Last Sunday’s News of The World carried a ‘JORDAN’S LOVER BOMBSHELL’ expose on Jordan’s ‘hunky cage fighter boyfriend’ Alex Reid. What was the bombshell? He’s sexually open-minded.
‘”I’M TRY-SEXUAL: JORDAN’S MAN SAYS “I’LL TRY ANYTHING ONCE!'”’ was the shocking headline for the two page spread. The piece, cobbled together from interviews with ex-friends, and some snaps of him in drag with his mates – obviously for a lad’s night out – did its best to keep the (now old) tranny story going, further undermine his masculinity and suggest that he’s even worse than a tranny – he’s probably a poof! After all, any bloke who says he’s a ‘try-sexual’, even one who doesn’t wear women’s clothes, is obviously a bender….
So far, so NOTW. It is, after all, a famously narrow-minded newspaper catering to people who don’t get much.
But rather confusingly, the front of the NOTW glossy magazine inside the very same edition that mocked and ridiculed Reid for his cross-dressing and daring to step outside prescribed gender roles featured TV celeb Myleene Klaas shaving her face on the front page, the with the come-on coverline: ‘MYLEENE MANS UP! – Tough talking and too feisty even for Cowell. Yes, this girls got balls.’ Inside she poses for a glamorous photo shoot in a suit and a side-parting.
Klaas doesn’t describe herself as ‘try-sexual’ in the interview (though she does talk about comparing ‘boob sizes’ with female friends in toilet cubicles), but if she did it would probably have been presented in the same yay! good on ya! girl power!! fashion as her ballsiness. ‘Try-sexuality’ when undertaken by women now seems, even in the NOTW, to be both a measure of both female empowerment and also their new assertive sexuality. It tends to enhance their femininity rather than bringing it into (fatal) question.
But when men try to join in the experimentation and step outside gendered sex roles themselves, by for instance cross-dressing or expressing an interest in same-sex fantasy, the opposite appears to be true, at least in the public sphere. They are merely deviant, ‘gay’ or ‘sad’ – and instantly shorn of their masculinity. A joke. Even cage fighters. Attitudes towards male bi-curiousness show that for men being ‘half gay’ is tantamount to being ‘half-pregnant’.
This new double standard for male and female sexual behaviour which in contrast to the old ‘stud/slut’ one, penalises men rather than women was documented earlier this year by Canadian sociologists, who found that men were expected to be up for sex all the time – but only very straight sex. Women were allowed much more latitude in both whether they actually wanted to have sex – and what kind of sex they wanted to have.
This double standard is endemic in the UK, as is painfully evident in the recent case of the barmy woman boxer (also Canadian) found guilty of a violent and unprovoked attack on a couple of drunken squaddies at a disco for kissing and dancing with one another and ‘pretending to be gay’ screaming ‘THIS SHOULDN’T BE ALLOWED IN THE BRITISH ARMY!’.
Despite being a violent foreign criminal on the run from the law for assaulting British soldiers (from behind) – and moreover a woman who stepped outside of gender stereotypes herself – she was feted by the British popular press as some kind of have-a-go a heroine.
Why? Well, partly because she was quite ‘tasty’ (in the sense of ‘not looking like a dyke’), but mostly because she was punishing men for daring to break the gender rules themselves.
Twenty-First Century trysexuality is, you see, just for girls.
Well, certainly if no one had sex it would be he end of the world for human beings.
I think that while a person, who for some reason or other, can’t manage to have sex, it’s unfortunate, since it is the most powerful of the emotional outlets available.
The design that prompts Christians to make sex a shameful act is far more perverse than the encouragements which permissively encourage people to do what is natural.
To interpret Ms Brights statements as “It seems to be saying if you don’t have loads of nice happy consensual sex starting from a young age you are a miserable bastard,.” are no more than “it seems to be”:(your)internalizations, not anything she said or implied.
If you lived in a country in which you were constantly badgered by the weird outpourings of the Christian freaks who abound here, as an intelligent person you would take objection to anything they said.
QRG: Glad your you enjoying it. Definitely fantasy , she calls it romanticism.
If i identified my sexuality by the crap sex that i’ve had then i would be asexual
Mark W: I tried sex with a women but failed miserably. I thought i owed it to myself to see if i was missing out on anything. Which made me realise i am 100% homosexual. So i guess QRG that Trysexuality does exist for those who try it. As does the insidiousness of shame that Mark W mentioned. I think that Mark S and Sisu would have more interesting gentlemen callers if there was no shame involved. Because when you repress your sexuality you repress everything else about your true self and coming out and being proud is just the beginning of finding the rest of yourself.
