It’s socially acceptable to say rude & disparaging things to some people based on their membership in a group, while entirely unacceptable to do this with other groups. There are a bunch of unspoken rules about this primarily established by lamentable historical dynamics from the past we are now ashamed of.
Thank you so much for this unexpected defense. This Gay man appreciates it.
I’ve definitely rediscovered olden days homophobia while coming to the heterodox/gender critical space. I usually don’t engage when I see the homophobic stuff, but it really does make me consider whether the far “progressive” voices in the LGBTQ community aren’t without merit.
I’m in this space for good thinking. I love evidence. I have a lot of hopes for the future of gay men and what we have to offer each other.
I’m always mindful of just how recently gay marriage was allowed (hold up all your fingers, that’s about how many years it’s been legal in the US). I’m super, inescapably, aware of just how decimated society left generations of gay men before me. Good role models are scarce in our community. Gay elders are some of the most selfish, hurt, uninterested, and self destructive elements of Gay world as I’ve experienced it (I’m a millennial). There are exceptions, but the support of straight people doesn’t make for the health lacking in an older generation of gay men. Society treated older gay men badly. This is a truth that doesn’t go away the minute something is legalized or society starts to put in the effort. Gay culture is populated my memes and ideas that come from an era of deprivation and scarcity. Will drag never die? Must the community always be stuck in the 70s?
But older generations of gay men have forgotten what it was like to be young and gay. It is still mostly the case that gay men come out sometime at the end of highschool or in college. No matter how “accepting” straight people are, gay men in highschool now are still in a lonely journey. And on the other side older out gay men expect a new generation of gay men to be a continuation of their lives, rather than a slow growing life of its own, rhyming in similar challenges that need to be overcome the way any human being, born, must learn lessons for themselves.
The media is addicted to gay men on the brink of despair or the breaking edge sanity. Most of gay health is completely hidden from public view. I’m furious that tv shows like generation+ (where the gay character played by Justice Smith) set up insane standards of what a gay kid should be. Whose vision is this? Today’s zeitgeist won’t allow gay men to matter unless they are the cutting edge of radical.
The older gay men often abort the fuller more whole vision younger gay generations have for themselves. They will often call what I see as a full life, “boring”. They are so bored. What they dream of getting from younger gay men is to be entertained. The generation of gay men just before millennials seems obsessed what’s “next”. Think trans, or anything to distract from the many things before they’ve left incomplete. It’s very hard to break the news that doing the same thing, raising gay men generation after generation, a little better than the last, is the goal. Older gays, and gay organizations like GLAAD should’ve held the line for this.
While being born gay is something that many gay men have clarity about, how to be in context with each other, how to love and be loved well, how to relate to a society (that isn’t natively aware of their needs), are all complex problems to negotiate.
If heterosexual people in majorities feel oppressed by transqueer ideology (as Andrew Sullivan calls it) you have no idea the pressure on gay men to accept every bullshit idea that comes down the pipeline. Try to negotiate your feeble rights while being called oppressors by straight women who want to take testosterone and have gay male community as their backup lovers. I’d love the meet the therapist who affirms this. Um, you just obligated gay men to do what? You just told a straight woman that if she transitions she will find the “nice” male love that she always admired in gay men? Gay men are often the expendable chaff when ideas in straight world fail. It is in our nature to be amenable. How can a young gay man defend himself against ideas he sees as wrong when the world around him has called him wrong and cannot be relied upon to defend his identity.
On some level it seems evolution’s allowing men who are entirely uninterested in women, is taken as a personal assault by some women. It makes me think these women have precious beliefs about themselves that the gay man by existing call into question. What value is so importantly held by straight women as to need all men to be evidence of either her universal oppressive struggle against men, or male validation of her goddess-like, mother-creator of all? We don’t live in a universe where either of these things are true.
Not caring about gay men isn’t the answer either. Gay men are on a different path and we deserve dignity and a government that respect our needs. Gay men are not straight men, even though we must play the heterosexual game because it is the Lingua Franca of business, government, and many aspects of human life today. I will happily open a door for a woman, give my seat to a woman, pretend a woman’s issues are even more important than my own. I expect no refund from heterosexual people at the end of the year because I’m a man to whom this labor is merely accepted as social custom. But what about my partner? Do you realize his importance to me? Do you know that we dream?
I was born into the Elton John gay world, where to find respect as a gay man in straight society you needed to be Elton John. That’s not the world I want to pass on to the next generation of gay men.
There's a lot there! And it looks like many subsets of people and collections of attitudes that have treated gay men badly and made their lives harder. My liberal attitude must be that we should go through life treating everybody with dignity and consideration and if one group of people is not being treated in this way by another group, we must stand against it.
"gay male sexuality is all about men publicly urinating on each other, engaging in public anal sex, walking about dressed as dogs with dildos protruding from their anuses and performing drag acts"
Entirely true if written about events such as Folsom in SF, but I believe that many if not most gays are not into this behavior. I've certainly seen many rejecting the bestiality & bondage fetishes aspect of current Pride events.
I know some people who drive gender critical over the edge - Gayle Rubin of “Thinking Sex”. A lovely woman who is smart as a firecracker and has a personal library to die for. We had a long discussion as I was working on an AI driven erotic Tarot and wanted to make a Lesbian version.
I gave up on the Lesbian version, it was hard to tune it to not be somewhat explicit or not explicit enough, and she and I had a long talk about female-female sexuality and female sexuality in general which was fascinating.
(I publish Gay art which books would probably make gender critical homophobes explode in a nuclear meltdown. She has a lot of illuminating things to say about gender critical feminists and homophobia. She’s been working the territory for 50 years.)
Her basic premise however is the entire trans eruption and sudden escalation is to create a wedge issue against gays and lesbians in the long run. They are forced to take sides (more than two here!) all of which are not particularly in their best interest - they team with teams who are ultimately homophobic on team LGTBQIA+ or they team with gender critical who are often also homophobes. The narrow passage is to repudiate LGBTQ+ and celebrate gay sex, which seems to trigger everyone else.
Gays have been at it a long time however - being gay isn’t politically about men loving men it’s about men fucking men and being cocksuckers (in the native parlance). That’s arrestable, prison focused and death penalty in many places. It’s still dead letter law in parts of the US.
When you take the sex out of Gay or Lesbian you have rainbows and pride which is, well, nothing.
I’m all for lesbians gettin’ it on and making sure everyone knows lesbian sex is deliciously fun, and same for gays. That sense of sex is still a bridge too far for an awful lot of people.
