That's correct.

We wish to create a "socially-dignified space" for masculine men to love other men.

A space characterized by

Proposition 2:

The fact is that what we do in bed does not decide which community we will relate to. It is our degree of masculine-identification which decides that. Therefore, all the so-called straight-acting ["gay"] men feel so at home with straight men even when they have to hide their sexual feelings, but so at odds with [feminized] gay people even when they are all supposed to be the same.

QUESTION:

Is that true for you?

Do you feel more at home with straight men, even when you have to hide your sexual feelings, than you do with feminized gay males?

Proposition 3:

Feminized gay males cannot claim that they are the same as you because you both like men. There is a huge difference between how you like men and how they like men. When they like men, they do it like they are women liking men. It is more like heterosexuality for them.

When you like men you like them as a man. When men have sex with effeminate gay males, they don't really think they are having sex with a 'man'. They realise they are dealing with a 'third sex'.

When men have sex with men like yourselves, they know they are having sex with someone, who like them is a man. Your society fudges these differences, but men feel them nevertheless.

QUESTIONS:

Let's break this one down.

A. "There is a huge difference between how you like men and how [feminized gays] like men."

Do you agree?

B. "When feminized gay males like men, they do it like they are women liking men. It is more like heterosexuality for them."

Do you agree?

C. "When you like men you like them as a man. When men have sex with effeminate gay males, they don't really think they are having sex with a 'man'. They realise they are dealing with a 'third sex'."

Do you agree?

D. "When men have sex with men like yourselves, they know they are having sex with someone, who like them is a man. Your society fudges these differences, but men feel them nevertheless."

Do you agree?

Proposition 4:

Once the difference is clearly maintained, the queers will stop bothering you, and your sexual desire will also cease to have to bear the effects of their femininity. It will also have an immense effect on straight identified men.

Do you agree?

Proposition 5:

Masculine identified men never feel any different from other men, and their worst fear is having to leave the 'straight' identity to join the 'gay' identity. Because they don't feel inherently different from straight men. And they don't feel any affinity with gay men --- except those confusions created by the society and the concept of sexual orientation.

Do you agree?

Here are my responses:

The first two propositions are easy: yes, we want and need our own MAN SPACE; and yes, many of us feel more at home with straight guys than effeminate gay males.

But parts of Proposition 3 are, again, based on a very different definition of "gay":

A. "There is a huge difference between how you like men and how [feminized gays] like men."

Certainly there's a big difference between what we want sexually and probably affectionally from another man.

B. "When feminized gay males like men, they do it like they are women liking men. It is more like heterosexuality for them."

That may be so.

But:

C. "When you like men you like them as a man. When men have sex with effeminate gay males, they don't really think they are having sex with a 'man'. They realise they are dealing with a 'third sex'."

What he's referring to here as a "third sex" and "gays" are transgenders and transvestites.

They constitute a miniscule minority within gay male life.

And what he does is try to extrapolate from that tiny minority to all gay men.

That just doesn't mesh with my experience of American gay life.

As I'll discuss a little further on in this post, my friend points out that the gay community was hobbled together by "extremist gay elements who believed sternly in sexual orientation as the basis for forming their community."

That's correct, but there was a reason for that.

Which was the intolerance of what we called the Heterosexual Dictatorship aka heterosexism.

And there's been a consequence: which is that there are many masculine-identified men who also self-identify as gay.

Or at least try to.

The vast majority of gay men in America, therefore, do not constitute a "third sex," and it's very damaging and misleading to paint them that way.

D. "When men have sex with men like yourselves, they know they are having sex with someone, who like them is a man."

Of course that's correct.

And that's the whole point.

Masculine Men seek out other Masculine Men for fellowship and for sex.

Under the present heterosexualized set-up, however, the gay subculture, which is controlled by feminized males, works against them.

Proposition 4:

Once the difference is clearly maintained, the queers will stop bothering you, and your sexual desire will also cease to have to bear the effects of their femininity. It will also have an immense effect on straight identified men.

I agree that it's important to maintain a clear difference, and that's why there's a Frot Movement and this Man2ManAlliance / Heroic Homosex site, where we talk very clearly about a culture based on the Warrior values of Phallus, Fidelity, and Masculinity.

However, I don't think the queers will stop bothering us.

Dream on.

