I don’t want to write this post. I don’t want to write it because it could too easily sound like 17 things I don’t mean it to sound like. Yet I feel compelled to make the point. So here goes:
(1) Some gay men – not all – are aversive to female bodies and fluids.
(2) Some gay men who are aversive to female bodies and fluids – not all – feel totally and completely comfortable expressing their aversion:
At 3:10: “So remember: we gays know tragedy. Before we came out, we had to eat pussy!”
(The “had to” is my favorite part of that sentence.)
It’s a thing that happens. Science doesn’t know why, and science, as far as I can tell, seems pretty uninterested in why, but it turns out that in the same way that some (but definitely not all) asexuals are aversive to sex in general, some gay men are aversive to sex with women and some gay women are aversive to sex with men. Even the idea of sex with them. Even the idea of the relevant parts and fluids, even if no behaviors are involved.
Yes, there are straight men who are aversive to women’s sexuality also, but that appears to be a different type of phenomenon, more purely social, whereas gay men’s aversion seems to be tied to their sexual orientation. I have some ideas about how this mechanism might work, but it’s all speculation.
So it happens, and in a lot of ways our culture tolerates gay men jokingly bashing on women’s bodies. Why? Maybe we forgive it, culturally, because we don’t want to seem homophobic. Maybe it’s just a whole lot better, in the ranking of cultural privilege, to be a gay MAN than to be a woman. I don’t know.
I don’t tolerate it, personally. I call bullshit – at my own peril, as many of you know. It bugs me when people who want acceptance for their sexuality degrade and belittle the sexuality of others. I can kind of understand it, but I don’t like it.
I have this terrible sinking feeling that I’m going to regret this post, but I can’t NOT say it out loud. Sometimes gay men are grossed out by women’s bodies, in a way that straight men rarely are. It happens, it does.
Does that give aversive folks permission to talk about women’s bodies like they’re made of yuck? I’m sayin’ no.
One of my closest friends — gay, male — feels this way. Which makes me really, really glad he never propositioned me when he was still in denial and self-hating about being gay. Since I’m bi and at the time I was half in love with him, I might have considered it against my better judgment, and it would have SUCKED as a first time.
I waited for someone who really digs my body and its fluids, for which I will be eternally grateful.
do you think it is genuinely ingrained, or is it in lots of men, gay and straight, but gay men have not been forced to overcome it, like disgust at menstruation? All the boys I knew were grossed out to begin with, but then had to get over it if they wanted to keep a girlfriend more than three weeks. Gay men have not had to get over it if they wanted intimacy.
agreed – thought you might be interested in this post i’ve written about gay male misogyny:
http://benjamineleanor.blogspot.com/2010/02/when-state-senator-hiram-monserrate-was.html
thanks for a great blog!
Emily, There’s no reason why you should be chastised for stating a simple fact. It is simply true.
If someone experiences an aversive reaction, it’s their responsibility to recognise it for what it is, and to mitigate its consequences by, perhaps, avoiding the situations which trigger it, if they can’t separate their reaction from the objective value of a person, if it’s a part of a person which sets it off.
I may be phobic about slugs, but slugs think slugs are great, and what I think of them is neither here nor there in terms of their real value in creation. I’d hate a slug to have to go into therapy just because some stupid old Brit couldn’t separate his reaction from making them feel devalued by it. We can’t help our reactions but, as usual, we can help what we do about them.
hehe… i have a vagina, but i still like the slugs analogy.
I guess what I’m seeing is a big, broad line between “talking” and “joking.” In my experience, gay men who poke fun at women’s genitals don’t offend women because the joke says more about the gay man than about women or vaginas. The women tend to assume that the gay (GAY!) man’s disliking vagina has no relationship to how straight men (prospective romantic/sexual partners) feel about vagina, or her vagina. The comments come across as silly, not degrading and belittling. We’re not taking anyone seriously.
It’s true that my experiences come from people who I know to have a solid baseline respect of and appreciation for the wonder of all genitals, which does provide crucial context for kidding around.
But with that appropriate context, why not joke? Genitals are funny-looking and their behavior is quirky, and I know I don’t laugh so much in a day that I’d trash an inoffensive source of humor to accommodate an overarching ideal that myself & co. can access in a snap if called for.