That’s the source of the issue. It’s not homosexuals; it’s homosexual sex. “Love the sinner not the sin” shit.
The problem with gender ideology was always that it is a form of identitarianism with all of the risks that this entails. The idea that identitarian Feminism is the solution is as silly as thinking Black Nationalism is the solution for White Supremacy or that Zionism is the solution for antisemitism. This "as a [insert a race/gender/sex/sexuality/etc. here]" stuff was always wrong.
Gays, Jews, Blacks, Whites, Women etc. are normal people same as any other. Neither inferior nor superior.
I wholeheartedly agree with your purpose in writing these things.
I found especially informative (not because it's the most important thing, but because it was the most enlightening to me) your comparison between radical misandry and the fake anti-racism of those who think white people are inherently racist. In a similar way, I found enlightening Jane Clare Jones pointing out that lesbian separatism is a a capitulation to patriarchal metaphysics, in that it assumes penetration is inherently oppressive, which amounts to seeing bodies as countries, man as invulnerable and woman as conquerable, a view that underlies so many other toxic concepts. It seems to me there is a common problematic view of female sexuality under all this.
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But please allow me some point of disagreement.
First of all, as a side note, I may be a pessimist, but presuming it's social conservativism that piggybacked on a well-established gender critical movement may be historically true in UK, but I'm afraid if we look at the numbers of people holding the different views, it may well be that the reverse is true, i.e. GCs are in the minority even in the opposition to TRAs bigotry (as it's shown, as an example, by those rejecting the label in favour of "sex realism", which seems clearly a way to distance themselves from left-wing criticism of gender norms).
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My main disagreement though is another one. I think it's perfectly legitimate to speak of the existence of a gay "culture" and to generalize individual observations to a group: it's not illiberal nor it means one is necessarily assuming "all gay men". (By the way, the rebuttal "not all gay men are misogynists" should immediately sound as a red flag for anyone familiar with feminism, because it's awfully similar to "not all men (are rapists, etc)"; which is technically true, but it also sounds dismissive, it is sometimes used as a narrative precisely because of that, and it's also certainly true that most rapists are men).
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You are of course correct that if one helds an individual accountable for the behaviour of other individuals who share a characteristic only because of that shared characteristic, that one is behaving in the same essentialist way that identity ideology does. But one has also to avoid another problem of that ideology, which is denialism of average differences between groups. Men and women are different; their psychologies and sexualities too. So it is indeed true that female sexuality acts as breaker in heterosexual relationship, and that breaker is absent among gay men. And it may well be true also that misogyny is more prevalent among gay men than it is among heterosexual men (or, at least, they have less incentive to hide it).
I quote from Gareth Robert's "Gay Shame": "Men are inclined to be sexually promiscuous and women less so. (...) Straight men's eyes often pop out on envious stalks when you tell them of the accessibility and variety of sex on easy offer in the gay world. (...) Gay men have a dirty little secret: a tendency -not universal but pretty pronounced- to sexism, rooted in sexual jealousy and male entitlement. Gay male acquiescence to genderism therefore doesn't come out of nowhere; it comes out of old-fashioned sexism".
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I also think there is a perfectly legitimate feminist tradition of critique of certain aspects of gay culture. As an example, as a liberal I wouldn't support a ban on drag queens, but I also think feminists are entitled to find it problematic. I quote from "Going too far: The Personal Chronicle of a Feminist" by Robin Morgan (1978, Vintage Books edition; she is referring here to transvestitism and transexualism, but the reasoning would be the same): "We know what’s at work when whites wear blackface; the same thing is at work when men wear drag". This are almost the same words that Fred Sargeant himself used on a placard a couple years ago to protest genderism when he was assaulted by TRAs: "No blackface, no womanface".
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Of course what I said doesn't mean I condone either homophobic language or the use of violent imagery, which of course I do not (fagots would be a reminder of burning at the stake, even though this etimology is an urban legend- see Warren Johansson "The Etymology of the Word Faggot", Gay Books Bulletin, 6 (1981) https://homolexis.blogspot.com/2007/01/faggot.html).
I just don't think its any woman's business how the gale male dating scene works and it certainly has no responsibility to enact female-typical dating norms to compensate for the lack of a female breaker. A dating scene only needs to accommodate women's preferences when it has women in it but the gay male dating scene doesn't affect women in any way and can therefore be left alone by women.
People only say "Men aren't all rapists" when someone has said something that suggests that men as a whole are responsible for men who are rapists. They're not. Just as I am not responsible for women who deceive men about paternity and then deny men access to the children they thought was biologically theirs. If someone says women do this, I will absolutely say that far from all women do this and I think its morally unconscionable. Like this:
"This guy raped a woman. He's a sick bastard"
"Not all men are rapists."
That's defensive and irrelevant.
"This guy raped a woman. Men are sick bastards."
"Not all men are rapists."
That's liberal opposition to collective blame.
Of course, feminists can criticise drag. As you point out, some gay men do too. I'd defend anybody's right to criticise anything. Other people don't feel this way and the majority of audiences for drag acts are women so they can argue with each other if they want to, but anybody saying "Women oppose drag" or "Women support drag" will just be wrong and should criticise women for what they actually think and do, not what some other women think and do.
Thank you for your reply, though it doesn't seem to me you engaged with the relevant points, one of which is you seem to conflate different things, and, frankly, this does seem analogous to those who deny there can exist any sexual difference.
Is it possible that gay culture can harbour on average more sexism? Yes it is. Does this mean all gay are sexist? No, it doesn't. You did in fact affirmed in your essay some things that go contrary to the experience of at least some people, among them a gay author who wrote a book calling out problematic aspects of gay culture. Everything we do affect others, if only in indirect ways. Saying gay dating scene doesn't affect women would be like saying since I have not children I shouldn't care if gender affirmation ends up by transing the gay away. Foucauldian extremism is bad, but denying culture has material impacts is too.
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"This guy raped a woman. Men are sick bastards."
"Not all men are rapists."
That's liberal opposition to collective blame.
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I disagree and this is where I think the conflation (I hope involuntarily) happens. The one who were to say that clearly would be spelling badly but the difference with the case "defensive and irrelevant" is not so clear cut. I find almost disingenous to deny that. One could say, for example, "men on average are more sick bastards then women" which if it is meant as "most rapists are men" is also clearly true.
It's not so easy to distinguish the liberal position with the (wrongly) absolving one.
