Patriarchy and Homosexuality

Patriarchy hates homosexuality and punishes it severely. But have you ever wondered why it hates it so much? Why it feels that homosexuality must be given the biggest disincentives possible? What are they so afraid of? What fuels their persistent and clearly unsupported belief that homosexuality is spreading and that any exposure to it will lead people down the wrong path?

Why are they so afraid that something they say is the most disgusting and awful thing ever will start catching on?

Because patriarchy breeds homosexuality. And deep down, it knows this. In fact, in a sense, patriarchy itself is very gay, and I think that male homosexuality has played a part in the history of patriarchy.

The most obvious way that patriarchy breeds homosexuality is via sexual segregation. Anyone who has heard about what goes on in prisons knows that sexual segregation leads to opportunistic homosexuality.

Now imagine that, but pervasive throughout the lives of young males. From birth till college, they are kept apart from women by the established patriarchs who don’t want better-looking youthful men full of hormones poaching “their” women.

So all that is around when they are going through puberty, and more importantly sexual imprinting, is other males. Young, old, equal, superior, fulfilling every role in a functioning society (including “women’s work”), nothing but XY chromosomes as far as the eye can see.

In this world, females are alien, exotic creatures, rarely see up close and clad in unassailable virtue and protected (and enslaved) by a system that treats them as priceless possessions. In such a system, women seem not just unattainable but mysterious and thus powerful. The patriarchal system proclaims the rightness of hetrosexuality, but removes the opportunity.

In such a system, a high percentage of males are not just going to have sex with one another (that’s virtually guaranteed), they are going to sexually imprint on one another, and hence homosexuality is inculcated.

This happens because one of the most important components of our sexual imperative is the seeking of the most stimulating available target for one’s sexual attraction. Emphasis on availability. That’s why your dog humps your leg, and why you hear of the occasional bull moose “wooing” some farmer’s cow. It might not be the ideal sexual target, but it is the best of what is available, and lust can always overcome reluctance if it is left to build for long enough.

And when the most stimulating object around is another male….

In addition, patriarchal culture constantly reinforces the value of men and the unimportance of women, and treats manly virtues paramount and female virtues to be strictly for girls. It should then come as no surprise, then, that when it comes time to choose a partner, some of these males (especially the ones of low status) seek a partner with those same male virtues.

Once patriarchy goes past a certain point of no return, when the sexual segregation is nearly total and women are forbidden to show any female characteristics in public at all (again, because of the jealousy of old established patriarchs), the homosexuality of the culture becomes literal and things will inevitably slide towards male homosexuality.

That is what they are so afraid of and why they have to make a show of punishing homosexuality as harshly as they can in order to show to others and themselves that no matter how tempting it might be, homosexuality is not worth it.

Otherwise, why bother punishing it? We don’t dole out harsh punishments for doing things nobody actually wants to do. Nobody ever got burned at the stake or stoned to death for pounding a nail into their eyeball or setting their hair on fire. To harshly condemn and punish something, and talk about how easily it could spread, you have to believe that this thing is something everyone wants to do really badly and only the threat of the severest punishment and a culture where every man must continually assert and defend their heterosexuality can keep everybody from doing it.

Another way in which patriarchal culture breeds homosexuality is by encouraging men to stay at a prepubescent level of sexual development. The idea that all that women are good for is cooking, cleaning, and babies matches completely with how a little boy sees the opposite sex. A little boy literally cannot imagine what else women are for. And neither can patriarchy.

This sexual infantilization turns all women into “mommies”, and under that paradigm women can only be good mommies or bad mommies. Good mommies treat their men like spoiled babies, giving them whatever they want whenever they want, including sex. Bad mommies fail this very narrow and powerless role.

This is how the Greek version of patriarchy, which progressed to the point of women not even being allowed to leave the house, quickly became the era of “women for babies, men for fun”. Heterosexuality was nonexistent and you only had sex with women because you wanted to have lots of children (that she had to raise, of course) in order to impress other men.

Also, because patriarchy separates the sexes so thoroughly, it breeds gynephobia. What is mysterious is often frightening, and so men in a patriarchal society often fear women. And how do they express that fear?

Why, by punishing them and controlling them, of course. Misogyny is always an expression of the fear of women. Only someone who sees women as dangerous as an enraged bear will think that women have to be kept in chains.

And who is going to lead this fight against the power of women? The ones who fear women the most, the ones who don’t just see them as a threat but as competition for the attention of other males. Ones who understand that, from their point of view, women ruin everything because most men are primarily heterosexual and therefore no man can be a superior sexual target to any women as the women will always be more stimulating.

I am talking, of course, about gay men.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

TARDY REVIEW : Seven Psychopaths

Just gonna dash off a few thoughts while I try to get this extremely irritatingly timed allergy attack under control.

Damn you, generic Claritin, you’ve failed me again.

Let’s see… it’s a very smart, stylish, and dextrous movie, and I did enjoy watching it, but I can’t recommend it because it all seems very forced, contrived, and way too pleased with itself.

