Ugh. Labels are for soup cans.

Trying to passssss.

Wowza. Is there fatwah on Neal by the Gay Mafia now? I remember everyone being freaked out by the idea of the stealth gay.

Is that Jason Bellini? I totally heart that mary!

Nothing makes me lisp like a nelly in a butt-swing like a bisexual man telling me how to act in public!

Um, I've seen plenty - and I mean PLENY - of swishy little boys (six and seven year olds, even) who are clearly destined to be gay and who have no idea what sexuality is or that there were "signals" set up as identifiers in covert sexual games. I was one myself. Sorry, Neal, you hyper-masculine fag, but there are lots of men who like men who WERE born swishing down the street. With their wrists flailing. And lisping while they were at it.

Oh I know some guys who were born swishing down the street. Who cares?

Boulton needs to see a Kristian Laliberte-Micah Jesse walk-off before making any more assertions about the lack of femininity among gay men.

You know what I hate? Really, really Jew-y guys. Jewbaccas. Y'know, the kind with the twitchy mannerisms and the fro-ed out hair, talking about their mother and therapy and shit? I know you know what I mean. It's like, yarmulke-in' me puke over here. Learn some basketball and stand up straight already.

If Boulten is correct, how come every time I go into a gay bar most of the guys are swishing around. I mean, we are in a gay bar - there is no need to give out signals. And then you have the SEE TARZAN HEAR JANE dudes. And I don't care if it is politically incorrect to label people. The ones who don't like labels are typically the people who are so easy to label.

I realize it is impossible to cite Proust without simultaneously being a pretentious douchebag (shower sack?), but cf the long rant from In Search of Lost Time, v. 4, Sodom and Gomorrah, called “The Race of Fairies” (La Race des Tantes). An excerpt:

... I had managed to arrive at the conclusion that M. de Charlus looked like a woman: he was one! He belonged to that race of beings, less paradoxical than they appear, whose ideal is manly simply because their temperament is feminine and who in their life resemble in appearance only the rest of men ... Race upon which a curse weighs and which must live amid falsehood and perjury, because it knows the world to regard as a punishable and a scandalous, as an inadmissible thing, its desire, that which constitutes for every human creature the greatest happiness in life ... lovers from whom is always precluded the possibility of that love the hope of which gives them the strength to endure so many risks and so much loneliness, since they fall in love with precisely that type of man who has nothing feminine about him, who is not an invert and consequently cannot love them in return; with the result that their desire would be for ever insatiable did not their money procure for them real men, and their imagination end by making them take for real men the inverts to whom they had prostituted themselves ...

Published 1921. Plus ça change ...

@BeRightBack: Yeah, but sometimes I wonder. You know the ones who act all macho that you think they might be Italian or something? Is that because they are that way naturally, or are they just pretending not to act all Woody Allen because they know it freaks people out? A televised roundtable discussion featuring Adam Sandler, Harvey Keitel and a Jew for Jesus out to be able to straighten this out.

Paging Perez Hilton, party of 11.

Are femmy lesbians considered "straight-acting"? Just curious.

In the old days gay boys had to act feminine so that the bullies knew who to beat up.

@rod: Lipstick lesbians. Versus Chapstick lesbians--they are more athletic. But the Carmex lesbians: you don't want to mess with them.

@lawyergay: Those are the ones that were exposed to the guido effect in Queens and Brooklyn. Jaegerbombs, Jaegerbombs, Jaegerbombs.

@lawyergay: I know what you mean. It's sometimes freaky when you just can't tell.
@AndSheSaid: Spastic lesbians are even worse. I prefer non-stick.

I'm going to assume that figure skaters are exempt from this argument.

Yep, it's all about "passing" much in the same way that some mixed people of color have chosen to pass for white because of the societal benefits of being perceived as white. Likewise, some gay men overcompensate in acting too butch and even going the distance of getting married to women because of the societal benefits of being perceived as straight. Back from my heydey internet days, it was always interesting to meet the "closeted" married man or straight guy who was butch in the streets and femme in the sheets and would let go and show his true colors behind closed doors.
[www.amazon.com]

@iplaudius: This post proves that 1) Neal Boulton is an idiot and 2) you, iplaudius, deserve a medal for quoting some real Proust instead of the usual madeleine-cookie scene.