One thing is to say that personal responsibility is what matters when criminal behaviour is involved. Quite another is to pretend there is no such thing as collective cultural conditioning. Men are indeed responsible IN A CERTAIN SENSE (clearly different from a legal one; we could call that social, or moral sense) if they don't do anything to oppose a negative status quo. As we are in general as a society; why are you trying to change people's mind otherwise? You could just sit and wait hoping for things to get better magically by themselves. But of course you know this wouldn't happen; so you act because you care. There is no obligation to act, but there is also not a right to an automatic absolution if you fail to act and in doing so you actually encourage the behaviour to persist. Maybe it's because you can't participate in every fight; but maybe it's because you don't care.
I'm pretty sure you despise those who don't believe in gender identity ideology but don't call it out, not out of fear of consequences, but because they can exploit their virtue signalling to advance their position. I don't see how can you deny that this does happen also about sexism and misogyny, with SOME men (both hetero and gay) not calling them out because it is convenient for them to (not) do so.
It's not difficult to understand. The normalization of trans and pushing of it was done by gay organizations in the 1990s. Human Rights Campaign, GLAAD, etc, all pushed trans. That's because they had won on gay marriage, and had nothing to continue to get contributions. If you go to the websites of Big Alphabet groups today, you STILL find them pushing the rainbow trans flag. And promoting trans.
So I hold them responsible for the current trans situation. And I do resent gay organizations for this. Also a LOT of gay folks continue to push trans even today.
Many warned gay activists and gay organizations that pay-back was coming. And now it has come. Too fucking bad, gay folks. You need to be a LOT FUCKING STRONGER against trannie madness. Association with trans is damaging gay folks, and that's just fine by me.
When you push a pile of shit, you will get some shit on you.
But these are very specifically men in the gender critical movement who are under fire. They not only didn't push 'queer' ideologies on people but actively organised against it. They typically have the hashtag #GayNotQueer in their bios. And the gender criticals feminists know this, but they blame them for everything including gender identity ideology anyway, just as they'd blame you for rape culture because you are (presumably) a straight man. They would no matter how much you said you would never commit or condone rape and even if you'd dedicated as much time as these men have to opposing 'queer theory' ideas to opposing rhetoric and attitudes that treat women as sex objects. You're guilty of complicity simply because you are a straight man and rape still happens. Because they are collectivists. Don't be a collectivist.
All of that is irrelevant. The issue is "how did trans get going" and the answer is "LBG promoted TQ+". This is a historical fact. Now LBG is stuck with TQ+. And the stench is beginning to permeate the LGB. I don't care if some minor "gay not queer" group comes along. We would not have trans without LGB.
How does that work? What do you want lesbian, gay and bisexual people to do? Disappear?
This is the same collectivist logic as "How does rape occur?" The answer is "Men commit rape." I also ask collectivist feminists if they would like us to make men disappear when they present 'men' as the problem rather than men who commit rape. They offer no solution (or any way to have prevented the problem in the first place) as we cannot, and hopefully do not want to, cull all men.
If you present LGB people as the cause of authoritarian trans activism regardless of whether they supported it or opposed it, you offer no solution (or any way to have prevented the problem in the first place) as we cannot, and hopefully do not want to, cull all same sex attracted people. You are just indulging in prejudice against same sex attracted people in lieu of doing anything useful to address authoritarian trans activism just as misandrist feminists who use this reasoning indulge their prejudice against men rather than doing anything to reduce sexual violence against women.
I'm afraid you can't just tell me that my argument that we have to evaluate people on what they believe, say and do and not on their immutable characteristics is irrelevant. It's not irrelevant to addressing any real world problems as they are caused by what people believe, say and do. If it's just irrelevant to your wish that same sex attracted people did not exist, your input is irrelevant to any productive conversation or to reality because they do.
You are speaking of the internal state of the gay person. I am not gay. I have no idea if it is immutable, a choice, or some combination.
What I am speaking about is the political/social nature of the support of TQ+ by gay organizations. It is a simple fact that the "march of dimes effect" operated - that when the primary purpose of Big Gay was accomplished (gay marriage), they did not fold up their tents and fade away. They changed their focus to TQ+. Today, they continue to promote TQ+.
It is not important what a few individual gay folks do - some oppose TQ+. A HUGE number still support TQ+. So fuck them.
I went and looked at the GLAAD site. Lots of support for trans. So, the Big LGB has tied its future and its weldschmerz to TQ+. I hope they rot in hell. I no longer support gay persons or gay organizations.
Ordinary gay folks need to get far more active. Oppose trans. Oppose drag perversion and drag grooming. Join parents' groups in opposition to pervert books in elementary school
Why should they get more active when the ones who do get verbally abused by gender critical feminists? How much more of his programming would you like Andrew Doyle to dedicate to precisely those issues? How many more organisations should he join and support that do that? At what point will he have done enough to not be called disgusting things and have false accusations thrown at him? I've already explained to you that these are very specifically gay men who have been opposing gender identity and queer activism. That's how they are known and targeted by these women. For being prominent in doing exactly that.
You have precisely the same collectivist attitude as they do. Some gay men support authoritarian trans & queer activism so fuck all of them? In this case you have no grounds to object to anybody blaming you for anything another straight man does or another person of your race. To be ethically consistent - if that matters to you at all - you will now need to accept that others have the right to vilify and discriminate against you for being a straight, white man because some of them who aren't you are misogynists, rapists, white supremacists, paedophiles etc.
I won't make any further attempts to persuade you to evaluate others on what they say and do and not their characteristics. Once someone is this far gone into identity politics, there is seldom any hope of reaching them.
So I’ve been involved in the gay/lesbian and feminist movement since the late 70’s. Encountered ‘drag queens’ a bit early on but, personally never thought it funny or entertaining (though plenty did). At work I was involved with our LGBT employees group but, in truth, no T ever showed up (retired in 2013 so the trans movement hadn’t gathered steam). I think it kinda belongs under the umbrella (sexual deviance if you will) but it (the drag show component) has gotten pornified, it seems. Of course, drag’s not trans but there certainly have been overlaps. Our selfie-culture is allowing more and more to post & rate/mock appearances to an unprecedented degree. I’m rather picture shy myself.
It wasn't because of gay men that the letter T was added to the acronym, as the few of them that did live their lives ostensibly "as women" were already included in "LGB". There was no need on their part for the addition of the letter Q, either, since "queer" is really a movement for radicals who 1. are typically straight or bisexual, 2. do not understand or even quite approve of exclusive homosexuality, 3. wish to hide their true identity behind an obscure label, and 4. work towards ideological goals that are antithetical to the "assimilationist" politics of the gay rights movement.
