relationships.
With straight people love and sex generally gets intertwined, with women especially conceptualizing them as being part of one thing. There is the idea of courtship, meals, roses, gifts etc. This isn’t a part of Gay life. I remember when a friend at college gave a dozen red roses to a man he had a crush on, the Gays on campus were amused at his modeling after what straight people do. (The roses didn’t work.) The whole thing to give gifts to demonstrate that you can be a provider doesn’t exist with Gay men.
There is a whole culture of straight men pursing women as if they are a castle to be taken. There are outer walls, like the “friend zone.” In straight society they discuss the ratio of men to women in different places and professions. In Gay society the idea of a ratio doesn’t apply. If a town had 13,482 Gay men the ratio would be 13,481:1 not including the number of bisexual men looking for a man to have sex with at the moment.
One popular slang expression when straight men have been able to have sex is to say, “I got lucky last night.” For Gay men, “lucky,” would mean that the morning after the guy they met was able to repair a kitchen appliance.
Gay men can have sex with each other for the sake of sex as well as part of romantic relationships. Going to the nightclub is usually with the expectation that you can easily have sex with someone that night if you wish and it is likely with someone you just met there that night. Prior to the Gay apps, Gays had bathhouses, frequented parks, and made use of other spaces to have sex again with people you just met, or absolute strangers.
Generally, for most Gay men sexual opportunities are plentiful and sex is easily available if you are reasonable in your choices. If Gay men aren’t having sex frequently it is generally a matter of choice on their part, not the lack of opportunity. With the easy access to sex Gay men have an opportunity to explore their desires and more precisely know them and develop them. Gay men develop sexual subcultures. Currently in 2022 the Gay pup subculture with its costumes and paraphernalia has established itself. What subculture are the straights going to be developing in the next ten years if any?
Straights with their monogamous relationships and limited sexual opportunities are not going to be learning about sexual possibilities as fast as straights. Also, a straight guy is going to have to read about some new sexual position and method, have it described by a close friend, or view it on a video. A Gay man learns it directly when he experiences a new sexual practice done with him by another Gay man.
Gays also know what a specific sexual act feels like or is experience by his partner. Even in the extremely unlikely event a straight guy gave another guy a blow job he still wouldn’t know it was experienced by a woman giving him a blow job because he would not have the element of sexual desire.
Gay men also have a much broader range of sexual activities. Gay men can fuck or be fucked, give a blow job or get a blow job. Being same-sex they can have sex as threesomes in all sorts of interesting combinations. Penises can be pressed together for jacking off.
Gays generally consume pornography and it generally doesn’t carry any stigma that when they do so. Pornography for Gay men, performed or created by men, doesn’t involve what issues heterosexual porn might. Heterosexual porn is controversial in heterosexual society. Pornography is another medium of exchange of sexual ideas and possibilities among Gay men and self-exploration of desire.
A Gay will likely have ideas about fucking that will be much different than a straight guy, when he is being fucked and shouting “harder.” Though this is changing to some extent, Gay men much more often than straight men realize that they can be objects of sexual desire and with their greater opportunities for sex are much more likely to be working out and watching what they eat than the general population. When taking aerobics classes I noticed that it is made of mostly women and Gay men. Back in the 1980s the author remembers reading a newspaper reporter’s shock and dismay that none of the pants for sale at a clothing store in the Gay neighborhood could fit him. This was considered newsworthy for the readers of this major metropolitan paper.
Some straights are more experimental than the great mass of straight people, but they are few. Even then they perhaps only reject one thing or another, but they are still within many of the other constraints and practices of straight life.
Gay men in having much more sex will have more developed sexual practice and awareness of their sexual desires. They typically will have experienced much more sex with many more partners than straight men. So, the lives of Gay men are lived differently in regards to sex and they will be sexually different besides being homosexuals. They will typically have a more positive attitude towards sex than the society they live in.
In just this, sexual practice, Gay men in general are quite significantly different from straights in general. However, perhaps it in combination with another feature of Gay life that the sexual practices of Gays have their most profound impact on Gays being different.
WORLD WIDE, ANCIENT AND PERVADING ALL OF SOCIETY
Gays are everywhere geographically, are born in all groups in society, and have been noted in the historical record since when there have been enough records to be likely to include Gays. Very likely Gays existed prior to the historical record.
Persons who are entirely or nearly entirely or enough such that they are going to live as homosexuals constitute about three percent of society. To meet other Gays, they will need to go to Gay spaces where the others are Gay or not hostile to Gays.
