They'll Always Hate Us

Why the homophobes won't accept us, no matter how "normal" we try to be...

Since I started posting my sex positive content on Instagram and Tiktok, I’ve regularly received comments like the one below which say that I, and gay/bi men like me who are frank about our sex lives and sexuality, are the reason why the homophobes hate us.

Now, his poor spelling aside, this is a pretty common sentiment I get. Usually it’s fellow gay/bi men who think that talking about the extremes of gay sex candidly, or those extremes existing at all, is the reason why the homophobes are homophobing.  In their view, from gratuitous sex parties to open relationships, the particular deviancy of gay and bi men from heteronormative behaviors is the primary cause of the homophobes’ ire.

But this is just not the case.

What most don’t understand about homophobia generally is that it operates from two levels which then act on one another. The first level we deal with is a kind of emotional revulsion or disgust that arises from some of the heteros (or closet cases) when they think of two men together, whether it be simply holding hands or them indulging in some carnal sexual activity. This is the kind of simple reaction that comes from our socialization where, until recently, these gay activities were kept out of the popular culture and outside of general social norms so they might invoke a guttural response when witnessed.  While this is the more banal of the two, it’s usually the cause of the knee-jerk homophobia we deal with on the streets or online.  Emotional, unintelligible, lizard-brained reactions that can be quite dangerous, but are at the same time rooted in little more than childish “yuck”. 

However, there is a second and more complex level at work which grounds traditional and conservative morality in opposition to homosexuality and likely will for some time. Now I know I’m about to wax a little philosophical here, but bear with me.

When you look at Christian theology and its metaphysics from which most western homophobic ideology roots itself from, gay sex is a problem. It’s a problem because it is not “productive” in terms of procreation (though I do understand this can be slightly different when considering our trans brothers and sisters). The fact is, despite our best efforts, as many times as we breed those hot guys or get bred by them, none of us are going to get pregnant.

In this metaphysical sense then, gay sex is “sterile”. It doesn’t produce anything, it is a kind of useless at best, corrupting and harmful at worst, disordering of the natural order. It also doesn’t provide any limits to sexual desire like heterosexual sex does. For heterosexuals, you have pregnancy which is both productive and a kind of internal limitation to sexual desire and activity. A woman can only get pregnant so many times and this is a limiting component to the affair, as well as an underlying duty that is implicit in heterosexual sex. You have sex, you’ll have a kid, you’ll have to deal with that kid. Within heterosexual sex there is an internal consequential bind to it.

Gay sex is particularly troubling in contrast because not only is it “sterile”, but it is sexual desire unbounded. From partner to partner, there isn’t a particular natural cap or limitation to this desire beyond those of disease, self control, or just physical exhaustion. While definitely legitimate boundaries they aren’t particular to gay sex but practically any physical activity with other people, and they aren't apt to consolidate sexual desire into a neat circuit of familial reproduction.  

Hetero sex lends itself, thanks to the possibility of children, to enclosing sexual desire within a monogamous marriage (a kind pact established to ensure that reasonable sexual desire in reinvested in the production of the family and the duties that are entailed) that gay sex is simply not so naturally inclined in this mode. I don’t mean to say here that gay men are incapable or uninterested in monogamy, marriage, and raising children (many of us are), but simply that our sexuality doesn’t so gravitate us to it as heterosexuality does.

As you can see, social conservatism sees even non-procreative straight sex as a problem.

All this is to underline the reason why gay sex, and much of what we understand as queerness in general, finds itself in direct opposition to social conservatism and traditionalist morality. Gay sex simply exceeds the parameters by which their theology and metaphysics of natural law can ever accept. As a sterile act and as sexual desire without clear natural limits, it is and always will be disruptive to their view of how society ought to be.

This is also why I said the two levels reinforce one another. On the one hand, we have the knee-jerk emotional response of disgust and on the other the metaphysical opposition towards that which undermines their conception of how society should even function. “Why do I feel the repulsion towards two men kissing?” Because it violates nature. “How do I know this violates the natural order?” Because my body has a guttural response to it. In this way there’s an internal reinforcement of homophobia as a phenomenon.

