I’m going to tell you a deep secret about LGBTSGL men. I’ve been teaching sex and sexuality workshops for well over 15 years to thousands of them, throughout the country, at multiple agencies, universities, etc..
Most gay/bi/SGL men, deeply dislike/hate men.
I actually learned the word misandry decades ago because of trying to find a word for the anger and antipathy I was constantly sensing personally and professionally from men.
My working theory is multifold as to why:
- Most non-hetero men, as boys, were ostracized, bullied, attacked by males (and females) not just outside of their home but also within their homes/families.
- Until recently, the past decade or so, being LGBTSGL was not “on trend” or in vogue/acceptable. Marriage equality helped tremendously because it legitimized what people often had a “choice” about “accepting”.
- To the point of accepting and acceptance—-reductive frameworks—-LGBTSGL people have had to mostly be tolerated or accept being accepted—-which is why so many divulge so much, literally vomit about their lives. It’s a huge “please, like me!” banner because no mater sexuality, we’re all human and want to be accepted and liked. So LGBTSGL folk, including men, bend over backwards to explain…existing. (I don’t which makes me a little odd, confident and intimidating to other LGBTSGL folks sometimes—-because ironically while teaching so much about sexuality, I don’t think any of them or the dozens of categorizations of gender (yes, there are dozens) are anything but normal. I also think all the plants, animals and insects as well as aquatic creatures, big and small, normal and part of and intended by Nature. ) What I often teach at the onset of any course with men about sexuality is that “You are Divinely intended.” I let that bombshell sit in the room. Fucks with at least 80% of the heads in there every time.
- The thing (other men) that you can’t help being attracted to are generally 6 out of 10 times not attracted to you. And even more devastating, the other 4 might be in their own confusions so play what amounts to perceived “games” as they to try to navigate Identity-Sexuality/feelings. What I’ve learned (and become) over decades of being out is slightly inured to the effect. One, my mother owned a modeling agency with troupes of fantastically beautiful men and women in and out of the apartment and house, practicing in lingerie and Speedos, often, male and female using my bedroom as changing rooms. So I got lustful eye candy about men and women of all ages and ethnicities. But I learned from that over-abundance a temperance to myself, which extended to being in teacher positions of responsibility—-at university as a TA at 22—-and then later at charter and public schools and again university—-everyone, male and female, blooming and bustling and bulging—-and then adult men and women! What I mean by this traipse down Lust lane is that I’ve been in the center or Hormone World and surrounded by pretty, nubile people in a trusted position so I had to learn to in effect “grey” out people who avowed heterosexuality. Everyone flirts. I learned that not all flirtation is sexual or non-heterosexually focused at me, even when the flirtation is focused at me. And even if it’s focused at me, to require MORE than simple flirtation for me to engage my sexuality back. In that jumble I mean—-no, you’re being cute does nothing for me, because unless you’re on the team in both a physical and mental/emotional way—-you exist as sort of a Neutral/Neuter Human to me. But I’ve had years and years and years of exposure and folk testing my boundaries to erect them (erection pun!)
- Not being given a Social Script (as heteros are) can leave one feeling abandoned in Life itself. Then you find a gay community—-and you know what I discovered? There were racists in the gay community! lol I was 18 and in a bar in NYC called Uncle Charlie’s, week after week, dressed well and being summarily ignored. Then I went with a friend and he, Black too, pointed out it was predominantly White and therefore inherently biased. Being LGBTSGL you assume (wrongfully) that others who are LGBTSGL will be better people, more accepting having gone through the growing up gauntlet too. And you know what—-assholes, saints, sinners, winners, losers, fools and predators….who are LGBTSGL.
- There is no Social Script. Alluded to become, and shown constantly in entertainment like Transparent—-there is a script for heterosexual people. And it’s not all bad, billions of them are excited by it, follow it, make minor adjustments and die having lived it fully. It provides a full life AND it also provides an alternative if you want to go counter Social Script and “do your own thing”. Non-heterosexuality though is treated by heteros and non-heteros alike—-like an infection (another theory as to why HIV stigmatization is so prevalent for decades) in that if you do something gay or bi as a man—-you’re forever a cocksucking faggot who takes it up the ass. When you may just be an experimental Puerto Rican who sucked some cock and then took it up the ass. Once you’re a jet (homosexual), you’re considered a jet to the end, my friend. But without a script—-how to love, who to love, where to find love, your family assisting you finding love, direct timelines and goals to dating, courtship, engagement, marriage, having children or not, life insurance—-it can all feel a little not simply bleh——-but meaningless. Yes, parties are fun but we’re multidimensional needing creatures so we covet and want and try to experience work and Life Purpose and mentoring and parenting and legacying—-and LGBTSGL seemingly it’s own “script” is in it’s nascent humanity/Social Script Stage as a worldwide/human legitimate ideology/framework with social integration—————-our ID is still being checked at the door while everyone else—-ostensibly hetero is just waved right in.