So, to meet each other it will be necessary for persons from all groups in society to come to Gay spaces to meet. Being that Gays are only three percent of society some of the types of Gay spaces, such as nightclubs or bars will be few in numbers. At these Gay spaces there will be likely Gays from all classes, ethnicities, races, religions, occupations, ages, castes and whatever social different groups that might exist in that society since Gays are born in all social strata of society everywhere geographically on earth.
Gays in rural areas have strong incentives to migrate to urban areas not only because the generally more hostile attitudes towards Gays there. In a town of 2,000 inhabitants, if Gays are three-percent of the men, after excluding women, children you might have maybe 600 adult mails and that would mean 18 Gays living there from 18 to 70. However, just calculating a percentage for the general population wouldn’t apply to this small town. Maybe 18 Gays have been born there, but many of them have realized the limited prospects of this small town for Gay people and have long since migrated. Those that remain might be young and haven’t yet figured out when, where and how to migrate out, or those who got married to a woman and for some other reason are trapped there, and those who are content with bleak prospects. However, the number of Gays there, if any, would be few, which would encourage what remaining Gays reaching the age of 18 in that town to leave or having finished college education not to come back.
Small towns offer little opportunity to escape observation by the community at large and by relatives. For some straights, the reason driving them to stay is that their relatives are there, but for Gays the presence of relatives nearby might be a driving force for Gays to leave the town. Having lived in high school for a year in a very rural area, a common complaint was that you couldn’t flush the toilet without everyone knowing about it.
The ability to escape observation by the community would be another reason, the larger city offering more anonymity. The visiting straight relative surprising the Gay couple in the city is a common theme in Gay movies.
Even if the town was the most welcoming town for Gays in the world, what type of specialized supports could it feasibly provide for Gay people? Is there going to be a Gay bar there? With a few Gays what type of cultural events or social activities would there be for Gay people. If a Gay person had a specialized sexual interest, it might be an impossibility to satisfy it in a small town. Even the ability to learn sexual practice and experience variety in sexual practice might be limited.
Straight people do migrate out of rural towns, I would argue however, the opportunities to stay in a small town are greater for straights and the pressures to drive Gays out of rural areas are particularly intense on Gays. Gays would have the usual pressures that straights find that drive them out of rural areas, added on would be the issues of Gay isolation.
Similar driving forces that lead Gays from smaller towns, lead Gays to go from smaller metropolises to larger metropolises, resulting in very large Gay communities in the top-tier major metropolises in the United States. Migration has been an ongoing fact of Gay life for many probably going back historically to the rise of cities to which Gays could migrate.
We live in a world where there are large migrations of refugees due to catastrophes both natural and political, and due to economic inequalities. Gays are present in these migrations also, but Gays are also are migrating internally in a nation that is at peace from the rural area to the urban area. Gays also migrate internationally, when there is anti-Gay hostility in one nation making Gay existence particularly difficult.
This leads to another increased factor of diversity in Gay spaces, people that have moved to the geographical location where the Gay space exists. In a Gay space you are likely to find people from elsewhere. In San Francisco in the 1970s and 80s, few Gays in the community had grown up there, they had moved there.
Also, given that Gays are three percent in number, it is generally much less likely that you might meet a Gay person who you would be interested in at a work place, church, school, than a straight person. Your opportunities as a Gay person to connect with someone in your social demographic groups is small, 97% of the men are precluded from the beginning since they are straight.
Being outside of straight society, being outside of the society of family members in regards to meeting Gays, Gays don’t have the constraints and restrictions that the straight society might otherwise apply to Gays as to who they can or can’t date, who their social network or family of which they might disapprove. What disapprovals the social group or the family might have against members of a religion, race, ethnicity, class, family background is much less likely to be applied to a Gay’s dating or sexual activities. The Gay person himself might have internalized it, but the straight society and family aren’t present when social and sexual choices are made. Also, what ideas that Gay person might have had derived from his straight environment can often disintegrate in the face of sexual desire.
Though in some societies more accepting of Gays there might be straight people trying to suggest to a Gay person who to date, perhaps some parent might attempt match making. Even so, how many Gay people would of which parents know to arrange introductions? The great majority of the men of their friends and social contacts of which they know are straight.
This is where the casual sexual activities tend to erase or minimize the boundaries between social classes, occupations, ethnicities, races, religions, ages, geographical origin, castes, and other possible social groupings.
In nightclubs and bars Gays are socializing with each other, drinking with each other, and going home with each other to have sex. In parks they are having sex with strangers. In bath houses they are having sex at an institution with people selecting others based on sexual attraction. At these institutions there are opportunities to socialize or have sex with people from different backgrounds and Gays do so. Interactions across the social boundaries of the larger straight society happens much more than in the larger straight society and interactions that can be intimate.
