nerdperv:
Issuing my first ever Fuck Off hasn’t satisfied me, so I feel the need to lay down some commentary. I’m not going to bust the guy for being sanctimonious; I don’t give a shit. Here’s my beef: When you issue blanket statements that begin “The problem with gay men is …” you don’t sound like a gay dude who got a little spooked by poo porn. You sound like an anti-gay bigot. What’s more, you top it off with the most off-base characterization of sexual fetishes that I’ve ever read this side of a panicky, right-ring, hate-spewing nutblog:
” … social normality has pushed them into strange and sick sexual things because they feel that they are not normal and have to resort to abnormal sexual shit[.]”
I’m going to be kind here and not even address how fucked up I find this themand they business. Instead I’ll focus on what amounts to a pile of Liberty University Psych degree horse shit. It seems you’ve cracked the code of the causality of sexual diversity. It turns out, you argue, that every flirtation with whips and chains, every splash of cum to glance a man’s tongue and every old jock fished from the laundry bin and crammed under the nose of a greedy bottom are all just acts of rebellion against a normality that gay people can never enjoy because we’re simply not straight enough. It’s so logical! How could it not be true?
Look, straight people aren’t collectively our parents, so I’m not buying that my interest in watersports is the sexual equivalent of my not cleaning my room (That’ll show ‘em!). I also think that letting straight people own normality (and assuming that the rest of us see it that way) is dangerous because it sends the message that we’re outsiders whose sexual appetites demonstrate that that’s where we belong—the outside. Anti-gay zealots will take that and run with it. See if they don’t!
Ugh. I wanted to avoid talking about straight sex (Gross!), but I feel that I have to mention that not one of the fetishes with which you have a problem is exclusively gay. Straight people engage in those very same horrifying, sexually deviant acts. So what’s their problem? Because when straight couples show affection in public or apply for marriage licenses, they don’t do so through a fog of societal resistance so thick that they can’t possibly perceive themselves as being normal. But there they go—to dinner, an Adam Sandler movie, maybe and back home for light bondage. Surely, the glee with which Sheila pops the ball gag into Steve’s mouth belies a secret shame that stems from her rejection by society. Give me a fucking break.
As humans, we explore all that it means to be human. We test our limits—not as an act of rebellion against an unnamed oppressor, but because it can be fun and that exploration can teach us a lot about ourselves. Not everyone has to agree on what they find titillating. That would be boring. But let’s not label people as dysfunctional when their paths to sexual self-discovery diverge from our own—especially when doing so could impede social acceptance for all gay people.
I’ll wrap this up by saying that straight people enjoy lives of unparalleled privilege in this country (and beyond). We shouldn’t reward them further by giving them a monopoly on normality. But let’s not give them credit for the sexual creativity that gay people have cultivated for millennia either. That’s ours.