Because like their feminist allies, they seek power.

But, I agree that the effect of maintaining our own space and building it, will be that "our sexual desire will cease to have to bear the effects of their femininity."

And that that will "have an immense effect on straight-identified men."

Proposition 5:

Masculine identified men never feel any different from other men, and their worst fear is having to leave the 'straight' identity to join the 'gay' identity. Because they don't feel inherently different from straight men. And they don't feel any affinity with gay men --- except those confusions created by the society and the concept of sexual orientation.

On this point I wholeheartedly agree.

I don't feel different from other men, except through "those confusions created by society and the concept of sexual orientation."

As a kid, I knew I was a "man" -- masculine.

But I was also attracted to other men.

My "worst fear," as my foreign friend puts it, was "having to leave the 'straight' identity to join the 'gay' identity."

So what I did was seek out a psychiatrist who said he could make me "straight."

But of course he couldn't.

Not because I didn't have feelings for women.

But because my same-sex feelings could not be destroyed.

That's what he couldn't do: destroy my natural masculine desire for other masculine men.

I spent seven years in treatment -- from 1965 to 1972.

And those were very frustrating and arid years.

Finally, in 72, I heard about Gay Lib.

As my friend points out, more or less correctly, Gay Lib was the product of "extremist gay elements who believed sternly in sexual orientation as the basis for forming their community."

And Gay Lib seemed to offer an answer -- because it put all the emphasis on sexual orientation, and asserted that all sorts of people were gay -- including masculine men.

So I left the psychiatrist, and joined Gay Lib.

Gay Lib, which was a truly revolutionary movement, was fine so far as it went, but within a very few years, the revolutionary aspect of Gay Lib ran up against gay realities -- as the effeminized males reasserted control over the gay community.

And anal, promiscuity, and effeminacy came to the fore -- in spades.

Once again, I found myself conflicted, just as I'd been as a child.

Because my personal "sexual orientation" did not match my "gay identity."

I was expected to do and be things as a "gay" which were alien to me and to my own sense of my masculinity.

This was not some sort of puritanism on my part.

It was a conflict between the ideology of analism and my own masculine identity -- indeed, my own Natural Masculinity.

The years 1975 to 1982, as a consequence, were very arid sexually.

Because I didn't want to do the things the rest of the gay community was doing.

In 1982 I met Brett, and that conflict was solved, for 13 years, by my relationship with him, which was a Frot relationship.

But once Brett died, I had to confront again what the gay community was actually about sexually and in terms of fidelity and masculinity.

And it wasn't me.

So, like the guy says, I didn't "feel any affinity with gay men --- except those confusions created by the society and the concept of sexual orientation."

That's when I wrote Hyacinthine Love.

It wasn't until Hyacinthine had been published, in 99, and I began hearing from other Frot men, that I realized that I wasn't alone.

And it wasn't until we'd started the Alliance that I realized how many bi and straight-identified men there were who thought as we did about male-male sex and love.

So:

I think my foreign friend's observations are very useful on the issue of masculinity.

But when he starts labeling "gay males" as a "third sex," I have great problems with his formulations.

Because feminized gay males are not a third sex.

Their feminization is a function of culture.

And they can be de-feminized.

The key again is Masculinity and Natural Masculinity, and as Robert Loring has said, the way both individuals and the culture *thinks* about those things.

Robert:

"Change the thinking. Change the behavior."

Every action we take in our lives begins with a thought. Sometimes that thought is conscious. Other times that thought is unconscious. But, the fact remains that every action begins with a thought. According to Cognitive Psychology, if you want to change a person's behavior then you must change the thinking. Changing the behavior first and then trying to change the thinking last does not work because all behavior starts with a thought.

That is one of the things I see us trying to accomplish here, that is, changing behavior by first trying to change thoughts. We are presenting thoughts which are masculine, phallic, and rooted in fidelity rather than analism, femininity, and promiscuity. We are presenting an alternative to analism and LIBERATION from the BFD!! By presenting this alternative, these new thoughts, we are attempting to change the behavior and a change in behavior is absolutely ESSENTIAL if AIDS is to be conquered.

And, I'm sure Robert would agree, if Masculinity is to reclaimed by MEN.

Bill Weintraub

© All material Copyright 2006 by Bill Weintraub. All rights reserved.