Gays when traveling internationally, even when traveling to nations outside the cultural sphere that their nation might be located in, such as a Westerner going to East Asia or an East Asian going to a Western nation, will find that going to the local Gay spaces and getting laid is easy. The Gay spaces will likely be the same or very similar to ones they know at home.
Gays are socially and sexually gloriously promiscuous, that is pro-mixing.
It isn’t to say that the Gay community is one of an all-pervading universal brotherhood, or that merely having sex will result in a greater social understanding, the larger divisions of straight society do manifest in the Gay community, but the interactions across these divisions are much more common in Gay society than in straight society. Talking with different people, drinking with different people give an opportunity to know people, an opportunity that is more common with Gay society. Fucking and cock sucking tends to be an ice-breaker, with an intimate shared experience. This results in a society of individuals with generally a broader social perspective and tolerance than that present in the local straight society. It results in a Gay community incorporating within itself a great diversity and due to its migrations, an urban diverse community.
As a global community, a community present in every place where humans exist, it is a globally pervading community with a global exchange of ideas relevant to Gay people. Indeed, one surprising feature of Gay life is how much Gay life in one location is like that of another elsewhere on the earth and how sexual practices are part of this global exchange.
Besides being a reason why Gays are different, it is one of the great benefits of Gay life and it is one of the strengths the community can have.
This is one of the reasons, there is another, why discrimination by bars or other institutions in the Gay community is a deadly offense against the Gay community. It is destructive of our community’s strength derived through its diversity, it is a denial of one of the great benefits of Gay life, and it is essentially assimilationist, since it is making the Gay community like the larger straight society with its discriminations, and assimilation is the denial of the development of being fully a Gay being.
As a deadly offense, those who care about the well-being of Gay society need to be serious and determined about opposing those elements in the Gay community who would be discriminatory.
ALTERNATIVES TO RAISING CHILDREN, WHAT ARE THE POSSIBLE GAY PATHS
In a lot of series or movies about Gays, a pair of Gays get married, usually they are professionals, nearly always monogamous, are a model of Gay respectability, adopt children, face challenges resulting from prejudice and have a happy ending.
As will be discussed later, getting married is the great vehicle of the assimilationist agenda of the neoliberal management of desire, of Gays not being different.
The fact is that marriage as an institution among straight people is in severe decline, but even it if wasn’t, it is a social institution designed for straights to bind them together, provide a social unit for children, and support some dynastic ideas and it was not designed for Gays.
To avoid misdirection on the topic of same-sex marriage by assimilationists and neoliberals, the author would say that Gays should have the right to marriage as an option, especially since no alternative useful options are available to Gays. Also, for one reason or another it might be useful or strategic to get married, such as guaranteeing the right to visit a partner in the hospital or securing inheritance of your residence from greedy relatives. Finally, not being allowed to get married, establishes Gay as being unequal to straights. The author feels that Gays have as much right to be miserable as anyone else.
Homosexual activity doesn’t lead to pregnancy. Unlike most heterosexual couples, not having children isn’t an option needing weighty thought and isn’t the expectation of parents, relatives and society. Instead, it is the opposite, it is the weighty decision to adopt children without expectations of society that you do so, often in opposition to society.
Gays have the opportunity and option to pursue many life paths besides being like straight people. However, in the media, including what is LGBTQ+ media, the focus is on Gays getting married and adopting children even though for most Gays, either activity is something they are unlikely to do. By omission there tends not to be a discussion of what other paths Gays might take and what social institutions that might support these paths.
Without the time and costs that children require what alternatives might there be for Gays to use that time and resources, what paths might they follow instead? Without marriage how might their relationships be constructed?
One obvious difference is that a lot of Gays often can and do go night clubbing until their 40s or other Gay entertainments, like circuit parties. They are not bound.
This is a huge difference between the possibilities in Gay life and straight life and yet the discussion and focus of the Gay movement has been nearly entirely directed into same-sex marriage and adopting children and living like straight people. There are tremendous possibilities of different paths for Gay people and it is largely undiscussed.
Gays being unencumbered with a family can take more risks or take paths without concern about loss of income. A straight person with a family and financial responsibilities has often the job that can’t be quit and risks that can’t be taken, let alone deciding to sell it all and go back to school or spend a year someplace or take a new career direction with much less. One major difference of Gays and straights is the relative lack of binding obligations and responsibilities.
