>First, the OP (I think I'm using the term right. I'm new here. Original Poster? I mean Concupisys) worded some shit wrong and pissed some people off. What of it? People say shit all the time that pisses people off. I understand PC to some degree, but there's a point. Most of you would have no problem saying the idea of fucking a chick disgusts you, but people don't flip out and go nuts on people.<
Yes, and he was complaining that he gets flak for saying those. Well, duh. He has no tact. And no, the idea of fucking a chick doesn't disgust me- it just doesn't do anything for me, and that's how I word it- and no one gets pissed off.
>I first realized I was gay literally months before the Matthew Shepherd murder, and just a few months after that the highly publicized murder of Barry Winchell, who I believe was generally straight, but the media at the time spun it into a "gay soldier beaten to death" type headline.<
He was a soldier who fell in love with a DRAG QUEEN...you can't get much more feminine than that. Notice how the OP pointed out that he's done PROFESSIONAL DRAG? The OP has a lot of self loathing going on.
>In terms of the whole flamers vs butch gay guys argument, I personally think there are a number of ways to view the whole situation. In my experiences with the vast majority of homophobes I've met, I've found that it's not so much the idea of two men sleeping together and being with each other as a couple, that disturbs them. It's the outright betrayal of masculinity which the stereotypical gay guy represents. There are two friends of mine in particular which come to mind. <
But see that's just the thing, it's NOT a betrayal of masculinity. Masculinity doesn't have to be an all or nothing prospect, where you talk like a dude, walk like a dude, fuck like a dude, chase chicks like a dude, go to football games like a dude, etc. My bf SOUNDS much more masculine than me, but my interests are more stereotypically masculine (except I dont know the first thing about cars). I'm much more comfortable kicking back at a baseball or football game and having a few cold ones than I am at the big gay clubs in town. But I LOVE LOVE getting pounded by a nice cock, and bottoming does nothing for my bf (He's a total top). But those are just my interests. Masculinity is so much more than how one carries himself. Besides, I don't know too many str8 guys that could hold their own against some drag queens that I know. They are vicious. haha.
As for your anecdotes about your friends, if they are adults, THEY are responsible for their own ignorance and bigotry. It isn't the fault of anyone else, and I don't have to be nice to them when they display their obvious bigotry/ignorance in my direction. The onus is on THEM to treat EVERYONE (even steretypically gay folks) with respect and dignity. And if you didn't know "flamer" was a derogatory term for gays, then I don't know what to say. It's just not a polite term.
Alright this was pretty much what I wanted to reply to.
I personally would say the image of fucking a chick or going down for a mouthful of clam sandwich would be disgusting to me. It could be my OCD, but every gay guy I've met was inclined to agree with me. I actually have a story about my ex bf that kinda gives an idea. He was friends with this one chick and she wanted him to mess around with her. Well in order to bring himself to finger her, he had to get a pair of those yellow rubber dish washing gloves that go half way up your forearm, and fucking was out of the question since he just couldn't stay hard...but that could have been the double wrapped condoms to who knows. Now getting blown by a chick I'm apathetic about. I really could care less, and if some girl was so inclined I'd let her go to town.
The Barry Winchell thing is a hard subject because it really depends on if you believe Transexuals are for all intent and purpose, a member of the sex they see themselves as. The two of them were publicly a heterosexual couple, but in the bedroom, given that Ms. Addams was pre-op at the time, It had to have been homosexual acts. However if the murder itself had not happened, would you now classify Barry Winchell as straight seeing as his lover is now legally, and biologically female? Calpernia herself has said that one of the big things about Barry was that he was absolutely heterosexual, not someone who was using her as a stepping stone into full fledged homosexuality which is apparently very common in the trangender community. She performed in drag shows, but she was not however a drag queen. Drag queens don't live as their persona full time. Calpernia was, and is simply a performer.
The part about the OP having done drag could be a sign of self loathing. It could be something else though. In cities it's not uncommon for even straight men to do drag simply because apparently in the right places it pays damn well. I've had some performers from NYC tell me that in just your basic bar you can get more money in a few hrs a night for a couple nights a week, than you would working full time at most basic jobs. I don't know where the OP was doing it, but it's possible that was his original reason for doing drag, and after that the attention and ability to step outside of his own world for a time made the whole thing grow on him. If anything his willingness to admit openly that he had done drag shows me it's not something he is ashamed of, rather than him having done it but keeping it his own dirty little secret in some deep recess of his mind. I don't think doing drag for a couple hours for 1 to 4 nights a week, and being a feminine/flamboyant gay guy full time are always the same thing. For some, or even most sure, but for all, I don't think so. To say it is once again just has us lumping people together that have a couple things in common, in this case drag, and pegging them as all the same, when thats just not so.
