This was originally going to be a piece about how gay saunas – bathhouses if you are in the US – are becoming pressured to admit transmen despite the fact that a ‘transman’ is female, but I became increasingly frustrated by how I felt compelled to clarify what I meant when I was using words like ‘gay’ and ‘men’.
Ordinarily I don’t agree with writer Douglas Murray on many things but he does have at least one aspect right; we really are living in a demented time where reason and rationality have left the room. It should be simple enough in 2021 to talk about gay men and know people will understand what is meant by the words, particularly after 60+ years of LGB activism.
These days the language that we use to describe ourselves has become so muddied that it has become increasingly difficult, and exhausting, to communicate meaning clearly because our words have become contested in a way that not only feels unnatural but also quite ludicrous. Where meaning cannot be changed or challenged motives are instead ascribed to us; now using the words ‘same sex attraction’ carries the demented accusation that this implies support for conversion therapy.
From one very tired gay man to another let me say it’s about time more gay men grew a backbone and spoke up, because while you stand by silently the wolves in sheep’s clothing are actively undermining your hard-won rights as exclusively same sex attracted men.
As these crazy arguments are made, those most active in doing so are undermining the principle that their own rights have been granted in law under the Equality Act 2010 as same-sex attraction.
Meanwhile many gay men, a demographic that are not usually known for keeping their opinions to themselves, are nowhere to be seen. From one very tired gay man to another let me say it’s about time more gay men grew a backbone and spoke up, because while you stand by silently the wolves in sheep’s clothing are actively undermining your hard-won rights as exclusively same sex attracted men.
A key aspect of these demented thoughts seem to revolve around the idea that if you control language you control thought and if you control thought you can control expression, and as sex is how we express our homosexuality they seem to believe that you can control that as well. It seems to presuppose that every aspect of the human experience is divorced from the physical body and that we are simply a collection of identities that are purely down to the choice of that individual. The logic of this argument is that when you are sacked from work by your homophobic boss, or were disowned by your family after you came out, or were beaten up by queer bashers, or were laughed at by the police after being raped was because you identified into (a choice) being gay. It is incredibly offensive on so many levels.
The crazy obsession with language is motivated by the desire to decouple the concept of biological sex from the human experience, because they are inextricably linked to the word sex and sex is bound up in the physical body is the reason why terms like same-sex attraction and homosexual are labelled as offensive or outdated. Playing by their demented rules and shying away from using our language feeds the false narrative that these words have fallen out of favour. This is an attempt to shame us into silence at a time when now more than ever we need to make sure that people understand that being a gay man means being a male homosexual.
Why are we having to explain that homosexuality is not a choice, and neither is it hateful? Wasn’t this argument already won? The irony seems lost on those that say LGB people who refuse to conform to the new homophobic diktats around language are part of a well-funded American right wing orthodox Christian plot to destroy our community and roll back our rights. The American right-wing orthodox Christians do not need to lift a finger, the gender identity activists are doing the work for them and they are doing it for free.
To those gay men that say that transmen are men, I draw attention to the fact that only 5% of transmen actually go through with phalloplasty/metoidioplasty and so if transmen are men you are expected to be sexually orientated toward people who have a vagina. Putting pronouns in your bio and/or performatively talking about how you would include transmen in your dating pool, safe in the knowledge that you will never have to put your money where your mouth is, might seem harmless. It is not. You are contributing to the false and damaging narrative that gay men can be female, and in doing so making it harder to justify maintaining our own spaces away from the opposite sex.
If females can be gay men where can biological (see, I feel that I must be explicit here) males attracted to other biological males go to meet others like them away from the female gaze? Why are we having to explain that homosexuality is not a choice, and neither is it hateful? Wasn’t this argument already won? The irony seems lost on those that say LGB people who refuse to conform to the new homophobic diktats around language are part of a well-funded American right wing orthodox Christian plot to destroy our community and roll back our rights. The American right-wing orthodox Christians do not need to lift a finger, the gender identity activists are doing the work for them and they are doing it for free.
Despite their attempt to control language the demented cannot control reality. There have always been men (males) who are exclusively attracted to other men (males), and we will always be here. We are reminded daily by the demented that we continue to be targeted for abuse and harassment because of our innate homosexuality. They can try to remove our ability to articulate our struggle, but we must not allow it. We aren’t going anywhere, and we need to find our voices and reclaim our words, we must be shouting it loud and shouting it proud as we enter the next chapter in our long battle against the bigots.
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Another great piece Judy. Thank you
Nail on head!