But is gay sex really sterile? I’d argue to the contrary that it is definitively productive, but rather than producing another human, it plays an integrative role in producing community bonds and cultural development. While I’m no biological essentialist, there’s plenty of research in mammal species which have shown that homosexual behavior plays an active role within the various animal cultures, particularly amongst primates. In a number of primate families, as far as many biologists are concerned, homosexual sex plays an active role in undermining the internal violence amongst the male population and the building of social bonds. In the competition of female mates especially, homosexual sex seems to actively reduce the violence and death that male primates inflict on each other.

Let’s suppose then we gay men have carried some constellation of these inclinations from our primate ancestors and cousins. Is it so strange to consider the gay sex we engage in within a similar vein? Doubtless, there are hookups and relationships that have left bad tastes in our mouths or worse. But on the other hand, from the summer flings with the guys who eventually become our lifelong partners, to the sharing of cum dumps with each other while not even knowing anyone’s name, there’s certainly a productivity at work in the social realm.

I suppose one could question how “positive” this kind of productivity is, but that is a matter of moral and ethical consideration which social conservatism and traditionalists don’t even believe is worth discussing. Yet, this social productivity is very real despite their opposition. Doesn’t it build familiarity with the new coworker at the job who had blown your back out the month before, not knowing you’d be at the same office in the future? Or the Grindr hookup that then turned into your platonic best friend? Or what about the DJ that’s shagged every guy that shows up to his set, but creates a space which results in couples, new friends, and more developed networks?

When and where the productivity of gay sex is “positive” or “negative” is certainly something to think through morally and ethically. However as an act and a force in society, gay sex is undeniably productive and not “sterile”.

While I don’t agree with her too much, I think the philosopher Camille Paglia was correct when she said that “Gay men are preservers of the masculine principle”. From art to sex to community styles, homosexuality preserves not only a masculinity that is interested in itself simply for itself, but also the various articulations masculinity can encompass.

From androgynous twinks to muscle daddies, as well as leather guys or drag queens who are men who dress as women but talk like men, homosexuality in general, and gay sex in particular, is fundamentally constructive to masculinity in its very structure. There’s a reason why so many straight men that become a #gymbro find themselves getting desired more by men than the women they hoped for. It’s because the male form is more prescient to us than to heterosexual women at large.

Historically we can see this productive nature of gay sex as well. From the Sacred Band of Thebes as well as Alexander the Great’s and Hephaestion’s relationship, through the Renaissance artists brought before the Office of the Night in Florence, as well as the whispered relations in the courts of countless monarchs and princes, and far beyond Alan Turing and James Baldwin, gay sex has always been productive and coexistent with human development at large. It is simply not up for question.

It is for these reasons then, especially in a time when some of our advances as gay men seem in peril after a long struggle for them, that we can’t shrink from a blatant and uncompromising affirmation of who we are and what we do. As I’ve shown, the social conservatives and traditionalists will always hate us. It won’t matter whether we are all monogamously gay married or not. In their vacuous world view, we will always be repulsive and they deny that we have had any hand in the beauties of civilization or in its progress.  

As such, I see no reason to be cagey about the details of gay sex. While I certainly recognize the dangers that exist in this time of reaction, I also adamantly believe that once we’ve opened Pandora’s box, it is also our duty to ensure it is not closed. This is why, as heirs to the Sexual Revolution, we are co partners in its defense when it comes down to contraception, the right to abortion, transgender rights, and non-monogamy.

While these are unique in both how they function in society and how they draw the ire of Social Conservatives and Traditionalists, they are nonetheless a complex of social rights and tools of liberation that are linked to ours as much ours to theirs. And while all of us involved in the project of the sexual revolution have our unique parts to play, gay sex remains particularly useful. For what is desire unbounded, if not explosive? 

- Darian Black

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