Bill Weintraub

Re: To see masculinity and masculine love as sacred

8-5-2007

Thank you Redd.

Guys:

All of Redd's post is important, and I hope you'll read and re-read it.

I want to pick up on these words:

the men who visit your site have been redefined or have been given a social identity that differs and contradicts their masculinity. Because their social identity condemns their real masculinity, they "act" heterosexism's script, while thinking and perhaps secretly doing something that expresses their real masculinity. To be themselves requires their defying heterosexism's stranglehold on them. Their freedom will require defying heterosexism publicly--e.g., walking in public with their shirts off or as some UFC fighters do, polish their toenails black.

Let's take a look:

the men who visit your site have been redefined or have been given a social identity that differs and contradicts their masculinity. Because their social identity condemns their real masculinity, they "act" heterosexism's script, while thinking and perhaps secretly doing something that expresses their real masculinity.

What is heterosexism's script?

At its most basic, it is that "real men" don't feel desire towards and don't have sex with other "real men."

But there's another part to the script, which goes like this:

"Real men don't love other men."

Redd says,

Because their social identity condemns their real masculinity, they "act" heterosexism's script, while thinking and perhaps secretly doing something that expresses their real masculinity.

Right.

"their social identity condemns their real masculinity"

In this case, "social identity" means the false categories of sexual orientation -- gay or straight.

So -- and as usual, Redd's post is dense with ideas -- a few lines earlier Redd noted that "our society is more artificial everyday ... we commodify the earth."

That's correct.

And just as our society becomes more artificial with each passing day, and just as we commodify the earth, so do the artificial categories of "sexual orientation" commodify Men into "gay" and "straight."

And in so doing, divorce them from their real and NATURAL selves -- their Natural Masculinity.

Males who have been separated and divorced from their Natural Masculinity are now primed to follow, as Redd says, "heterosexism's script."

A script which is completely UNnatural and whose dictates run directly counter to the best interests of MEN.

So again, under heterosexualization, males become commodities.

No longer true to themselves and their inner Masculine nature, they are instead forced to follow heterosexism's completely artificial and false script.

For the gay-identified guys, heterosexism's script means acting like a girl and getting fucked up the butt.

Many of our guys have done that and many still do, even while knowing that "their real masculinity" -- which again is their Natural Masculinity -- requires them NOT to do that.

But what I see on the site among the straight-identified guys -- very often -- too often -- and what I want to address today -- is that when they sometimes manage to do "something that expresses their real masculinity" --

what that means is that may seek to rub cocks with another man.

So they get that far.

But they can't go farther, and that's what they have to do.

Redd:

To be themselves requires their defying heterosexism's stranglehold on them. Their freedom will require defying heterosexism publicly--e.g., walking in public with their shirts off or as some UFC fighters do, polish their toenails black.

Right.

Says Redd: They need to defy "heterosexism's stranglehold on them."

And need to do it "publicly."

What does that mean -- beyond taking your shirt off in public or painting your toenails black?

Here's what it means:

Loving a Man as a Man

And publicly.

I found these quotes from James Baldwin on a German language site:

Wenn du dich in einen Mann verliebst, dann verleibst du dich in einen Mann.

If you fall in love with a Man, you fall in love with a Man.

Die Tatsache, dass es viele Amerikaner fur eine Krankheit halten, sagt mehr uber sie aus als uber die Homosexualitat.

The fact, that many Americans hold this an illness, says more about them than it does about Homosexuality.

So to truly be themselves, and to truly challenge heterosexism, guys have to accept that:

If you fall in love with a Man, you fall in love with a Man.

And live it.

That's what Patrick did.

In asking me to marry him, and having the ceremony conducted by a preacher, he put me -- a Man -- on the same level as his wife -- a Woman.

What I see in the straight-identified guys who visit the site is a great reluctance -- really fear -- of doing that.

The hetero relationship -- the hetero marriage -- has to come first, and then they want to rub cocks on the side.

But -- historically, as I keep saying, the love of Man for Man was judged to be higher and nobler than the love of Man for Woman.

That being the case, can we not today at least put the two on the same plane.

Which is what Patrick did.

He had the strength of character to challenge heterosexism in that way.

Very few straight-identified men do.

But that's what it will take.

Heterosexism, whether it's in the form of religious fanaticism or in the secular form of "real men don't do that" has to be challenged all the way.

And that means YOU have to challenge the heterosexism within yourself.

And that means you have to recognize that being FULLY MASCULINE means being able to LOVE another MAN.