Long before anyone had heard of gay rights, cross-dressing straight men were a subculture in their own right, with their own publications, events and support networks, and (later) their own activism. The ingenious invention of these men was to merge their erotically-based transvestism conceptually with transsexualism, and subsequently transgenderism, so as to gain access to the resources and social status of the more successful gay rights movement.
Today, the "LGBTQ+" is a captured movement that caters to straight people with cross-sex identities as "lesbians with penises" or "gay men who menstruate", or ideological identities that vaguely answer to the name "queer". Straight people demand control over historical gay and lesbian spaces, demand that the very definition of homosexuality be changed to accommodate their cross-sex identity play, and aggressively oppose any attempts of gay people to organise on their own. Independent LGB organisations like the LGB Alliance are labelled "a bizarre offshoot of the far-right anti-gender movement" by organisations that used to defend gay people from exactly that kind of totalising slander.
So while it is possible to accuse some gay men of being naively supportive of the postmodern gender identity movement, it is perversely inaccurate to blame gay men, as a group, for the thing itself. Very many things had to coincide in order for gender identity to become the sociocultural phenomenon it is today. To simply say "gay men did it" is to purposely miss the big picture.
Will this ever get out of the schoolyard antics, spiteful pranks, and immature behaviour. There are some serious issues here, for everyone.
And LGBTQ++++ I have never understood why they have lumped themselves all together, They all HATE each other and each others lifestyles and politics values morals and sex sexuality and genders.
Its like the only people hanging round the toilets is the school bitchy lot. Waiting for anyone else to enter so they can have a go at them.
I've been banned off Twitter for over a few years now for a post I wont remove.
FINE! I'm out of it, So peaceful and I dont want to give Mr Musk any commonsense light to his online bigotry barnyard
Sorry it is so bitchy and nasty
Have you ever thought of coming out of it?
Its so peaceful when you dont know what everyone is thinking and saying about you, They will still say it and think it, but the you are just getting on with your life, Raising your issues but not getting into the sticky mire of schoolgirl toilets
Excellent stuff as ever. I’d just like to point out, while not entirely relevant to the argument here, that there are plenty of social conservatives who are not authoritarian, but think that traditional families and sex roles/ behaviours need defending from constant criticism, and people should not be denigrated or challenged for preferring to keep living that way. In fact it is commonplace to see people championing radical lifestyles while taking full advantage of traditional living.
Yep, I had a sentence on that but I had to cut words. That's why I used both 'extreme' and 'authoritarian' because I don't want to indicate, say, a couple who both want a lifestyle where they get married before living together and where he is the breadwinner and she dedicates herself to the home and family and they think and say that this is the best way to live and it's good for families and societies, but they're not campaigning to criminalise homosexuality or calling women who have had sex before marriage 'used up holes" etc. Liberals must also support liberal social conservatives. That may sound like an oxymoron, because liberals are defined as people who want everybody to be able to believe, speak and live as they see fit provided it harms no-one else or denies them the same freedoms and social conservatives think this is too individualistic a way to evaluate whether something is right or wrong and centre their morality on certain virtues, traditions and norms that they think serves society well. But this is two different levels. I use 'liberal' as an adjective to mean 'anti-authoritarian' so if someone can say "I am a social conservative and I believe this is the best way to be, but I will not try to force everyone to do it" they are a liberal social conservative on this level.
"... consistently principled people recognise this illiberal collectivist mentality to ..."
I'm not a liberal (or conservative). I believe a collectivist mentality is not only justified/ethical but necessary in addressing patriarchy and rape culture. All members of a patriarchal society bear a degree of responsibility for the oppression of women, man and woman alike
I'm disappointed in homophobic, analphobic GC women. Despite the taboo surrounding it, anal between individuals of the same sex is neither sinful nor problematic. And recognizing that men's "sexuality" is a ruthless hunt for domination, that "all men are predators satisfying their depraved appetites," how befitting it is to endorse the noble, virtuous path of homosexuality
The men whose appetites bypass the female flesh, whose affections are reserved for their fellow men, are to be hailed as champions of virtue, as towering pillars of decency in a society gone awry and insane. They leave women alone, offering women a measure of respite from the constant barrage of male attention. That's a good thing
It's only when these men begin to fetishize women's bodies, indulge in drag, or use surrogates that our eyebrows can begin to ascend towards the heavens. Their wonderfully subversive expressions of homosexuality should remain immune from our disparagements
"... found that 86% of men and 74% of women supported equal rights for women. The evidence that men are at least as likely to support women’s rights as women are is neglected ..."
Because it's not evidence
The naivety of placing one's trust in the statistical mirage that identifies as "evidence" of men's support for women's rights ... The words tripping so glibly off the tongues of men aren't a true reflection of their actions. If one were to judge men's commitment to women's rights based on their actions rather than their words, one would be forgiven for concluding that men are, collectively, opponents of equality
For every token knight/ally, a legion of jesters defile such chivalry through their twisted performance of toxic masculinity, unwanted advances/harassment, and passive consumption of the bitter fruits of misogynistic media, all the while feigning innocence amidst the ruins of a patriarchy
It's a common psychological defense mechanism to deflect blame by clinging to flimsy defenses of "not all men" or "not all [insert group]." No one wants to be "the villain/bad guy." Until we recognize we are all "villains," there can be no meaningful change or improvement
The reason I've declined to castigate Reduxx and co is that it's clear to me Slatzism is attacking the normalisation of damaging sexual incontinence, not homosexuality. When a large number of gay men took umbrage, expressing solidarity with the incontinent, indulging in a range of misogynies and insisted she apologised for the homophobia she hadn't expressed, she mocked them.
Rather in the same spirit Kellie Jay Keen adopted a photoshopped 'Nazi Barbie's as her pfp. It's expressing contempt for the authoritarianism of her critics. The more the cancel mob ooh'd and aah'd, the more punk she went. I can't speak to these other actual homophobes who've been drawn in, but Reduxx in my book is miles away from that.
Thanks, Helen, for continuing to represent and explain a principled, liberal stance.
I’m with you. And am sooo grateful for your ability to sort out the differences that underpin these clashing attitudes/positions.
It’s socially acceptable to say rude & disparaging things to some people based on their membership in a group, while entirely unacceptable to do this with other groups. There are a bunch of unspoken rules about this primarily established by lamentable historical dynamics from the past we are now ashamed of.
I think people are tired of this.