- Being Out gets you stopped at the door and asked for your ID. Society is constantly in big and subtle ways proofing you, asking you private questions, conferring acceptance on your (peer) ass and that exposure can get annoying, weakening—-like an immortal fly buzzing around your head for your entire life—-even when you’re at Uncle Charlie’s bar. A student, in his 20s, having been in my adult workshops, happened to see me sitting on a park bench by my godmother’s house. Actually I was coming from the beach—-where I relax and meditate and needed off of the crowded hot Summer subway, so I stopped, visited her and was sitting by the park as the evening cooled down. He’s a great, energetic, out young man, sharp, funny, sarcastic and slightly flamboyant—-visibly and undeniably gay. It had been a few years since I’d seen him and he, like most of my students who run into me years later, told me some of what he’d gotten from me, my teaching—-which often as the teacher you have “forgotten”. When he was in the LGBTSGL Youth group I ran for years, I workshopped all of them that coming out, being out, was a lifelong process—-that you didn't do it once, you did it thousands of times—-which is why people do it—-so they won’t have to do it forever with everyone. Because the everyone’s all have their internal opinions about non-heterosexuality—-good, bad, up, down, lynching, loving, experimentalism, etc.—-and that anxiety, you’ll feel it every time you say something or have to clarify something or they directly ask you something, is sexuality related. And that shit is so fucking annoying. You realize this immortal buzzing fly around your head is about race AND sexuality, and it won’t die. Men who are DL, discrete, discreet (bad spellers) that’s what they’re trying to avoid—that anxiety and judgment because that’s what being Out is constantly, yes, the hum/volume lowers, is constantly generating in your head. What does this motherfucker—-family, new friends, old friends, college friends, teachers, administrators, children, cashiers in stores, managers in stores, poor people, rich people, vagrants, tellers at banks, garbage men, supervisors, your bosses boss, your grandparents, the neighbors, and your slut fe/male bar patrons at the Super Bowl party—-all of society—-think of me, about something I can’t change that should really be casually accepted but isn’t by everyone?
- You’re not considered a man. That’s what all that masculine and effeminacy toxicity is about. Manhood is simple: Responsibility, Accountability and Integrity. You aim for and ride that three wheeled cycle constantly—-you’re a man. Fuck and suck whom and whatever you like…to completion. But society tries to snatch that away from you based upon something you can and cannot control—-so you’re put in the vise of aiming for acceptance by constantly lying, patrolling and smashing your own proclivities—-mainly around men, which is exhausting and breeds resentment. Because you might be attracted to the very thing that demands your reductivity.
- You’re considered damaged. “Hey, I noticed you wrote/talked about being sexually abused as a child. Did that adult seducing and fucking you as a child so often just sort of dickmotize you for life? So now you willingly repeat it trying to get that Ol’ Rape Timey feeling back”? Notice no one ever asks women who have been raped as children or adults, if they’re going to be buying strap-ons and sodomizing men and women because of the alien-forced penetration. You’re considered broken because of simply existing, generally by patriarchy. Can you imagine the twisted anger at wanting to be accepted by the very ideological-male forces that oppress? Even oppression thinks you’re bad.
- LGBTSGL-ness is so far, unless you look into native and African and Asian ontologies and ideologies, like the Tao, predicated simply on sex and sexuality. I mean, Gay—-what is it good for? Absolutely nothing. Say it again! Boys, male teens and men, need something to DO, to aim for in becoming—-why do you think wars are so popular? It literally gives men something to do with their anxiety and fear. Video games are close now through technology but we still have wars. Men need more than work and hobbies, especially when marriage and kids, from the Hetero Social Script, may not be in their future card deck. Why don’t lesbian and trans folk experience this misandry towards men or misogyny towards women—-women are taught to community so lesbianism isn’t as thrown out of the Woman Cave, in fact it’s given a space IN the Woman Cave. And trans folk have torched the fundamental precepts of the Social Script based upon gender, sex and sexuality so if they are Out, they’re really fucking out and don’t care or have built up resistance and boundaries and enclave. And if they’re not Out, they're purposefully shopping, literally and figuratively, Clinique at the Sephora counter, working hard to assimilate. They want to be one of the Borg (heteros).
What are the numbers?
I would call it a strong 50–70% of gay, bi, SGL men, without doing serious self-work, dislike men. It’s one of the elements of not simply coming out but living out, Identity Synthesis.
I often forget that for years in teaching the work of self acceptance, healthy sexuality, living life beyond my crotch or skin hue, I’ve really, really, really done some deep therapeutic work. And I’ve done several years of group and individual therapy, at least 1 year every decade since my teens, around life issues, sexuality and race. Yes, all of that reading and work and therapy makes me “stronger” but I still smell the embers of finding men, gay and not, obtuse, limited, shortsighted, un-manly, but then I consciously remind myself that there is no Social Script for not being hetero. Yet. Give it 25 years.
The process of liking men, through all of the above reasons, and learning to just put a splash of sugar on your shoulder so that immortal buzzing fly lands there and rides along with you, takes time, practice, foresight and hindsight, and a sort of arrogant, deep acceptance of not just yourself but the confusions and experimentations and harmful emotional games people play—-that we’re moving, and always, have always, towards a greater good, that your life—-non-hetero, has deep Purpose (get to work!)—-and that the confused gay dude you met?—-bless his heart, even when you have to walk away. He simply didn’t survive the wash and dry cycle of the tumble-tumble of this spiritual go around.
Maybe next lifetime……
#KylePhoenix
#TheKylePhoenixShow
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