Is Jack Malebranche right?
 

http://www.jackmalebranche.com/hub/

GAY IS DEAD

The word gay has never described mere homosexuality. Gay is a subculture, a slur, a set of gestures, a slang, a look, a posture, a parade, a rainbow flag, a film genre, a taste in music, a hairstyle, a marketing demographic, a bumper sticker, a political agenda and philosophical viewpoint. Gay is a pre-packaged, superficial persona—a lifestyle. It's a sexual identity that has almost nothing to do with sexuality.
Androphilia is a rejection of the overloaded gay identity and a return to a discussion of homosexuality in terms of desire: a raw, apolitical sexual desire and the sexualized appreciation for masculinity as experienced by men. The gay sensiblility is a near-oblivious embrace of a castrating slur, the nonstop celebration of an age-old, emasulating stimga applied to men who engaged in homosexual acts. Gays and radical queers imagine that they challenge the status quo, but in appropriating the stigma of effeminacy, they merely conform to and confirm long-established expectations. Men who love men have been paradoxically cast as the enemies of masculinity—slaves to the feminist pipe dream of a 'gender-neutral' (read: anti-male, pro-female) world.
Androphlia is a manifesto full of truly dangerous ideas: that men can have sex with men and retain their manhood, that homosexuality can be about championing a masculine ideal rather than attacking it, and that the wicked, oppressive 'construct of masculinity' despised by the gay community could actually enrich and improve the lives of homosexual and bisexual men. Androphilia is for those men who never really bought what the gay community was selling; it's a challenge to leave the gay world completely behind and to rejoin the world of men, unapologetically, as androphliles, but more importantly, as men.

it's going to be a struggle to change the face of homosexual culture seeing as the gay stereotype has been totally embraced by the mainstream and become synonymous with homosexuality. but it would be a good thing if it did happen.

In a way it has been happening for a while. While you still have certain social mechanisms that produce *insert stereotype*/ chaser, there are also men out there who look like men, fancy other men who look like men, but don't exagerate their masculine traits to the point of caricaturing them.

There's also quite an epidemic of certain male stereotypes brought up to the fore and given their own habitat, generally a club, or, as someone told me recently, a point of meeting*. Think about the craze about men in suits, sloppy-looking bears, daddies, all types that retain a fairly normal semblance and a non-effeminate look.

* There's apparently a place in the city where homosexual business men meet for a chat and networking. This place was opened for people who hold jobs of a certain importance in the city and want to meet other men with a similar social status.

I had a homosexual friend in high school that was a nice guy, fun to hang out with. Then he went to college and he turned GAY. He suddenly had this brand new culture. He was a drag princess, he had his hair bleach blonde, he was always a little effeminate, but he really went off the deep end.

You're here. You're queer. I'm used to it.

Anyone read this guy's book? I finally got it last week. I agree 100% with some of what he says, 100 % less on other things he has to say, the rest I sneered my way through the pages.






Nice cockstika painting.

I'll probably check Androphilia out. I think it's a wider malaise than just the gay community, but there are a lot of people who carry the bullying they received around at school around like a badge, where every slight criticism is the same person who was calling the crap at sports type a queer in school. Obviously, bullying can be horrific, but I get the impression a lot of people use it as a mental crutch. Some people continue to be cunts, but if someone acts, or once acted, like a cunt, there's no reason to shut down all communication barriers.

At least I think that's what he's getting at.

Yeah, one of the things that irritated me about him is that he seems to base the entire psychological tapestry of homosexual men on their relationship with masculinity alone, which seems to me important but incomplete, considering that - taken away the feeding of mutual insecurities that is the fag hag/sterotypical gay man friendship- there is a whole world to explore about the interaction between females and male homosexuals. This is not even getting into female homosexuality itself, which is never discussed enough.

Yeah, precisely - gender, sexuality, sex are all different things, and it's important that masculinity and femininity are not prescriptive things. Masculinity and femininity are not single objects. I think it's easier to see in art than in people, there's a fluid, non-dogmatic sense in which it's possible to be a feminine rugby player, a masculine fag, a masculine shoe-model, a feminine Diesel dyke.

This thread's gay.

[/obvious since I'm posting in it and I like fingers in my ass and yada yada]

Let's show these Americans what complex thinking is really made of.

Are you hitting on me?

I can smell your voice from here.

That could well be self-satisfaction you can smell.

^^^ that's super.



if I was gay, I'd be very interested in finding another descriptor.

"gay" died about the time that 14 year olds starting using it instead of "retarded".

whatever it is, choose one for yrself soon before you end up a "special sexual needs person".

I call myself hatredsexual. That way I'm not discriminating against anyone.

I wanted to mention something about the validity of this perspective from its connection with ancient Greco-Roman ideals this morning but couldn't think of how to introduce it. So now I'm using the fact as the introduction.

I often wonder how much the notions of Greco-Roman sexuality isn't a bit at odds with what the non-aristocracy or barbarians were doing. That is to say, posh people have always been indulgent ponces (Bacchanale [sp?]/ Saturnalia), but were the plebs rolling in shit actually into fucking pigs?

I'm going to not edit that statement so as to remind myself of how not to construct a sentence.

