[Orig to FB]
While I was puzzling over exactly what this guy was trying to say, the first thing that struck me was (as Monty Python put it: MEN MEN MEN MEN MEN MEN MEN MEN MEN MEN MEN MEN MEN MEN MEN [ad nauseam]. That’s not quite what he intended, but — as anyone with eyes can see — it’s what he’s saying.
Even in the late ’80s, when I was but a lad really, the gender disparities in the visibilities of gay cultures made it clear that one aspect of shifting sexual / gender / preference norms was, basically, men taking their toys home and playing with them, so to speak. My hunch at the time was that it was, in some part, a cultural reaction to (what was then called) women’s lib — not just the movement per se but, rather, the emergence in the public sphere of ~feminine ways seeing, thinking, being, doing, and sharing. I learned very quickly not to share those ideas because (as they say) boy oh boy did they strike a nerve. It isn’t hard to understand why, or to fully support it. At a time when coming out was, for most, a real struggle, any ‘skeptical’ analysis could seem aligned with the forces of repression. And, as a rule, young people are usually — and rightly — hostile to anything that smells like a sociological dismissal of who they are, what they aspire to, and so on.
This guy’s message about masculinity and exceptionalism is intended to be progressive and, in many ways, is progressive — but not in every way. Nothing is always and only what someone intended, because other people. That ambivalence — what I’ve called for years omnivalence, not either/or but both/and — is the condition of everything always.
My hunch is that one of the basic political distinctions of our time is, roughly, the that “left” is mostly attracted to either/or ambivalence and “progressives” are more attracted to both/and omnivalence. (It should go without saying that rightists hate both because they’re attracted to oneness in all its forms and facets.)