About masculinity, I personally am not saying that masculinity is an all or nothing thing. Obviously it's not. However what the media chooses to SHOW us is. How many times have you seen images or shows on TV where flamboyant gay men are at a football game, or working on a car? You don't. You see feminine gay men working in hair salons, on project runway, and doing interior decorating. I went to gay pride in NYC in 2009, and they have the gay firemen and gay police officers of NYC marching. On TV you don't see that part of the parade. You see the floats with the Cuban drag queens and half naked over the top camp twinks covered in glitter and makeup. From what the rest of the world sees of us through the media, 99.9% of the time it is absolutely feminized gay men and as such we as a group in it's entirety are a betrayal to masculinity as is seen in by those who only know gay men as what they've seen on TV. Exactly how many gay men do you think your average farmer in the rural midwest, or the bible belt know personally? Most likely none, and if they do know any around town, it's likely they are of a more feminine disposition, and are kept at a distance because they hate and fear what they have seen on TV and equate them to be the same. It could very well be that the gay guy in question is a bull rider, or is a huge baseball fan, but none of that matters when no one gets to know you to find out. That one guy surely isn't the only gay guy in town, but the problem is the others who can live in the closet because they are more masculine, or at least can pull off the 24/7 lie, do. Thats the reason Harvey Milk told us that the best way for us to gain acceptance as a group was to come out of the closet; because by doing so we let those who were already close to us find out the truth by actually experiencing it. In that time we had a far worse reputation than just being feminine. We were pedophiles and rapists who only thought of ourselves and since we couldn't reproduce on our own we were always on the lookout for new recruits. That is a WAY more extreme and horrible stereotype than being feminine, and yet people faced up to it, and came out. My mom is a perfect example of someone who was drastically changed by someone coming out (i.e. me). She was an Irish/Italian Catholic woman raised in an extremely conservative family in a time where being a racist was a pretty normal thing for far more people than it is now. Today she, like me, has denounced her Catholic faith, votes Democrat of all things, and is quite offended by certain terms being used to refer to certain groups of people.
This whole thing really does go for my friends to. Yes as adults they are responsible for their own ACTIONS. I don't bullshit or try to pass off blame from my one friend when he was bashing gays, however humans are animals. More importantly we are social animals with a pack mentality. We learn how to behave and what is right and wrong from those around us, and what we observe others doing. We don't always question why thins are that way, we just go along with it. Not until some reality punches us in the face do we look at different perspectives and actions and THEN question. I mean how many of us one day got a hardon in the locker room and said to ourselves "oh...guess I'm gay. Well thats cool."? Few of us did. Why? Because even we ourselves thought it was wrong on some level or another. It's not always even so much what we see and hear as what we DON'T see. We didn't grow up seeing guys in a relationship with each other. It was always a man and a woman. You didn't see advertisements for...idk cologne, where the guy putting it on was intending to pick up other men. Characters in the books you read weren't gay. The prince never killed the dragon to save the prince of another kingdom who he loved, and Mario really was actually cleaning peoples pipes on weekends, but for money, it wasn't code for a hot hookup with the paperboy (Nintendo joke). We learn what is dangerous based on if it looks strange to us. If you see a member of your tribe with some strange rash, or growing pustule, you learn to stay the fuck away from them, or even to cast them out of the tribe. Similarly if you see two dudes kissing, and you haven't experienced this before, then something is wrong and you need to avoid it, or isolate it. It's how we're genetically built. People fear what they do not understand. So do I blame people for jumping to conclusions or acting in a certain way about something they know nothing of? No. Not really. Nor do I feel it's right for us to expect them to simply take us as we are right away and completely change their way of thinking. It's up to us to give them that punch in the face of reality. Whether as friends, family, neighbors, or just strangers on the street expressing public displays of affection with out lovers the same way a heterosexual couple might. Because only when something becomes the norm, or at least isn't so absolutely bizarre, will people start to accept it as a part of society rather than have that knee jerk reaction to avoid, or feel revolted by us.