That's what it means.

It clearly meant that to the ancients.

They saw Love between Men as the highest social good, and their Warrior-brother as "a friend inspired by God."

And YOU need to see him that way too.

Because until you're able to Love a Man as a Man --

your Manhood and Masculinity -- will be incomplete.

Put differently -- until you're able to Love a Man as a Man --

you're not a complete Man.

In our most recent discussion of HIV predators, I said that only the WARRIOR can stop the predator.

And that only the Warrior ethos -- an ethos of austerity, affiliation, and aggression -- can stop the culture of predation.

And I added:

Heroic Love -- the Love of Man for Man and Warrior for Warrior -- is the strongest and purest in the world.

So far as I can tell, every human culture -- except our own -- has recognized that fact.

Mankind's salvation lies in and only in the return to the WARRIOR values of Phallus Fidelity and Masculinity -- as expressed in the HEROIC LOVE OF MAN FOR MAN.

One of the male's primary life tasks -- is to have that Heroic Love in his life.

Without it, the male never becomes the MAN he was born to be.

HEROIC LOVE is yours by right of birth.

Don't run from it.

Seek it, seize it, treasure it.

In The Fall of Troy, Achilles tells his son,

If good thy thought be, good shall be thy deeds:
But no man shall attain to Honour's height,
Except his heart be right within: her stem
Is hard to climb, and high in heaven spread
Her branches: only they whom strength and toil
Attend, strain up to pluck her blissful fruit,
Climbing the Tree of Honour, glory-crowned.

"no man shall attain to Honour's height,
Except his heart be right within:"

"Honour's height," for the ancients, is VIRTUS -- Manly Virtue, Manly Valour.

And you can't attain "honour's height" unless "your heart be right within."

Translation: unless you're in touch with and living fully your Natural Masculinity, you cannot achieve Virtue, you will not be Valourous.

And Valourous means, remember, living fully the communal, psychological, and spirtitual life of the MAN.

That means being unashamedly and indeed proudly naked in front of and with your fellow Men; competing with those Men in fight sport; standing shoulder-to-shoulder with and fighting alongside those Men through the roughs and toughs of life; openly and again proudly LOVING those Men; and joining with them in the celebration of Masculinity and Masculine love as sacred.

Redd:

To see masculinity and masculine love as sacred is profoundly liberating. ... Masculinity is man, which doesn't separate men into different components such as spiritual, sexual, psychological, communal. All of those is man.

Redd is correct.

"To see masculinity and masculine love as sacred is profoundly liberating."

Because once you do see masculinity and masculine love that way -- as the ancients did -- it frees you to LOVE a MAN as a MAN.

That's why we talk about masculinity and masculine love as sacred.

If you don't see them that way, and given how the larger culture regards sexuality and male-male sexuality in particular -- you will be forever lost.

But once you do see them that way, you understand, as Redd said, that

Masculinity is man, which doesn't separate men into different components such as spiritual, sexual, psychological, communal. All of those is man.

That's exactly right.

We don't separate men into different components.

The spiritual, sexual, psychological, and communal are all MAN.

That being the case, you cannot simply lust for a man -- or what is really, lust for sexual contact with a man.

NO.

What you need is the True Love of one Man for another.

And that's why the Warrior Ethos is so important.

I said it's an ethos of austerity, affiliation, and aggression.

What does that mean?

The Warrior is austere, he's affiliative, he's aggressive.

He lives simply, he bonds with his fellow Warriors and especially with his Warrior-brother, and he's appropriately aggressive when he needs to be.

Living simply -- austerely -- means also that the Warrior is not promiscuous.

That he recognizes the power of sex and the importance of sex.

A power and importance which is ultimately spiritual.

He respects that power, and makes it manifest in his Heroic Love of his Warrior-brother.

Again:

HEROIC LOVE is yours by right of birth.

Don't run from it.

Too many of you do.

You say, "I love my wife."

That's fine.

And then you say, "But I need some cock2cock -- on the side."

NO.

That's a cop-out and it's a cowardly cop-out.

It's a way, as Redd says, of following "heterosexism's script."

You can't do that.

You can't let the oppressor forever dictate your life.

I repeat:

The HEROIC LOVE of MAN for MAN is yours by right of birth.

Don't run from it.

Seek it, seize it, treasure it.

Thank you Redd.

You're a true Warrior.

Bill Weintraub

August 5, 2007

© All material Copyright 2007 by Bill Weintraub. All rights reserved.