Thank you so much for this unexpected defense. This Gay man appreciates it.
I’ve definitely rediscovered olden days homophobia while coming to the heterodox/gender critical space. I usually don’t engage when I see the homophobic stuff, but it really does make me consider whether the far “progressive” voices in the LGBTQ community aren’t without merit.
I’m in this space for good thinking. I love evidence. I have a lot of hopes for the future of gay men and what we have to offer each other.
I’m always mindful of just how recently gay marriage was allowed (hold up all your fingers, that’s about how many years it’s been legal in the US). I’m super, inescapably, aware of just how decimated society left generations of gay men before me. Good role models are scarce in our community. Gay elders are some of the most selfish, hurt, uninterested, and self destructive elements of Gay world as I’ve experienced it (I’m a millennial). There are exceptions, but the support of straight people doesn’t make for the health lacking in an older generation of gay men. Society treated older gay men badly. This is a truth that doesn’t go away the minute something is legalized or society starts to put in the effort. Gay culture is populated my memes and ideas that come from an era of deprivation and scarcity. Will drag never die? Must the community always be stuck in the 70s?
But older generations of gay men have forgotten what it was like to be young and gay. It is still mostly the case that gay men come out sometime at the end of highschool or in college. No matter how “accepting” straight people are, gay men in highschool now are still in a lonely journey. And on the other side older out gay men expect a new generation of gay men to be a continuation of their lives, rather than a slow growing life of its own, rhyming in similar challenges that need to be overcome the way any human being, born, must learn lessons for themselves.
The media is addicted to gay men on the brink of despair or the breaking edge sanity. Most of gay health is completely hidden from public view. I’m furious that tv shows like generation+ (where the gay character played by Justice Smith) set up insane standards of what a gay kid should be. Whose vision is this? Today’s zeitgeist won’t allow gay men to matter unless they are the cutting edge of radical.
The older gay men often abort the fuller more whole vision younger gay generations have for themselves. They will often call what I see as a full life, “boring”. They are so bored. What they dream of getting from younger gay men is to be entertained. The generation of gay men just before millennials seems obsessed what’s “next”. Think trans, or anything to distract from the many things before they’ve left incomplete. It’s very hard to break the news that doing the same thing, raising gay men generation after generation, a little better than the last, is the goal. Older gays, and gay organizations like GLAAD should’ve held the line for this.
While being born gay is something that many gay men have clarity about, how to be in context with each other, how to love and be loved well, how to relate to a society (that isn’t natively aware of their needs), are all complex problems to negotiate.
If heterosexual people in majorities feel oppressed by transqueer ideology (as Andrew Sullivan calls it) you have no idea the pressure on gay men to accept every bullshit idea that comes down the pipeline. Try to negotiate your feeble rights while being called oppressors by straight women who want to take testosterone and have gay male community as their backup lovers. I’d love the meet the therapist who affirms this. Um, you just obligated gay men to do what? You just told a straight woman that if she transitions she will find the “nice” male love that she always admired in gay men? Gay men are often the expendable chaff when ideas in straight world fail. It is in our nature to be amenable. How can a young gay man defend himself against ideas he sees as wrong when the world around him has called him wrong and cannot be relied upon to defend his identity.
Here’s a video that I can relate to as a gay man around women: https://m.youtube.com/shorts/KIrN-F3XrsU
On some level it seems evolution’s allowing men who are entirely uninterested in women, is taken as a personal assault by some women. It makes me think these women have precious beliefs about themselves that the gay man by existing call into question. What value is so importantly held by straight women as to need all men to be evidence of either her universal oppressive struggle against men, or male validation of her goddess-like, mother-creator of all? We don’t live in a universe where either of these things are true.
Not caring about gay men isn’t the answer either. Gay men are on a different path and we deserve dignity and a government that respect our needs. Gay men are not straight men, even though we must play the heterosexual game because it is the Lingua Franca of business, government, and many aspects of human life today. I will happily open a door for a woman, give my seat to a woman, pretend a woman’s issues are even more important than my own. I expect no refund from heterosexual people at the end of the year because I’m a man to whom this labor is merely accepted as social custom. But what about my partner? Do you realize his importance to me? Do you know that we dream?
I was born into the Elton John gay world, where to find respect as a gay man in straight society you needed to be Elton John. That’s not the world I want to pass on to the next generation of gay men.
There's a lot there! And it looks like many subsets of people and collections of attitudes that have treated gay men badly and made their lives harder. My liberal attitude must be that we should go through life treating everybody with dignity and consideration and if one group of people is not being treated in this way by another group, we must stand against it.
Thank you Helen.
I'm an old school radfem and recovering misandrist and I agree with your analysis here. Absolutely spot on. Thank you.
"gay male sexuality is all about men publicly urinating on each other, engaging in public anal sex, walking about dressed as dogs with dildos protruding from their anuses and performing drag acts"
Entirely true if written about events such as Folsom in SF, but I believe that many if not most gays are not into this behavior. I've certainly seen many rejecting the bestiality & bondage fetishes aspect of current Pride events.
So well said Helen! You’ve put into words the very thing that’s been bothering me lately 👏 thank you.
Thank you so much for this.
This is a nice conversation, and my $0.02
I know some people who drive gender critical over the edge - Gayle Rubin of “Thinking Sex”. A lovely woman who is smart as a firecracker and has a personal library to die for. We had a long discussion as I was working on an AI driven erotic Tarot and wanted to make a Lesbian version.
Https://www.wildwesttarot.com - Lusty Rusty has some stories! (It’s years old)
I gave up on the Lesbian version, it was hard to tune it to not be somewhat explicit or not explicit enough, and she and I had a long talk about female-female sexuality and female sexuality in general which was fascinating.
(I publish Gay art which books would probably make gender critical homophobes explode in a nuclear meltdown. She has a lot of illuminating things to say about gender critical feminists and homophobia. She’s been working the territory for 50 years.)
Her basic premise however is the entire trans eruption and sudden escalation is to create a wedge issue against gays and lesbians in the long run. They are forced to take sides (more than two here!) all of which are not particularly in their best interest - they team with teams who are ultimately homophobic on team LGTBQIA+ or they team with gender critical who are often also homophobes. The narrow passage is to repudiate LGBTQ+ and celebrate gay sex, which seems to trigger everyone else.
Gays have been at it a long time however - being gay isn’t politically about men loving men it’s about men fucking men and being cocksuckers (in the native parlance). That’s arrestable, prison focused and death penalty in many places. It’s still dead letter law in parts of the US.