And I mean, the whole thing of having the main character being the screenwriter of the movie you are watching and ending it with him finishing the script is so verydone

I mean, Disney’s done it, for fuck’s sake.

And the way they throw around the word psychopath annoyed me. It was too much of a catchphrase, plus I think the screenwriter thought “psychopath” meant “crazy violent person who kills people”, and it’s far more than that.

But it has its good parts. Tom Waits has a small but memorable role and turns in a solid performance, which pleases me. Some of his performances in movies were… not so good. Which is fine… he’s a musician, not an actor.

But I am happier when not faced with the cognitive dissonance that inevitable ends with me feeling cringe-inducingly ashamed on his sake. Like I am watching a friend butcher a song on American Idol.

Fun fact : he was also good in Wristcutters : A Love Story.

And Christopher Walken is, of course, awesome in it.

Well, time to go, pills are kicking in. (That never stops being fun to say. )

I’ll talk to you nice people later today.

I am here to destroy them

Therapy today was… amazing. So many things revealing, so many new avenues of understanding revealed, so much good, solid therapeutic ground covered.

These are the days that justify all the sessions where nothing of note happens. I won’t claim I had some kind of life altering breakthrough and now everything will be different now, because that would be setting myself up for failure.

But we did good work. Such good work that it is four hours later and I am still processing it all.

One thing we figured out is why I can be calm, rational, and strategic when some offends against me, but when it’s someone I know and care about (me and mine, I like to say). I fucking lose my mind.

What we figured out is that I have a massive amount of latent anger from all that I have suffered in life. All the neglect and abuse and powerlessness and helplessness that I couldn’t even acknowledge as wrong because it was against my programming is still in there, ready to explode.

But I grew up without a model of how to express anger in a healthy way. My father expressed it a lot, but purely out of his need to vent his anger on us helpless victims. My mother rarely expressed it at all. Us kids didn’t do much better.

So in my world, there was only two possibilities : expressing anger at whoever can’t fight back, or never express it at all.

As you know, I swore to myself that I would never take my anger out on others like my father did. Which meant that for a long time, I couldn’t speak up for myself. But all that anger was still there, waiting for release.

Put someone else into the equation, though, and suddenly a very strong protective urge opens the anger valves and then I lose my motherfucking mind. I am ready to kill crush and destroy in order to protect my loved ones, and to a lesser but still very potent extend anyone who I see as being a victim of a bully and/or injustice.

Which brings me to a scenario that worries me.

My therapist has asked me what I would do if I had a real asshole for a professor. No problem, I replied. I can be calm and strategic. I can smile in the guy’s face and take the abuse if it gets me closer to what I want, namely a good grade.

I might also be plotting their downfall. But mostly the other thing.

But what has me worried is what would happen if this professor was an asshole to everyone, not just me. And there I was, sitting there while he abused people far, far less able to defend themselves than me. Making them cry, even.

There is no fucking way I would be able to let that slide. None.

Like I have said before in this space, I simply cannot sit by when bad shit is going down. I simply have to throw myself into the middle and protect the innocent from the badness. I have to thrust myself betwixt the weak and the strong, and betwixt fragile humanity and the cruel and unfeeling hand of fat.

I have to do something. The alternative is practically unthinkable to me. I GOTTA DO SOMETHING.

Which could very well put me in conflict with an asshole professor. If I saw someone verbally abusing some hapless nineteen year old freshman and making them break down in tears, there is no way I could just sit idly by and let it happen. I would draw that professor’s attention to myself and let them try that shit on me, and see how far that gets them.

It would be my mission to destroy them. But odds are, they would have real power over me, and might even be able to get me expelled. And I don’t see any real solution to that.

Granted, I am perfectly capable of calling their bluff if they threaten me with consequences they can’t actually follow through on. And I am also perfectly capable of learning everything there is to know about what they (and/or their colleague/cronies can and can not do) and nailing them to the wall if they make a single mistake.

But the real political power structure in any organization is based on things like favors owed, influence, and power of personality, and it might be that whatever the rules say, they can squash me like a bug and there would be nothing I could do about it. And then I would be SSOL.

So here is hoping that doesn’t happen. And if it does happen, let’s hope I can retain the wit to be a sniper and not a juggernaut, and gather all the information, support, and arguments I need before taking my one clean perfect shot to take this person out for good.

Because seriously. I am here to destroy them.

Of course, it could very well be that today’s professors are very well behaved because, and this is just a guess on my part, when they look at their students they see a sea of devices recording their every move. The last thing any professor wants is for a video of them being a total tool to some teary eyed freshman to become a viral outrage hit the next day on YouTube.

I hope that’s true. I really don’t know how I feel about recording the lecture. It seems eminently sensible, and yet I don’t feel good about it. It seems rude and disrespectful.

Especially if you fall asleep.

So I have worked out a compromise : I will do without until I really feel the need or desire for it.

After all, I never recorded anything the last time I was in college, and I did fine.

Hmmm. I guess this turned out to be about a lot more than therapy.

I never end up where I was planning to go.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.