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These are books that really made me think differently and I highly recommend! |
(***** = excellent, * = good) Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution (Hawken, 2003) ***** Escape the Gay Straitjacket Escape the Gay Straitjacket
Gays are wimpy pussy boys who -- even those who don't dress like women -- still act like them, even muscle marys and leather queens. Masculinity is "bad", violence is "bad", asserting control is "bad" (or at least, not something they're capable of) -- even though a cursory perusal of any gay video store shows that these kind of men are exactly what they lust after (if they're willing to admit it to themselves). If you're straight, strong and assertive, they probably want your ass even if they're too afraid to say so. What the fuck is up with this? Is it intrinsic to homosexuality? Looking at the gay community, you may think so. But Donald Black argues it's not intrinsic to homosexuality. Instead, it's an immense tragedy the gay community has not addressed. The problem is repressed anger. Every time you see a wimpy gay man or drag queen, there's probably a lion inside afraid to get out of its cage. The person may not realize it -- repression does a good job of hiding itself -- but his desires for a "real man", longing to be one and sense that he's inadequate for the job give it away. Whatever you repress in yourself, you desire in others. Black wants to show the way to let the lion out, to be the man of your dreams. [Note: I am referring specifically to gay men in English-speaking countries. How much this applies in other cultures with different attitudes about sexuality, particularly in non-Western countries, and whether it applies to women at all, are topics I'm not qualified to comment on. Perhaps nobody knows until further research is done. However, Black says several women in France say they've gained from reading the book.] To show that wimpiness is not intrinsic to homosexuality, Black points to the little-known fact that not all gay men are sissies. Only 90% are. The other 10% have no feminine tendencies (at any point in their lives), participate in sports without inhibition, often have successful military or construction careers, and have little interest in the gay community, gay bars or the men who frequent them. In other words, they are more at home in the "straight" community than the so-called gay community. Mark Bingham, the gay rugby player who was part of the team of passengers who overpowered the hijackers on the fourth September 11 flight and forced the plane to crash in an empty field in Pennsylvania rather than into the White House, was probably one of the 10%. TRIBUTE WEB-SITE The 10% (and straights) who read this article will likely think it's nonsense. They don't have problems expressing anger and telling others it's better not to mess with them, so why would anybody else? If gays want to be tough guys, why don't they just take up wrestling or aikido and get it over with? Unfortunately it's not that simple, and the fact that these people don't see the problem means they don't have it. The difference between the 90% and the 10% is that for the 10%, their parents encouraged them to play sports, roughhouse, stand their ground when people bullied them, and otherwise seize their birthright as men. For the 90%, their parents either didn't encourage these activities or actively discouraged them. But there's another factor too. In the 90%, either the father rejected the son (perhaps he wanted a girl), or the mother wanted the son for herself so she pushed the father away from active role in raising him, or the son had an Oedipus complex. An Oedipus complex means the son some point wanted the mother to himself so he imagined getting rid of the father, but then became terrified of the thought because if he tried, the father would retaliate far worse than the son could do. This creates a lifelong fear of violence, and more importantly, a lifelong fear of being aggressive. If that sounds like psychoanalytic nonsense, consider this: if you ask the 90% gays why they don't stand up for themselves or fight back, they will say they're afraid of what the other person would do to them. If you ask the 10% or the straights what they're thinking about, they'll say the opposite: they're thinking about (or often, excited about) hurting the other guy harder than whatever he does. Even if the other guy is bigger than them and they're afraid of him, it's not this overwhelming fear, but rather a "maybe I'm going down, but if so I'm gonna land at least five or six punches he's going to remember". If the reason for this difference isn't as described above, what is it? Regardless of how it originated, this fear of being aggressive has practical consequences. Because it cripples the kid from participating in contact sports or wrestling around, he misses out on the opportunities other kids have to learn to defend themselves, be a deterrent ("argue from a position of strength" as the military calls it), and grow immune to minor knocks and bruises. This causes even greater asymmetry between him and them as he grows up, with the result that things they don't even think about doing he can't do, like telling someone off when they insult them/play games with them/try to take advantage of them. This is the "straitjacket" of the book's title. The gay community is part of the problem. Rather than telling men with this condition what it is, and helping/encouraging them to overcome it so they can be the man they want to be, the gay community tells them they don't want it anyway, it's obsolete, masculinity and aggression are passé whereas we are enlightened and sensitive, etc. It's like asking a bird why it wants to fly and suggesting it learn to swim instead. It wants to fly because it's a bird, dammit! One hopes the gay community's attitude is only temporary, and that as it becomes more aware of the situation, it will see the benefits of encouraging gay men to seize their birthright as men