It’s even a mark of progress to me: “we’re sufficiently friendly and comfortable with all aspects of genitalia that we can joke about this and nobody’s feelings are hurt. The core value of genitalia is strong enough to us that it won’t be harmed by a little humor.”
Sarah, I completely agree with this, and my perspective is that I’m totally blind, and I don’t want people tip-toeing around that fact. Some people, like the recently blinded for instance, might need more sensitive treatment, but I don’t, and a lot of the things that happen to me as a result of blindness are just plain funny.
Honestly, I’m cool with gay guys mentioning that they don’t like sex with women and the associated acts — just as long as it’s clear in context that the reason they don’t like it is because it’s just not their personal, gay cup of tea. If nothing else, that can encourage straight people who want not to be seen as gay to do the opposite.
Benjamin’s link, for example, talks about when Robert Pattinson made a remark about not liking vaginas, and gives a link to a reaction from MTV which was not “Oh, yes, vaginas are disgusting, who can blame him?” but rather “Hm. Is Robert Pattinson gay?” This seems to me to be a useful cultural shift. Dislike of vaginas is not because vaginas are yucky, it’s because, well, some people don’t like that sort of thing. Other people do.
Thanks for calling out the remark in “That’s Gay.” It pissed me off too when I saw it. I like InfoMania and all, but doesn’t help that there are no women on the show except for a sometimes-present token woman, and that the token representative of queer sexuality is a man who has to hate on women too.
*cracks knuckles*
Hmm.
Nah, I had my say previously.
Rock on with your bad selves.
Reg mentioned that it’s about separating the objective value of the person from your attraction (or lack of attraction) to that person’s genitals.
If I constantly heard gay men saying “I’m kinda grossed out by vaginal fluid, therefore all women are subhuman,” then yeah, that would be a problem. But hearing gay men say “I’m kinda grossed out by vaginal fluid, therefore I’d really rather not have sex with a woman”…that’s an entirely different statement.
I’m a straight woman. I cannot, for the LIFE of me, figure out what’s sexually appealing about breasts. At all. I’m totally baffled. So yes, I think if I were offended by gay men expressing the same kinds of sentiments, that would indeed be homophobic of me.
“I cannot, for the LIFE of me, figure out what’s sexually appealing about breasts.”
Really?
I mean, I understand your point. If you don’t feel it, you don’t feel it. But are you puzzled as to why we straight guys do?
Yes and no. I’m “puzzled” in the sense that I don’t understand it, but not “puzzled” in the sense that I doubt it.
Basically, my lack of sexual attraction to breasts isn’t something that causes me to doubt the authenticity of those who DO find them attractive–the word of het men and LB-identified women is all I need in order to know that there are a lot of people in our culture who ARE attracted to breasts, and I totally, 100% respect that. Furthermore, I don’t think you’ll hear many straight women making a big deal of the fact that we’re not interested in breasts or vulvas EXCEPT in the context of a conversation like this one. (I used it as an example of how the claim of being grossed out by women’s bodies honestly is probably, in many cases, a genuine expression of their sexual orientation rather than an expression of misogyny.) After all, if I were to call a gay man a misogynist for complaining about “having to” “eat pussy” while harboring a pretty strong aversion to that particular activity myself, I think it would be entirely fair to call me a homophobe.
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*the claim of being grossed out by women’s bodies by gay men, I mean.
You’ll be happy to read another blogger’s post regarding the same subject…
http://centerofgravitas.blogspot.com/2006/04/queer-misogyny.html
Thanks for the great blog!
I can see why a gay guy would say a girl’s body is gross. You guys (…girls?) don’t have weird limp alien suckerfishes attached to your bodies.
But yeah, as has been hinted on elsewhere in the conversation, I think people are confusing their personal preferences for broad universal statements. (e.g., “I don’t personally like the way x or y looks” vs “x or y is ugly.”)
Let me generalize this ever-so-slightly:
Person A is insecure about their feature X. Person A looks at person B who has feature not-X. Person A, because of their history, finds the concept of not-X threatening. But hey! If not-X can be declared to be undesirable, then there is nothing to fear! For the win!
For bonus points, change “insecure about” to “has been ostracized and denigrated for their whole life”, change “threatening” to “existentially threatening”, and change “undesirable” to “an indicator of a lesser human being”.
Of course, A is usually totally oblivious that the condescension A is delivering is built from the same shit-legos as the condescension A is so insecure about. Such is the irony of being oblivious of the next meta-level.