Shame is an insidious and, in many cases dangerous emotional state.I doubt that MSM’s ever identify that way for health; indeed that’s the silliest thing I can imagine. It wouldn’t mean anything at all if they had safe sex or had sex with women who carried HIV or just had sex wuith multiple partners. Why not say Men who have Unprotected sex with Sluts who might have STD’s: MUPS. It’s just shame of being identified with a men who lead a gay lifestyle. I used to find it odd that men wouls identify as being gay if they didn’t have sex at all, or sex with women, however, I think that’s a little more understandable.
Shame is’nt healthy for anyone.
I definitely identify as being gay. I don’t take any particular importance or pride from the fact that I’ve had occasional sex with the females.It seems to be the only kind of relationship can have with them.I wouldn’t go out of my way to have sex with a woman, I would with the right man, if I was horney.
P.s. I should say “if some people think gay is something to ashamed of.”
QRG: I don’t think it matters how someone identifies sexually, as long as it doesn’t involve denial or shame, and for all the reasons(problems) you mentioned. If gay(or homosexuality) is still something to be ashamed of… what more can be done?
P.s. P.s. So i guess its true then, that what bothers someone about someone else, is what bothers someone about themselves.
P.s. Re Religious Shame. Though the shame Marcelo mentioned would be the other side of the coin that you are talking about. Which is interesting in itself, that both behaviours are act outs of the same feelings but one creates, and loathes the other.
Mark W: That “religious shame” That Marcelo mentioned earlier.
So do you identify as Bi or Gay? (if you don’t mind me asking)
Graham: Interestingly, especially in recent Gay politics, since the onset of HIV particularly, a shame inspired tendency which sometimes goes along with “marriage” politics and is called “mainlining” or “assimilation” attempts. In other words, there are definitely men who want to be regarded as being associated n no way with “fairies” or anything gay because they are quasi closeted. They try to develop lifestyles just like straight men with the exception that they go out and have sex with men.
It is all driven by shame.
I have had sexual relationships with women, but don’t like the heterosexual lifestyle. I prefer to have sex with men and I identify very publicly with being gay.
Mark S. Those aren’t the studies i refer to but much earlier hypotheses generated from naive scientific guessing. Sandra Bem was into gender studies when we were still children. The neurpolgical studies I refer to are far more sophisticated and don’t really address the issues you talk about, but rather the relative size of brains,, relative amount of grey to white matter the functioning of general thinking, with none of the kind of behavioral outcomes you speak of which seem very primative in light of current findings.The study paradigms are completely different and don’t attempt to describe the prototypical male vs female behavior. you refer to.
The most prominent differences are explained by the presence of androgen on brain tissue. I.E males all have larger brains than females; this is simply a fact. generated by weighing thousands of brains. The fact that there is more white matter(clustered nerve tissue) in females indicates that their brains are more efficient than that of males. There is no differential in intelligence between the sexes. I’ll see if I can dig up a generalization of what they now know quickly.
Mark W: There have been several books lately taking apart all that research you refer to:
http://marksimpson.com/2010/10/14/sexing-the-brain-neuroscience-vs-neurosexism/
http://www.queerty.com/katy-perry-has-recruited-teenage-girls-into-flexisexuality-20110223/
QRG: If you bother to research just a little physiological electromylography studies you will discover that they show with very sophisticated precision that there are not only significant differences between the male and female brains but that there are extreme differences from place to place, in specific areas controlling different functions. It’s not debatable; it’s a well documented scientific fact!
Someone who is sexually submissive is not”stuck” with that role, they chose it, and generally like it and can as easily chose to be a top. The arrangement generally gets worked out between the two people.
While it often shows in someone’s carriage
and command of themselves,that they are tops, that is not always the case, however they tend to want to be in control.
I don’t really understand what you mean_ “someone’s got to be the fairy” if you mean the bottom, it’s usually the straight guy who want to be the bottom. And no one minds. But they’re both fairys.
@Graham Perrett: the person is speaking chronologically, with the purpose of telling you specifically what he does now.
If he said that he was Bi it would mean that he switches currently from m-f. These designations would be of interest if you were looking for partners for you say if you were looking for a partner for you or you wife(if you have one) or the two of you. Or looking who messed around with your Grandma or Grandpa.(past)
Sometimes when i ask the “are you Bi or Gay?” question, i get the answer, “I used to be straight but now i’m gay.” What would you call that?