Since marriage is more and more an upper-middle-class and upper-class phenomenon in the United States what paths do we offer for Gays aren’t upper middle class? What paths do we have for the Gays who aren’t going to have the finances to purchase a home and restore it?
The author didn’t get married, didn’t raise kids, restored two homes, had a successful career in semiconductor processing, and at the same time was able get to university press books in cultural geography published. This is only one option, to have two successful careers, technical and in the liberal arts, done in parallel. However, that is just one option. The author sees an opportunity to have a dual career, but that isn’t for everyone. There might be a person who puts the extra time into one career. These two opportunities aren’t available for everyone or of interest for many Gays. They are just one option available when you don’t have children.
There just isn’t a discussion on what life paths Gays might have and the author hasn’t imagined alternatives for people in his social class and venue, let alone what working class people might have. What conversations in the Gay community that might exist are mostly around open relationships and polyamory, but there isn’t thinking of what a Gay life paths could be as a whole.
The scolding LGBTQXYZ media condemns circuit parties, but doesn’t offer alternatives besides marriage and the adoption of two children. (Circuit party guests, party all you want, I am not an Alphabet Soup scold.)
Could being Gay involve being a vocation? That is, you have time to plan on doing something special with your life with the time you have available? Or not so directed, but some life that is something that a Gay person could do? Or just not be straight life?
What types of domestic partnerships might be designed for Gays and serve them better than marriage?
Does a housing market oriented towards nuclear families work for Gays? Would a lot of Gays benefit in a cooperative boarding house or cooperative housing? Are we satisfied with a large fraction of the Gay community being renters for life? Would different housing solutions help younger Gays be able to live independently from their parents?
The author hasn’t given a lot of thought to what these paths might be, most focused on finding his path through life as a Gay person, and since one person is not likely to think of all the paths Gay people might follow, this is a discussion that needs to happen.
Gays don’t have to live in the boxes of Malvina Reynolds song “Little Boxes, and we should resist being put there.
But Gays are different in that in general, the great majority, maybe over 80% or 90%, we are going to live without being married, and even less likely have adopted children. Even if we do get married, it might be because we are in our 60s and 70s and because we need to be concerned about inheritance and hospital visitations.
There really hasn’t been any discussion about how older Gays might live. Upper- and middle-class Gays have their homes to live in, and then sell if and when they want to move into other arrangements, or just purchase a condo. What prospects do working class and others who aren’t middle class face when they get older?
We are very different from straights in having options different from marriage and we need to develop and cultivate this difference.
BORN INTO ALIEN AND OFTEN HOSTILE FAMILIES
As stated in the introduction, Gays are nearly always born to non-Gay parents and it is very likely that none of the Gay person’s relatives are Gay, given that Gays are about 3% of the male population. It is very common for the parents and relatives to be hostile to Gays and hostile even when they realize that the Gay person in their family is Gay. Even when there isn’t hostility, the word best describing the parent’s attitude is “acceptance.” They often wanted children and grandchildren, and the Gay persons grandparents wanted grandchildren and they had various ideas about the family continuing down through the generations, but they accept the reality of their son being Gay, but it wasn’t what they wanted.
The attitudes of the family in terms of acceptance can be very mixed, this cousin and that aunt that is supportive, that cousin or sibling that is not supportive.
Whereas most people in life have their families as a support, and this has been a feature of families throughout history, they are support networks, for Gays they can not only be not support networks, but often are anti-support networks, and can be sources of hazards and hostility.
From these parents and family, they will get no instruction on navigating Gay life and dealing with issues of Gay life. However, well intentioned, they aren’t Gay and don’t have experience as a Gay person. They won’t understand Gay life either, largely interpreting Gay life as straight persons.
What a Gay person’s family first teaches a Gay person is deception and secrecy and being careful not to reveal their true identity to their family. Often the family members are understood to be likely explosively hostile and angry to the Gay person if their identity is found out, or even potentially dangerous to the Gay person if their identity is found out by the family. This isn’t the universal experience of all Gay people, but it is the experience of the great majority of Gay people, and it is still somewhat exceptional that a young Gay person would feel free discussing being Gay with their parents.
Often the family members are understood by the Gay person to be likely explosively hostile and angry to them if their identity is found out, or even potentially dangerous to them if their identity is found out by the family. This isn’t the situation in every family, but it is a common situation. In a lot of cases there might not shouting, but anger nevertheless and interrogations and arguments about being Gay. The family teaches a Gay person fear of their family.