A $1000 fine? It was only beet juice, for goodness sake.

Oh sorry. Same news clip, different topic.

Am I participating in my own oppression whenever I wave an arm above my head and snap my fingers? Because I do that a lot.

I don't like labels... unless they're Marc Jacobs.

@iplaudius:
Great quote....

God that book was hard work though...

So where did the expression "Looks like Tarzan, but sounds like Jane" come from?!

@SeaBassTian: Ha! I heard it for the first time in "Mysterious Skin" yesterday.

@AfroGuapo:

"Yep, it's all about passing..."

A few times I've had guys I was dating or going out with tell me I "acted too Jewish."

And, yes, one time a really neat guy said to me, "You don't act gay. You act more Jewish than gay."

(The idea being, I guess, that my personality is some sort of put-on or charade and that, behind close doors, I talk about horse breeding and golf like a normal Gentile.)

And yet it's not as though I routinely force my non-Jewish dates to speak Yiddish or Hebrew. Nor do I pepper my conversation with witty asides about the Talmud.

I'm not interested in "passing," but I'd like to know what those guys wanted. The fact is that their remarks were so offensive and hurtful that I never really went to the trouble of asking them what they meant.

@Hamud: Hamud, I know it could never work out because you are de gay and I am de lez, but your honest, heartfelt comment kind of makes me want to marry you. In Massachusetts.

@thegayrecluse: Thank you, love. If one man’s madeleine is another man’s tante, my Aunt Madeleine must be the best of both worlds. Heh. Evidently, however, it takes more than a walk down Proustian lane for me to remember to close an A tag!

@PoBoyNation:

"Hamud, I know it could never work out because you are de gay and I am de lez, but your honest, heartfelt comment kind of makes me want to marry you. ...

I may be de gay and you, de lez, but you're also de-lovely, as in, "It's delightful, it's delicious, it's delectable, it's delirious, It's dilemma, it's de limit, it's deluxe," etc.

@Hamud, amv"s, I second PBN’s comment. Your textual projection in these comments—however incomplete—this alone is so rich, so lovely, that such remarks are unimaginable to me. May you find a person worthy of your qualities.

@Hamud: It didn't occur to me that anyone would actually say that to anyone else. It's terrible when the offensive absurdity one makes up to make a point is outstripped by that which occurs in real life.

Oh ferfucksakes, Boulton - pick a hole!

(KIDDING! Remember last time we had a post about him, we learned he can take a joke?)

@AfroGuapo: I have no idea who you are but I love you for linking to Nella Larsen. There is so much that book and her experience applies to.

But to the point about the discussion, can we have a post discussing/explaining/bemoaning the rampant misogyny among gay men? Especially the straight-acting ones.

@cassandra: Yeah, as a straight guy who often writes gay porn I've noticed there seem to be two distinct types of gays:

1. Ones who are gay because they love men and dick.

2. Ones who are gay because they hate women and pussy.

And the ones in group two are often really, really creepy.

@drunkexpatwriter: Exactly! It's made my life as a hag very, very difficult. The betrayal is worse when you realize that they've been harboring these feelings all along while telling you how fierce you are.

@HEZ-still laughing.

@cassandra: Yeah. I don't understand it. For me, I'm straight, not because I think dick is disgusting, but because I find it boring, while boobs and pussy are fascinating.

I think the ones that really hate women are responding in some way to weird mommy issues.

For me it's jarring when I talk to an otherwise very sane and professional client and they say something horribly misogynistic out of nowhere.

I swear they sometimes do it for the shock value.

@iplaudius: Grab the ring, dude. Grab the ring.

This is why Genre is the Redbook of the gays...

@ShanghaiLil - Right on! B

@drunkexpatwriter: New headshot-avatar! I must admit, I like the old one better, just because the bed head you've got going on in it is so cute! BTW, if you weren't an expat, and I wasn't a hermit shut-in in New Jersey, I would die to be your friend. You're a smart, erudite, creative straight man who has no trouble writing gay porn! What's not to adore?

@NTBoulton: I'm glad I was right about you! You don't seem to mind a little gentle ribbing from time to time. And not just the latex kind.

@Redfox: Why thank you!

At the end of the day I have no trouble writing anything as long as I get handed a check at the end of the day.

I'm a word whore.