I answer the door starkers. (But in my mind I’m wearing a kimono and curlers and holding a toy dog).
Oh fiddle dee dee, picture me in my mother’s velvet curtains and a rooster feather in my hair.
How we do run on!!!!
I’m not sure what the relationship is between psychic compartmentalization and the male/female brain differences. The later has been well demonstrated. Men for instance have larger brains, men have considerably more grey matter, women 10 times more white matter (fat)(jest?). There are a whole number of other distinct differences, between male and female brains. That’s not even debatable.
I wouldn’t feel left out if I inhabited only one compartment of a fellows id space. Women tend to be possessive and feel that they need to be the trump card in in the deck.
I for one don’t want to know what is going on with them; and as for their mental aerobics to justify their man-whorishness, I can’t say I care. The one time when my married-whore/fb decided to leave his wife to be with me, I was absolutely horrified.
I think the release that otherwise straight, married, conformist men get when being well and truly fucked must be worth their mental gymnastics.
I know this sounds like a cop out (and I guess it probably is if it sounds like one). But I feel like I’m both.
And what does it matter, either way I’d be embarrassed! (if I’m right, which I think I am).
So I guess I just embody puritan prudery from both ends. Like most people, the “normals”.
Fact: we like to hear people complain about their problems if it makes ours seem insignificant. If we feel *better* than them and their shitty situation.
Fact: we avoid listening to what we can’t change about ourselves or what causes us envy.
Fact: Single men (straight or gay) and single women don’t want to hear about marital problems.
Just a hypoth (actually I hope it boils over everybody who hears it):
all singles (m/f s/g …) want to be married happily ever after, no matter how whorish they want to behave/want others to behave.
So listening to marital problems drives them insane with jealousy.
That’s why they can’t stand the chatter.
I certainly wouldn’t stand for it.
The married men with whom I’ve been involved tend towards identifying as the whore – and compartmentalise their whoring away from the rest of their life. God bless ’em!
I may have spoken too soon:
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/showbiz/article-23756128-katie-prices-boyfriend-alex-reid-admits-he-enjoys-cross-dressing.do
p.s ditto Marcello, ‘failed homo” is just sarchastic.
I would very stubornly be no one other than myself; I’ve put too much effort in that direction, and clearly the gay status quo are currently no more than drearily conforming creatures, worse really than bourgeois heteros since they are trying to copy them now.
I’m very fond of being an individual and despise the notion of being part of the herd.
We are clearly just having a bit of fun with terms Sisu.
There’s nothing wrong with calling yourself something – I call myself Marcelo – which if you think about it, is quiet a bizare thing to do. How does the word ‘Marcelo’ represent me?
It’s not the label thats the problem – it’s the attachment and associations with the label that distorts.
At the same time – the term ‘Marcelo’ is, in a way, the best term – since it doesn’t tell you a lot. At best – it tells you I’m not Chinese. Although that might not be true either.
So, yes, labels are bad – but necessary – otherwise, we’d just be making grunting noises and Mark S would be out of a job.
Like I said – the problem isn’t the label, it’s the attachment and taking yourself to be those labels – that’s the problem.
Lads, you are not going to get an argument from me about “conformity” and the regretable (and so-called) maturing of the gay male community to forgo the individual for group-think and assimilation.
But calling yourself a failed homo, or post-gay, or anti-gay or whatever is being just as label-centric as those who see the fabulousness of marriage and other stereotypic gay trends.
Labelling yourself at the expense of others is exactly the same thing we see as objectionable in the Gay Mainstream… fuck who you want, act how you want, but remember that it is our reactions to identity politics and rigid definitions of behaviour that bring us all to Mark Simpson’s blog in the first place!
You can bet on that; Marks mind is a deep pit of poetic diversity, hyperbole etc.: undying devotion to mental flipflopery.
t seems he showed a liking for “sodomites” once. I suppose that could be “sodomists” or .sodomistas!
Mark, there’s so much pressure to conform that most people do.
So when you find guys like Mr Simpson and yourself – it’s a huge relief.
I like the term ‘failed homo’ although I think we could exchange the word ‘homo’ for ‘gay’.
It’s sounds like a term that we should be proud of.
If your a failed homo or hetero then your a successful person!
