Bill Weintraub

Re: fasting church

7-3-2006

Wow!

Thank you Redd.

This post, like Redd's other posts, are real and luminous gifts and I'm grateful to have them here on our board.

Fear creates stinking thinking about sexuality and retards sensibilities, then leads to abuse. Abusing one's body abuses one's spirit. You challenge those who abuse the body. That challenge, to me, tells people how many have yet to befriend themselves. Self-befriending, strangely, threatens one's welfare because such befriending is usually unorthodox, goes against the dominant paradigm, if you will. Hence, when one would follow his heart, when he would do right against the threat of the popular wrong, he recalls the threat and stress and rain of turmoil that hovers ready to pour rejection, excommunication, etc.

"Self-befriending ... is usually unorthodox, goes against the dominant paradigm..."

That's correct.

And that's why it's hard for guys to do it.

I saw that in the early years of Gay Lib, when most gay men clung to the medical model of homosexuality and the belief that they were mentally ill, even though the American Psychiatric Association itself had disavowed that notion.

And now we see it with anal.

Which has nothing to recommend it.

Yet remains the majority practice.

But where we see it most clearly -- is with effeminacy.

Self-befriending in this instance means embracing one's masculinity.

Yet the dominant paradigm is opposed.

So instead we have trannies and effeminacy -- males self-castrating physically and psychically.

Yet there stand my models Joseph and David and Oedipus, taking social rejection because they were true to themselves. Then I happen upon your site and read about a man who was true to himself through the frightening heyday of AIDS.

Why I didn't dismiss your site I don't know. Usually anything focusing on gay life I bypassed as irrelevant to me. Frankly, you've given me a different way of thinking about gays because I was (am) disgusted with girly boys.

Gays, I thought, give men, give masculinity a bad reputation with vulgar distortion.

Yes, and that's very well said.

But I read and was amazed that a man who had sex with a man was/is a man who validated masculinity.

Yes, and it's not just me.

That's true of most of the guys in the Alliance.

We've all faced the same battle.

We validated and continue to validate masculinity in the face of our peers and the subculture telling us we're wrong to do so.

And we've all taken our lumps.

And to this day, it's our stance on masculinity which engenders the most opposition.

It's interesting because there's been a shift.

It used to be that most of the hate mail and hate posts were about anal.

Now they're about effeminacy.

The hate and the spite are directed at me.

But they've been brought on by *our* rejection of effeminacy.

By OUR embrace of OUR Masculinity.

You see, I thought that gays treat masculinity the way gender feminists hate men.

Yes -- because much of the ideology of analism comes out of gender feminism.

Both groups believe that men and masculinity are the root of all evil in this world, and that it's desireable therefore for men to be effeminized through anal penetration.

Anything which destroys masculinity is, in their eyes, to the good.

I reasoned that if a man prefers sex with men, then what that man desires was a man, not a man who was trying to be a woman. If that's the case, then why not be with a woman? Why sodomize a man when he could have a woman? Sodomy as love didn't make sense.

It doesn't and it isn't.

It's not an act of love.

It's an act of domination and control.

A man attracted to girly men didn't make sense. A man who tried to be a woman was/is just stupid to me.

It is stupid.

And dangerous.

And literally deadly.

And perhaps worst of all, it buys into self-oppression.

It buys into the lie that men who have sex with men aren't really men.

Thanks to you, you've given me a different view. You've actually given straights guys a voice to discuss masculinity. Homophobia notwithstanding, most guys feel uncomfortable talking about anything gay because such talk meant/means putting the masculine in a feminine context.

Right -- which is where it should never be.

We didn't like bitching masculinity, but since we are not gay we didn't/don't feel our voices are valid compared to gays who champion femininity and sodomy as the gay identity. All critique was/is chalked up as homophobia.

Right.

This is the crux of the matter: "We didn't like bitching masculinity, but since we are not gay we don't feel our voices are valid compared to gays who champion femininity and sodomy as the gay identity."