Perhaps in some utopian society, the society assimilationists are so keen to imagine, these phase of secrecy with parents will not be the great majority, majority, or even a sizable fraction of Gay growing up stories, but that utopian future is unlikely to occur within the life times of Gays being born long after the author has passed away. These imagined utopian societies are fictions for assimilations to deny the reality of the present as being just a temporary thing.
Summarizing, Gays are born into families that often are hostile or those whose support is questionable, who can’t provide information on living a Gay life, and first teach secrecy and fear of their families.
SELF-REALIZATION AND COMING OUT
Gays aren’t born knowing they are Gay. They come to realize it at some point later in life. Though there are Gays who claim to be “8 before 7,” that is that they realized they were Gay early, most Gays slowly begin to realize that they are Gay when they reach puberty. They slowly begin to observe that when their male peers are starting to have interests in girls and women, they don’t feel the same interests and attractions, and further they are experiencing feelings and attractions to men that their male peers are not.
Prior to Gays realizing that they are Gay, they often have adopted the anti-Gay attitudes of their parents, their family, their family’s institutions such as their family’s church, and society in general.
So, one of the tasks for the young Gay person is confronting their internalized anti-Gay beliefs without support from their family and because of the concerns over secrecy, and often because of the underground or semi-underground existence that can be Gay existence in societies, not having easily available or available at all, sources of information to confront their internalized anti-Gay beliefs.
Being that young Gays often exist in an information vacuum surrounded by a hostile family and society it shouldn’t be surprising that outcomes are often not good.
Some Gays never do accept being Gay or they end up accepting it when they are 40 or 50 or 60 years old. I am sure there are cases where finally in their 70s they accept being Gay.
Some Gays never really deal with their internalized anti-Gay beliefs. They experience being homosexual as a vice or like a drug addiction with a view of other Gays being fellow practitioners of a vice or fellow drug addicts.
Other gays acquire some degree of acceptance, but still have a variety of internalized subtle anti-Gay attitudes. For them Gay is not Good, just something that happens and has to be tolerated. Often Gays are very much secret, not so much because they need to be, but because they are ashamed or embarrassed about being Gay.
It is not accidental that the annual parade for Gays is called “Pride.” Often that is what most Gays get from the parade and the most powerful function of the parade is Gays being in a large crowd of themselves. Participation in a Pride parade, even as only an onlooker, is often a powerful transformative event in a Gay person’s life.
The whole process of self-realization and coming out just isn’t the experience of straight people’s life.
CULTURAL ORPANS
Though there is a Gay past, and art, literature and other cultural forms, Gays are often disconnected from a Gay cultural past. Gays will always struggle to have a cultural inheritance. Parents are extremely unlikely to know anything about the Gay past or be able to direct their Gay son towards any resources. The schools won’t be having it in their curriculum. The only place where it will be in the curriculum might be in some Queer studies course in college, focused on the whole initialism, (LGBTQXYZ), and that will be limited to those who go to college. Historical amnesia and Gay cultural illiteracy are common for Gays.
In contrast, Straights have their parents, their schools, their academic institutions, the mass media, theaters, magazines, internet sources, all passing along their culture and their past onto them.
PERPETUAL ATTACHED MINORITY
Most Gay men don’t have children. Even when they do, the chances of them being Gay is small, about 3%, the same percentage of men who are Gay. It is not inherited like skin color or type of hair or other facial features.
The historical record shows that Gay people are a minority and a small one and this is what is generally observed everywhere. There are claims that some place doesn’t have Gays, but usually these are places which are hostile to Gays and the Gays are existing secretly.
Gays will always be originating in a larger straight society in close social and geographical proximity to it. Existing in neighborhoods where Gays are not a small minority, or perhaps a majority, will be the exceptional case. There never will be a homeland of Gays of which to dream. Gay actors in history will always be located in the history of straight people.
Gays will always be in a position from without straight society, yet knowing straight society from the inside also, to look into it straight society from the outside and inside. Whether individual Gays do so and to what extent they will is another question, but many Gays will. Straights know little of Gay society and being inside straight society can’t look inside straight society from the outside.
Gays will always be managing their minority situation. Straights will always be the majority for which Gays will be engaged managing their minority situations.
WE ARE DIFFERENT AND WE NEED TO ACT ACCORDINGLY
Derived from a variety of circumstances Gays will always be different than the Straights in many ways, substantial ways, important ways, and in life altering ways. There never will be a real assimilation of Gays into straight life and attempts to do so are destructive and obstacles to choosing real life Gay paths.
We need to realize we are different and act accordingly in defining what our opportunities are, what we need to think about, what directions we might pursue.
We need to oppose all programs and projects based on assimilationist ideas or at variance against what the nature of Gay life is.