Maybe Mark can come up with a word for that : )
Marcelo: Gosh, I’m terribly relieved that I don’t suffer alone! It’s more like being in a state of contracted puzzlement, and sadness. You seem to live in the same social milieu as I do! With out long term assurances from people like Mark and yourself, even Gore Vidal (who i don’t know personally) I would think that I was some some variety of natural freak : “a failed homo”.
I’ve been trying diligently, since I moved to this smaller city to make gay friends , and I may as well befriend wild grouse. I’m gregarious and make friends easily with straight people. But the (more effeminate) gay men are very removed and also, here at least , very religious which is beyond my comprehension even (and an interesting fact by itself in the states).
I’ve always assumed that the effeminateness is a consequence of the female role models in a persons life, since my Mother was more butch than most men, and I took after her. I have never even been able to relate to normal women accept as a 3rd sex. BTW I also always get along really well with drag queens.
I think you are right about the defensive gay men having suffered attacks and becoming rigid, toward anyone seeming masculine despite their sexuaity. (good insight!) It’s a little confusing now because some people “act ” butch and then turn out to be very different in reality.
c’est la guerre!
Yes Mark, there are some men who may have biological effeminate makeup – although there is too much contradiction in the literature on that to say that for sure – but, fair enough, I’ll concede that that is highly probable.
And yes, I have found that drag queens or transgender types to be the most accepting – i’ve always enjoyed their company.
And agree that sexuality is not enough of a bond (apart from a few contacts on the net – all my friends are straight men and a few women).
But, I guess I can’t help wanting to engage with people though – no matter what the difference. It’s just such a shame that gay men have suffered so many attacks to the point that it’s caused so much insecurity and rigidity.
They’ve just become so religious.
But, hey – ce la vie
I’m happy and content at 37 and at a very good place.
Marcello, in America, at least, their were men who’s identity is developed around being effeminate, who’s sexuaiy only seems secondarily, ( were for instance teased in school for being” fems” etc).and need a sence of belongiing which they found in time with similar individuals, who they called girlfriends or girl-which is a black female derivative. They didn’t call all homos girl,or girlfriend only the ones who they shared a common feminine bond.
When I first came out I felt excluded, except that they all wanted to have sex with me. Once I found guys like myself it was ok., and queens who just accepted me for me- like drag queens really- ‘a man or butch or husband material it was all ok.. I think we all try to fnd similar friends.. Sexuality itself (being a homo) doesn’t usually do it..
@Mark Walsh
Stereotypes exist because they are true on average. And I never said there aren’t exceptions to the rule. But of course you missed that because you started to respond to my posts before even finishing reading them out of anger.
Thanks guys – I just went and checked out his reply – again it was a bit stand off-ish. But, I do like the guy. And I totally understand why I would get that reaction. Camp men don’t have it easy and thats a terrible ignorant shame.
I Highly recommend his movies to people.
My intention is not to create animosity towards anyone of my camp fellow cock suckers. But that doesn’t mean that I can’t have a dig from time to time.
Trust me – i’ve been called plenty of things in my day. I still remember getting spat at and called ‘dumbfuck wogs’ by racists Australians as myself and mum walked by pubs in the late 70’s early 80’s. That stuff stays with you.
Here’s my reply to some of their ‘all critical’ comments.
“Brothers…ok,ok sisters, I’d be the first person to defend effeminate men – that does not mean that we shouldn’t be willing to question the origins of effeminacy or masculinity in men and the language that has evolved out of that. Needless to say, critical analysis = evolution.
But it usually comes across like a ‘put down’. That because you fuck men, then that makes you a girl (not that there’s anything wrong with girls). And to put all homo, or bi men into one category is very cheap.
I also understand that it’s become part of ‘Gay’ language and I do respect that.
And if you don’t see why religious shame has anything to do with it – then maybe you haven’t understood the effect the Bible has had on human language.
Homosexuality is natural – the Bible made it unatural, therefore confining us into this battle of words. It’s the ‘If you like boys then you must be a girl’ mentality. This adopted atrophy stems directly from these old books and breeds an identity or identification with women at an early age.
Again, not that there’s anything wrong with that for some men who are quiet happy being the way they are. But assigning that language to all homo or bi men is a form of control.
And that – is what makes it so tedious”
p.s. I agree that calling homo men who tend to be effeminate ‘girl’ , I never thought about it but it strikes me as being kind of homop\hobic in origins. Same thing with black persons, I might call a white racist a :’nigger’ to a black person or to their faces., but not a black person.