Your voices are valid.

This has nothing to do with "gay" or "straight."

It's about Men and Masculinity.

Masculinity and Manhood are ours by birth.

NO ONE has the right to deny them to us or to take them from us.

"All critique is chalked up as homophobia."

But it's not.

Because homosex is one thing.

Effeminacy and sodomy another.

Gay-identified men and straight-identified men are brothers.

Analism and gender-feminism seek to destroy that brotherhood.

What we're doing here is recapturing it.

Under the banner of MASCULINITY.

MASCULINITY.

As David said, these are what MEN share:

MASCULINITY

FIDELITY

INTEGRITY

PHALLIC SEXUALITY

WARRIOR BROTHERHOOD

When I told Larry Kramer that our masculinist stance was very popular, he became infuriated.

That's the last thing that sort of gay establishment figure wants to hear.

Doesn't matter -- it's true.

Men love Masculinity.

As I've said before:

What MAN doesn't want his Masculinity heightened and his Manhood honored?

ALL MEN seek an increase in Masculinity.

ALL MEN desire an honoring of Manhood.

These are UNIVERSALS among MEN.

That's why Redd and I -- or any other two men -- can have a conversation.

Because we're both MEN.

Thank you Redd.

Your posts are glorious.

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

Redd

Re: fasting church

7-3-2006

Bill,

You,
your wisdom,
your passion for life,
for the masculine,
for brotherhood,
your experiences,
your masculinity, all bespeak your stalwart humanity and expresses your dharma, a sacred duty.

In The Bhagavad-gita, warrior Arjuna struggles with his dharma to battle with the Kurus because they are his family. Krishna reminds Arjuna that as a Ksatriya, the warrior class, battling/fighting is Arjuna's duty, and that doing his duty is honorable. Krishna, by the way, is the incarnation of deity Vishnu, and Krishna steers Arjuna's chariot in the battle between the Kurus and Pandavas. So Krishna, as the god/hero relationship in many epics, is the god who supports the chosen one, Arjuna.

In short, Arjuna fights and wins the battle against the Kurus, but winning the battle was not as important as Arjuna's attitude in the act of battle. His was to act without hatred or desire for self-glory.

Bill Weintraub is a brave soul who acts without hatred or desire for self-glory in his advocacy for masculinity. His recognizing that the masculine is sacred is god-sent, I think. This m2m site addresses the soul of men just as the battlefield in The Bhagavad-gita is a metaphor for the soul. Our attitude informs our actions and our actions inform our attitude. Arjuna's action, his fighting, expressed his soul.

If one's action is in the form of a fighting art like boxing and wrestling, he usually doesn't box or wrestle because he hates his opponent.

Hatred is self-glorification.

The act of boxing, for instance, develops the souls.

This site, these moving articulations, is an excercise of the masculine. Bill, you're no accident. I believe you've been honed for this purpose that this site represents.

Fasting church has required my redirecting where I give financial support. Bill bore his heart that was so evident when I first encountered the site that I didn't hesitate to contribute financially and I continue to contribute.

I don't mention my giving to boast, but to encourage others to give. This site has befriended me by introducing me to the kindred spirit of masculinity others on this site have expressed.

Bill said that gay-identified and straight-indentified men are brothers. We are indeed. We're brothers of the masculine, not the feminine. Men don't have to be feminine to be compassionate, caring, gentle, etc. Those qualities are a part of their masculine composition.

Just look at how vulnerable Bill is with his candid revelations of himself. Masculinity as depicted in society avoids vulnerablility as a sign of weakness. But we on this site can tell that Bill's openness is a strength. So many who've contributed comments to this site have waxed poetic. The beauty of language is often dubbed feminine in our crazy society, but gentlemen on this site have defied such depiction.

Both men and women can bascially do all things without the other save reproduce. Men don't need to be women, nor women men to be whole.

Thank you Bill. I am happy to support you.

Redd