When you take the sex out of Gay or Lesbian you have rainbows and pride which is, well, nothing.
I’m all for lesbians gettin’ it on and making sure everyone knows lesbian sex is deliciously fun, and same for gays. That sense of sex is still a bridge too far for an awful lot of people.
That’s the source of the issue. It’s not homosexuals; it’s homosexual sex. “Love the sinner not the sin” shit.
The problem with gender ideology was always that it is a form of identitarianism with all of the risks that this entails. The idea that identitarian Feminism is the solution is as silly as thinking Black Nationalism is the solution for White Supremacy or that Zionism is the solution for antisemitism. This "as a [insert a race/gender/sex/sexuality/etc. here]" stuff was always wrong.
Gays, Jews, Blacks, Whites, Women etc. are normal people same as any other. Neither inferior nor superior.
I wholeheartedly agree with your purpose in writing these things.
I found especially informative (not because it's the most important thing, but because it was the most enlightening to me) your comparison between radical misandry and the fake anti-racism of those who think white people are inherently racist. In a similar way, I found enlightening Jane Clare Jones pointing out that lesbian separatism is a a capitulation to patriarchal metaphysics, in that it assumes penetration is inherently oppressive, which amounts to seeing bodies as countries, man as invulnerable and woman as conquerable, a view that underlies so many other toxic concepts. It seems to me there is a common problematic view of female sexuality under all this.
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But please allow me some point of disagreement.
First of all, as a side note, I may be a pessimist, but presuming it's social conservativism that piggybacked on a well-established gender critical movement may be historically true in UK, but I'm afraid if we look at the numbers of people holding the different views, it may well be that the reverse is true, i.e. GCs are in the minority even in the opposition to TRAs bigotry (as it's shown, as an example, by those rejecting the label in favour of "sex realism", which seems clearly a way to distance themselves from left-wing criticism of gender norms).
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My main disagreement though is another one. I think it's perfectly legitimate to speak of the existence of a gay "culture" and to generalize individual observations to a group: it's not illiberal nor it means one is necessarily assuming "all gay men". (By the way, the rebuttal "not all gay men are misogynists" should immediately sound as a red flag for anyone familiar with feminism, because it's awfully similar to "not all men (are rapists, etc)"; which is technically true, but it also sounds dismissive, it is sometimes used as a narrative precisely because of that, and it's also certainly true that most rapists are men).
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You are of course correct that if one helds an individual accountable for the behaviour of other individuals who share a characteristic only because of that shared characteristic, that one is behaving in the same essentialist way that identity ideology does. But one has also to avoid another problem of that ideology, which is denialism of average differences between groups. Men and women are different; their psychologies and sexualities too. So it is indeed true that female sexuality acts as breaker in heterosexual relationship, and that breaker is absent among gay men. And it may well be true also that misogyny is more prevalent among gay men than it is among heterosexual men (or, at least, they have less incentive to hide it).
I quote from Gareth Robert's "Gay Shame": "Men are inclined to be sexually promiscuous and women less so. (...) Straight men's eyes often pop out on envious stalks when you tell them of the accessibility and variety of sex on easy offer in the gay world. (...) Gay men have a dirty little secret: a tendency -not universal but pretty pronounced- to sexism, rooted in sexual jealousy and male entitlement. Gay male acquiescence to genderism therefore doesn't come out of nowhere; it comes out of old-fashioned sexism".
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I also think there is a perfectly legitimate feminist tradition of critique of certain aspects of gay culture. As an example, as a liberal I wouldn't support a ban on drag queens, but I also think feminists are entitled to find it problematic. I quote from "Going too far: The Personal Chronicle of a Feminist" by Robin Morgan (1978, Vintage Books edition; she is referring here to transvestitism and transexualism, but the reasoning would be the same): "We know what’s at work when whites wear blackface; the same thing is at work when men wear drag". This are almost the same words that Fred Sargeant himself used on a placard a couple years ago to protest genderism when he was assaulted by TRAs: "No blackface, no womanface".
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Of course what I said doesn't mean I condone either homophobic language or the use of violent imagery, which of course I do not (fagots would be a reminder of burning at the stake, even though this etimology is an urban legend- see Warren Johansson "The Etymology of the Word Faggot", Gay Books Bulletin, 6 (1981) https://homolexis.blogspot.com/2007/01/faggot.html).
I just don't think its any woman's business how the gale male dating scene works and it certainly has no responsibility to enact female-typical dating norms to compensate for the lack of a female breaker. A dating scene only needs to accommodate women's preferences when it has women in it but the gay male dating scene doesn't affect women in any way and can therefore be left alone by women.
People only say "Men aren't all rapists" when someone has said something that suggests that men as a whole are responsible for men who are rapists. They're not. Just as I am not responsible for women who deceive men about paternity and then deny men access to the children they thought was biologically theirs. If someone says women do this, I will absolutely say that far from all women do this and I think its morally unconscionable. Like this:
"This guy raped a woman. He's a sick bastard"
"Not all men are rapists."
That's defensive and irrelevant.
"This guy raped a woman. Men are sick bastards."
"Not all men are rapists."
That's liberal opposition to collective blame.
Of course, feminists can criticise drag. As you point out, some gay men do too. I'd defend anybody's right to criticise anything. Other people don't feel this way and the majority of audiences for drag acts are women so they can argue with each other if they want to, but anybody saying "Women oppose drag" or "Women support drag" will just be wrong and should criticise women for what they actually think and do, not what some other women think and do.
Thank you for your reply, though it doesn't seem to me you engaged with the relevant points, one of which is you seem to conflate different things, and, frankly, this does seem analogous to those who deny there can exist any sexual difference.
Is it possible that gay culture can harbour on average more sexism? Yes it is. Does this mean all gay are sexist? No, it doesn't. You did in fact affirmed in your essay some things that go contrary to the experience of at least some people, among them a gay author who wrote a book calling out problematic aspects of gay culture. Everything we do affect others, if only in indirect ways. Saying gay dating scene doesn't affect women would be like saying since I have not children I shouldn't care if gender affirmation ends up by transing the gay away. Foucauldian extremism is bad, but denying culture has material impacts is too.
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"This guy raped a woman. Men are sick bastards."
"Not all men are rapists."
That's liberal opposition to collective blame.
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I disagree and this is where I think the conflation (I hope involuntarily) happens. The one who were to say that clearly would be spelling badly but the difference with the case "defensive and irrelevant" is not so clear cut. I find almost disingenous to deny that. One could say, for example, "men on average are more sick bastards then women" which if it is meant as "most rapists are men" is also clearly true.
