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I’m sure millions of other people have already written on this, and I’m sure people with actual credentials have published good papers on it, but I’m still independently puzzled at the way in which gay men and women often get socialized once they’ve “joined” gay culture. I’m of the opinion that if gay men did not so often have a gay lisp and “feminine” ways of acting, being gay in modern America would be far less of a deal than it is. Throw in some flamboyant pride parades, and I can see how the hicks can get in a tizzy.

In my opinion, the problem American society writ large has with the gay community is not so much the sex part of it, but rather is with the gender bending part that is so readily passed around as memetic currency. Ironically, I don’t really think society as a whole cares all that much about particularly “masculine” lesbians. When their men start wearing pink bandanas, however, and start lathering up their hot-pants laden bodies on rainbow draped floats, you start challenging a pretty big part of the American psyche: what it means to be male.

Granted, in a free society, we really shouldn’t care all that much about how our neighbor dresses, talks, walks, or whether he takes it up the butt. It doesn’t affect you or me in any meaningful, real world kind of way. It’s not like gay sex creates some kind of shock wave that shoots out across the neighborhood, ruining dinner for everyone and making dogs bark or garage doors open. Nevertheless, we’re dealing with human beings, creatures which are only slightly removed from all the rest of the aggressive, hierarchically socialized mammals out there. We’re all biological computers, and if you upset the programming too much, you get some pretty discordant errors.

Essentially, what I’m saying goes for all counter-culture groups out there. Who gives a damn whether some kid wants to wear black makeup and thinks he’s cool because he wears pants so tight he has an uncomfortable moose knuckle? So what if every other kid in his group looks just like him, ruining the whole “I’m different from you” subtext? The point is, the same (!) biological underpinnings that make wolf packs and meerkat families tick also drives our own society. Members of the group in nature who behave or look strange usually get booted out of the group or perhaps eaten. Fortunately, we try and restrain ourselves, but it doesn’t always work that way. I personally know 3 goth kids who have been killed for their pale and ironic flesh. Poor Gryphon, Raven, and Tenebrae.

In any event, I might wager good money that if it weren’t for the prevalence of the feminine gay man–whether real or not–in the collective cultural psyche, we might have a very different social landscape today. I’m not arguing whether homosexuality is right or wrong–if neural networks and their complex processes can in fact be right or wrong–simply that a pretty big social apple cart has been overturned in the way gay culture has approached masculinity and femininity. If it weren’t for such a heavy counter cultural bent, I wonder if society would even be debating gay marriage today, or whether society would have “allowed” it long ago.