Can I call myself a homopsycho then?

Of course they weren't into it, or if they were, they simply had been mentally raped enough by the ruling classes to think that they were enjoying it, when they were forced to fuck one.

You're such a suidaphobe.

[quote=Nefeli]i just, sometimes, find that it is a sad dead end that we have to label everything that way.
i understand, we need words to describe our sexual preferences when we are asked and that the labeling and isolation is from needed to convenient.
as far as i m aware, the straight term is also stereotyped and has a negative meaning regarding especially a man's, limited, mainstream way of thinking and certain social behaviour.
there has always been men who retained? their male apperiance/behaviour, but of course i cant know the % of those who did that because they had to keep their homosexuality hidden. i dont see androphilia as bad, it could bring some balance in people's way of thinking for one, but will it end up being another social situation with elements of isolation and stereotypes?

and a question.
im a woman, but lets say i m a man, straight man and i like to paint men's thighs in a tom of finland kind of way. would my art be considered gay and me aswell and why should it?[/quote]


haha. I love you.

An Observation on Two Essentialisms

Mon 10:42pm
It is a rare thing when the very same gay males who oppose the slightest acknowledgment of gender essentialism do not also embrace and hold dear a number of essentialist ideas about homosexual males. How can it be that males and females may not generally be described as having certain tendencies, behaviors and aptitudes, but homosexual males are somehow naturally more "artistic," "cultured," "stylish," or "witty?" It is easy to catch someone who faithfully asserts that males and females are essentially the same offhandedly according gays with any number of natural "gifts" which make them, as a group, special or even superior. These two positions are obviously irreconcilable, and this commonplace is one of numerous ways that gays reveal their "culture" to be fundamentally little more than a "self esteem" movement.


The above is a brilliant observation by Jack Malebranche which sparked an interesting chat online with him and some other dudes. Any comments/thoughts are much appreciated.

I was wondering the other day about how gay culture is a study in cultural identity - black or jews or women have always been a cultural category, but gays (as a cultural category, can't emphasise that enough) are a relatively recent phenomenon. Like any recently-awakened 'pride' movement, the gays have to be afforded a little bit of slack for defence mechanisms. The problem is where that line between defense-mechanism and enforced alienation is drawn. I can't help but feel that gay becomes an article of faith for a lot of misled sorts. One of the major troubles of 'the gay' is that a gay isn't a gay in every situation - if you're black or a woman, it's near-impossible to avoid that alienation, but there are plenty of gays who live 'two' lives (or, less dismissively, live one life with different facets).

A gay in a gay club is bound to act differently to how s/he does in their daytime life. I think you have to be very careful about drawing the sort of conclusions drawn above - gays in gay clubs aren't a militant, pro-active political organism, they're a bunch of people having a laugh. Of course they're bound to say that gays are great in that context, but are they saying it in front of the houses of parliament? No, they're really not.

This post is a bit drifting, sorry.

Yes they are, otherswise why would you have a march that passes through Whitehall every year? It's called 'GAY PRIDE', not 'IM FINE WITH HOW NATURE MADE ME, NEITHER ASHAMED NOR PROUD'. Also, I have more than enough experience to testify that many, many gays in clubs/pubs don't just have a laugh, often they carry a secret code of conduct which unfolds the more you talk to them and listen. Of course there are aspects of camp culture that I enjoy and embrace, but not when they seem to be the sole point to your advantage.

Surely the codificatoin of social practises occurs as much with a collection of Estate Agents as it does 'the gays'? What is the collective noun for estate agents?

The one that prevents them from dressing in rainbow colours and drives them to march on top of homeless people?

You promised you'd keep my secret shame away from the internet. How dare you. How will I show my face in Wales now?

"Cunts". You may thank me now, later, or never. Spiffing question anyway, what what?

Back on topic - the gay "identity" thing is a sure interesting one...I recall that when I first came out, it seemed important for me to let everyone know of my, uh, gayness, which said a lot about my-then utter insecurity about the whole thing. Sure, being homosexual/"bisexual"/whatever is an important part of my life, but that's it, simply a part. These days, I find the whole "gayer than thou" thing that afflicts not a few peeps in the 'scene here in London tiresome as fuck. I'm tired of cock-talk and bitchy one-upmanship (hello Comptons...). Ultimately, I'd rather be known as an OK/decent human being who happens to be gay etc, rather than a gay who happens to be OK.

I finally feel LIBERATED! I'm now ready to log off, go out, and start walking over the homeless with a smile on my face.

^^^Hooray!

We've been discussing the Symposium for the past week and a half in my Plato class. What should be said about otherness of love? Malebranche (fitting name) seems to deny the necessity of masculine/feminine dynamics but does he reject that otherness is at all necessary for love? Does he even consider love, or this just about sexual desire?

I'm not sure what you mean. Have you read the book?

Ask Lacan. Which other are you talking about?

Actually, on second thoughts, it strikes me that he's rejecting the 'other' of enforced alienation in the social in favour of a (presumably supressed) predicate of a more Platonic other. Again, ask Lacan.

No, just your summery. I suppose I'm really just positing the question rhetoically. I have been interested in reading this for myself.

I think I'll read Malebranche first. See if I can do the work myself.