It's not so easy to distinguish the liberal position with the (wrongly) absolving one.
One thing is to say that personal responsibility is what matters when criminal behaviour is involved. Quite another is to pretend there is no such thing as collective cultural conditioning. Men are indeed responsible IN A CERTAIN SENSE (clearly different from a legal one; we could call that social, or moral sense) if they don't do anything to oppose a negative status quo. As we are in general as a society; why are you trying to change people's mind otherwise? You could just sit and wait hoping for things to get better magically by themselves. But of course you know this wouldn't happen; so you act because you care. There is no obligation to act, but there is also not a right to an automatic absolution if you fail to act and in doing so you actually encourage the behaviour to persist. Maybe it's because you can't participate in every fight; but maybe it's because you don't care.
I'm pretty sure you despise those who don't believe in gender identity ideology but don't call it out, not out of fear of consequences, but because they can exploit their virtue signalling to advance their position. I don't see how can you deny that this does happen also about sexism and misogyny, with SOME men (both hetero and gay) not calling them out because it is convenient for them to (not) do so.
It's not difficult to understand. The normalization of trans and pushing of it was done by gay organizations in the 1990s. Human Rights Campaign, GLAAD, etc, all pushed trans. That's because they had won on gay marriage, and had nothing to continue to get contributions. If you go to the websites of Big Alphabet groups today, you STILL find them pushing the rainbow trans flag. And promoting trans.
So I hold them responsible for the current trans situation. And I do resent gay organizations for this. Also a LOT of gay folks continue to push trans even today.
Many warned gay activists and gay organizations that pay-back was coming. And now it has come. Too fucking bad, gay folks. You need to be a LOT FUCKING STRONGER against trannie madness. Association with trans is damaging gay folks, and that's just fine by me.
When you push a pile of shit, you will get some shit on you.
But these are very specifically men in the gender critical movement who are under fire. They not only didn't push 'queer' ideologies on people but actively organised against it. They typically have the hashtag #GayNotQueer in their bios. And the gender criticals feminists know this, but they blame them for everything including gender identity ideology anyway, just as they'd blame you for rape culture because you are (presumably) a straight man. They would no matter how much you said you would never commit or condone rape and even if you'd dedicated as much time as these men have to opposing 'queer theory' ideas to opposing rhetoric and attitudes that treat women as sex objects. You're guilty of complicity simply because you are a straight man and rape still happens. Because they are collectivists. Don't be a collectivist.
All of that is irrelevant. The issue is "how did trans get going" and the answer is "LBG promoted TQ+". This is a historical fact. Now LBG is stuck with TQ+. And the stench is beginning to permeate the LGB. I don't care if some minor "gay not queer" group comes along. We would not have trans without LGB.
How does that work? What do you want lesbian, gay and bisexual people to do? Disappear?
This is the same collectivist logic as "How does rape occur?" The answer is "Men commit rape." I also ask collectivist feminists if they would like us to make men disappear when they present 'men' as the problem rather than men who commit rape. They offer no solution (or any way to have prevented the problem in the first place) as we cannot, and hopefully do not want to, cull all men.
If you present LGB people as the cause of authoritarian trans activism regardless of whether they supported it or opposed it, you offer no solution (or any way to have prevented the problem in the first place) as we cannot, and hopefully do not want to, cull all same sex attracted people. You are just indulging in prejudice against same sex attracted people in lieu of doing anything useful to address authoritarian trans activism just as misandrist feminists who use this reasoning indulge their prejudice against men rather than doing anything to reduce sexual violence against women.
I'm afraid you can't just tell me that my argument that we have to evaluate people on what they believe, say and do and not on their immutable characteristics is irrelevant. It's not irrelevant to addressing any real world problems as they are caused by what people believe, say and do. If it's just irrelevant to your wish that same sex attracted people did not exist, your input is irrelevant to any productive conversation or to reality because they do.
You are speaking of the internal state of the gay person. I am not gay. I have no idea if it is immutable, a choice, or some combination.
What I am speaking about is the political/social nature of the support of TQ+ by gay organizations. It is a simple fact that the "march of dimes effect" operated - that when the primary purpose of Big Gay was accomplished (gay marriage), they did not fold up their tents and fade away. They changed their focus to TQ+. Today, they continue to promote TQ+.
It is not important what a few individual gay folks do - some oppose TQ+. A HUGE number still support TQ+. So fuck them.
I went and looked at the GLAAD site. Lots of support for trans. So, the Big LGB has tied its future and its weldschmerz to TQ+. I hope they rot in hell. I no longer support gay persons or gay organizations.
Ordinary gay folks need to get far more active. Oppose trans. Oppose drag perversion and drag grooming. Join parents' groups in opposition to pervert books in elementary school
Why should they get more active when the ones who do get verbally abused by gender critical feminists? How much more of his programming would you like Andrew Doyle to dedicate to precisely those issues? How many more organisations should he join and support that do that? At what point will he have done enough to not be called disgusting things and have false accusations thrown at him? I've already explained to you that these are very specifically gay men who have been opposing gender identity and queer activism. That's how they are known and targeted by these women. For being prominent in doing exactly that.
You have precisely the same collectivist attitude as they do. Some gay men support authoritarian trans & queer activism so fuck all of them? In this case you have no grounds to object to anybody blaming you for anything another straight man does or another person of your race. To be ethically consistent - if that matters to you at all - you will now need to accept that others have the right to vilify and discriminate against you for being a straight, white man because some of them who aren't you are misogynists, rapists, white supremacists, paedophiles etc.
I won't make any further attempts to persuade you to evaluate others on what they say and do and not their characteristics. Once someone is this far gone into identity politics, there is seldom any hope of reaching them.
So I’ve been involved in the gay/lesbian and feminist movement since the late 70’s. Encountered ‘drag queens’ a bit early on but, personally never thought it funny or entertaining (though plenty did). At work I was involved with our LGBT employees group but, in truth, no T ever showed up (retired in 2013 so the trans movement hadn’t gathered steam). I think it kinda belongs under the umbrella (sexual deviance if you will) but it (the drag show component) has gotten pornified, it seems. Of course, drag’s not trans but there certainly have been overlaps. Our selfie-culture is allowing more and more to post & rate/mock appearances to an unprecedented degree. I’m rather picture shy myself.