and, most importantly, stop another generation of kids from growing up repressed. The more that isolated gays (especially young ones) have role models of people who are both gay and uninhibitedly men, the more they'll see it's possible for them too. And as more gays become unrepressed, the gay community will become more "butch" and less wimpy, whiny and campy. Maybe some drag queens will find they don't need those high heels after all. There are some positive signs. Enough people are reading Escape the Gay Straitjacket and Black's earlier book, Wrestling for Gay Guys, that it's in the featured section of my local gay bookstore, and the gay sports teams that have sprung up in the past few years have gotten an enthusiastic response from the gay community. Escape the Gay Straitjacket spends a couple chapters each talking about the nature of the problem, how Black eventually recognized it in himself and overcame it (and he's amazingly frank in his revelations), his experience running a gay wrestling club in London in the 1970s, how to break the repression (all that father stuff above), and how to learn to express your anger and acquire the assertiveness/combat skills others learned in childhood. Anger and aggression (which are two sides of the same coin) are not evil but are rather like electricity: a powerful energy source that can be used for both good and evil. Anger/aggression does not mean just shouting at people and throwing the first punch. It can just as easily mean calmly saying, "That's enough of that," and calmly forcing them to respect your rights while you show you understand their legitimate concerns. Both the violent and the controlled response comes from the same source, which is anger. But your demeanor will show whether you can back up the controlled response with a violent response if necessary, so it's important to be comfortable with both. In the last third of the book, Black goes into detail about the stuff "everybody knows" but repressed gays don't (and many wish they did): how to begin wrestling, how to throw a punch, what the inside of a gym is like, an overview of various sports, and how to get along with straights in these situations. Black recommends six months of Olympic freestyle wrestling or submission wrestling (or judo or jiu-jitsu) to gain basic tumbling/rolling/falling experience and to develop the immunity to minor knocks. Since straight wrestling clubs often have no patience for beginning older gay wrestlers (or for gay wrestlers, period), and many gay wrestling clubs likewise are run by the 10% gays [this is changing as a new generation of gay wrestling clubs is starting to appear], in Wrestling for Gay Guys Black provides advice on starting your own club. But if that's not practical, he also gives advice on surviving in a straight club. However, he emphasizes that learning skills is not enough, one must also deal with the repression, since it is the key to being able to learn and apply the skills successfully. For me, I found I had to consider all the possibilities, including those that didn't seem plausible. For instance, I don't ever remember my father rejecting me, or me wishing him dead, or me fearing he might hurt me. Our relationship just wasn't like that. He was neglectful for fourteen years, then started making up for lost time. But I still grew up with an inability to be aggressive and a deep-seated fear of violence anyway. It was merely an inconvenience until I became a skinhead and was suddenly in a world where people expect you to be able to defend yourself and they didn't understand why the fuck I had so much difficulty with that. I didn't know, besides the fact I'd had never had the opportunity to learn. Eventually I started (freestyle) wrestling to gain some skills (and was fortunate to fall in with a supportive, gay-friendly wrestling club). But it was only a year later when I read Escape the Gay Straitjacket that I realized what the problem was. I had never heard of repressed anger before, but it made sense and explained a lot of things. But still I couldn't overcome it. Six months later I started considering the possibility that maybe my father had rejected me at an early age, or maybe I'd imagined getting rid of him and then feared his retaliation... sometime before I was old enough to have any conscious memories. Immediately (within 24 hours) the straitjacket melted away; the block against aggression was lifted. Psychoanalytic theory says that proves this was the cause; otherwise the block would not have disappeared just by thinking about those things. That doesn't mean all my problems are solved, but the #1 inhibition is removed. If I sound bitter toward the gay community, it's because I can't stand the thought that another generation of gays (the ones who are kids now) will grow up with the same problem I had, not when we know now how to prevent it. This is much more important than Pride parades, Will and Grace, political recognition, marketing clout, etc. Since the book is focused solely on gays, Black doesn't address corollary issues. For instance, how many straights also grow up with repressed anger, fear of violence, inability to be aggressive? The number must be higher than zero. Computer geeks and goths, for instance, seem to have a significant number of adherents with similar characteristics. There may be others. I wrote Black and asked, and he said as far as he knows, nobody has researched this issue. However, he points out our prisons are full of people prone to uncontrollable outbursts of rage, and that is another symptom of suppressed anger. So more research is needed in that direction too. Funny how passive gays and violent felons have something in common, but that's how the cookie crumbles. Mike Orr © 2003 see http://iron.cx/reviews/ Why not print out this review for your NOTICEBOARD or to show your friends? Download PRINT version To find out more click on Escape the Gay Straitjacket or press your BACK button to return to the What Readers Say page.
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