It wasn't because of gay men that the letter T was added to the acronym, as the few of them that did live their lives ostensibly "as women" were already included in "LGB". There was no need on their part for the addition of the letter Q, either, since "queer" is really a movement for radicals who 1. are typically straight or bisexual, 2. do not understand or even quite approve of exclusive homosexuality, 3. wish to hide their true identity behind an obscure label, and 4. work towards ideological goals that are antithetical to the "assimilationist" politics of the gay rights movement.
Long before anyone had heard of gay rights, cross-dressing straight men were a subculture in their own right, with their own publications, events and support networks, and (later) their own activism. The ingenious invention of these men was to merge their erotically-based transvestism conceptually with transsexualism, and subsequently transgenderism, so as to gain access to the resources and social status of the more successful gay rights movement.
Today, the "LGBTQ+" is a captured movement that caters to straight people with cross-sex identities as "lesbians with penises" or "gay men who menstruate", or ideological identities that vaguely answer to the name "queer". Straight people demand control over historical gay and lesbian spaces, demand that the very definition of homosexuality be changed to accommodate their cross-sex identity play, and aggressively oppose any attempts of gay people to organise on their own. Independent LGB organisations like the LGB Alliance are labelled "a bizarre offshoot of the far-right anti-gender movement" by organisations that used to defend gay people from exactly that kind of totalising slander.
So while it is possible to accuse some gay men of being naively supportive of the postmodern gender identity movement, it is perversely inaccurate to blame gay men, as a group, for the thing itself. Very many things had to coincide in order for gender identity to become the sociocultural phenomenon it is today. To simply say "gay men did it" is to purposely miss the big picture.
Will this ever get out of the schoolyard antics, spiteful pranks, and immature behaviour. There are some serious issues here, for everyone.
And LGBTQ++++ I have never understood why they have lumped themselves all together, They all HATE each other and each others lifestyles and politics values morals and sex sexuality and genders.
Its like the only people hanging round the toilets is the school bitchy lot. Waiting for anyone else to enter so they can have a go at them.
I've been banned off Twitter for over a few years now for a post I wont remove.
FINE! I'm out of it, So peaceful and I dont want to give Mr Musk any commonsense light to his online bigotry barnyard
Sorry it is so bitchy and nasty
Have you ever thought of coming out of it?
Its so peaceful when you dont know what everyone is thinking and saying about you, They will still say it and think it, but the you are just getting on with your life, Raising your issues but not getting into the sticky mire of schoolgirl toilets
Excellent stuff as ever. I’d just like to point out, while not entirely relevant to the argument here, that there are plenty of social conservatives who are not authoritarian, but think that traditional families and sex roles/ behaviours need defending from constant criticism, and people should not be denigrated or challenged for preferring to keep living that way. In fact it is commonplace to see people championing radical lifestyles while taking full advantage of traditional living.
Yep, I had a sentence on that but I had to cut words. That's why I used both 'extreme' and 'authoritarian' because I don't want to indicate, say, a couple who both want a lifestyle where they get married before living together and where he is the breadwinner and she dedicates herself to the home and family and they think and say that this is the best way to live and it's good for families and societies, but they're not campaigning to criminalise homosexuality or calling women who have had sex before marriage 'used up holes" etc. Liberals must also support liberal social conservatives. That may sound like an oxymoron, because liberals are defined as people who want everybody to be able to believe, speak and live as they see fit provided it harms no-one else or denies them the same freedoms and social conservatives think this is too individualistic a way to evaluate whether something is right or wrong and centre their morality on certain virtues, traditions and norms that they think serves society well. But this is two different levels. I use 'liberal' as an adjective to mean 'anti-authoritarian' so if someone can say "I am a social conservative and I believe this is the best way to be, but I will not try to force everyone to do it" they are a liberal social conservative on this level.
“Liberal social conservative”, I’ll have that thank you, and add it to “agnostic atheist” as the most precise delineations of my stances
Excellent!
So how do you explain fag hags & old joke that gays exist so fat chicks can dance?
"... consistently principled people recognise this illiberal collectivist mentality to ..."
I'm not a liberal (or conservative). I believe a collectivist mentality is not only justified/ethical but necessary in addressing patriarchy and rape culture. All members of a patriarchal society bear a degree of responsibility for the oppression of women, man and woman alike
I'm disappointed in homophobic, analphobic GC women. Despite the taboo surrounding it, anal between individuals of the same sex is neither sinful nor problematic. And recognizing that men's "sexuality" is a ruthless hunt for domination, that "all men are predators satisfying their depraved appetites," how befitting it is to endorse the noble, virtuous path of homosexuality
The men whose appetites bypass the female flesh, whose affections are reserved for their fellow men, are to be hailed as champions of virtue, as towering pillars of decency in a society gone awry and insane. They leave women alone, offering women a measure of respite from the constant barrage of male attention. That's a good thing
It's only when these men begin to fetishize women's bodies, indulge in drag, or use surrogates that our eyebrows can begin to ascend towards the heavens. Their wonderfully subversive expressions of homosexuality should remain immune from our disparagements
"... found that 86% of men and 74% of women supported equal rights for women. The evidence that men are at least as likely to support women’s rights as women are is neglected ..."
Because it's not evidence
The naivety of placing one's trust in the statistical mirage that identifies as "evidence" of men's support for women's rights ... The words tripping so glibly off the tongues of men aren't a true reflection of their actions. If one were to judge men's commitment to women's rights based on their actions rather than their words, one would be forgiven for concluding that men are, collectively, opponents of equality
For every token knight/ally, a legion of jesters defile such chivalry through their twisted performance of toxic masculinity, unwanted advances/harassment, and passive consumption of the bitter fruits of misogynistic media, all the while feigning innocence amidst the ruins of a patriarchy
It's a common psychological defense mechanism to deflect blame by clinging to flimsy defenses of "not all men" or "not all [insert group]." No one wants to be "the villain/bad guy." Until we recognize we are all "villains," there can be no meaningful change or improvement
The reason I've declined to castigate Reduxx and co is that it's clear to me Slatzism is attacking the normalisation of damaging sexual incontinence, not homosexuality. When a large number of gay men took umbrage, expressing solidarity with the incontinent, indulging in a range of misogynies and insisted she apologised for the homophobia she hadn't expressed, she mocked them.
Rather in the same spirit Kellie Jay Keen adopted a photoshopped 'Nazi Barbie's as her pfp. It's expressing contempt for the authoritarianism of her critics. The more the cancel mob ooh'd and aah'd, the more punk she went. I can't speak to these other actual homophobes who've been drawn in, but Reduxx in my book is miles away from that.