I tend to turn the whole thing on it’s head and call straight men who take their masculinity too seriously “girl” which addressed to them makes them confused and pissed off or embarrased. When I say it of them it’s just dishing. I don’t say it to homosexuals or about them usually, unless they have this nevo-butch surface, covering a big queen inside, which is phony. I probably shouldn’t be that antagonistic, but can’t always help myself.
I tend not to use it much myself, but sometimes it is the perfect way of puncturing over-seriousness. And for Bruce and several other of my friends that kind of campy argot is quite an important part of their heritage.
I have a question. I recently made a small comment on Bruce La Bruces Facebook page. It was a quip, in regards to the use of the term ‘girl’ when speaking about homosexual or bisexual men. For example in reffering to a non hetero man “Oh that girl is…. ”
I said that using that term ‘girl’ to describe homo men is tedious. He reacted with a short, yet surprisingly ‘aggresively’ comment. I replied that it was “religious shame based” language. Basically what I meant was that those terms are drenched in so much guilt that it is not productive and not progressive at all.
Now, I know that the term is used ‘jokingly’ (I am aware of Gay culture and it’s history) but at this point I think it is counteractive because things are clearly changing. And you can only laugh at the same joke only so often before it stops being funny.
Maybe because I don’t consider myself to be so rigid in my sexuality that that language just seems ‘tedious’ to me.
It just makes sense that our language should shed it’s skin and adapt to new attitudes.
Anyway – any opinions?
pedro:
There is a difference between a thick skin and kindness. I can’t speak for Mark but I can’t imagine that he’s gratified by your always tossing the same strange old “gay” stereotypes into every discussion; when people show exceptions which there always are and you won’t listen.
Mark doesn’t do this to fight with people, I’m sure. He’d take up Pro wrestling if he wanted to do that.
More boring than anything; I can’t even imagine how it got associated with manliness: The only association I can make is that the bat is supposed to be some phalic extension. Why anyone one would stand around to hit a little ball with it is beyond me; there it gets lost in the imagination. Unless the one who hits the ball the most gets to give head to all the other players!
What a peculiar sport baseball is. OK, so all sport is peculiar, but any sport played by oafs in shrunken knickerbockers is especially odd.
P.S: e.g, I read a while ago a story about how Teddy Roosevelt, who in his irritation with the effemineness of the Cuban men, insisted that we introduce and make them play baseball to encourge the spirit of “competative manliness” in them. Lazy Latins!
As Marcello remarked at another site, they weren’t as lucky as they would like in getting the Latins aboard with capitalism.
The so called men’s movement which was supposedly a correlative of the “womens’s movement”(I believe that this is a Robt Bly version), claimed that men were as pathetically trapped by the same system of restraints that limited women, only that they acted as a foil to the female limitations. In other words, males were not the enemy of female liberty but that a system of contrapositional roles trapped them both. Males for instance, in the process of females staying homebound , are doomed themselves to thankless roles as caretakers who were often not even a part of the family, but more enslaved to bearing alone and externally the full weight of their care. This is especially true in industral societies.
Possibly in the same way that males set themselves up exclusively as competitors of one another, especially in capitalism, disallowed themselves any other kinds of affectional relationships with one another
since they have been trapped by the systems expectations of them.
This is easy to see in America, where males seldom are much more than work horses who battle with one another.
Alas, it doesn’t look like it’s Alex Reid.
There are many strains of belief in western society that keep men more rigidly constrained by gender rules: chivalry, the conflation of maternalism with morality, the shame of male vulnerability, and for that reason, men who defy these principles will be regarded as a monsters. The men who would change this would have to be completely free of gender-based guilt and unabashedly libertine. Who’s out there that meets these qualifications?
BRAVO!!
@Pedro
I suppose it depends on the gay men you hang with. As a gay man who lived on the more punk/alternative scene, a lot of the gay men I knew had occasional women partners.
The gays you refer to, we called straights, as in closed-minded or not alternative.
@Mark Walsh
It’s spelled relevant, something that you as a native English speaker should know. And I’m not trying to be offensive; rather, you took it as offensive. My criticism is how many gay guys are always saying that there is nothing wrong with hitting on straight men or even raping them by sucking their dicks whilst they are asleep, because all men are naturally horny and willing to get off, but when you apply this logic to them and ask how they would feel if a woman gropped them or sucked their dicks whilst they are asleep, they react with horror. And Mark Simpson couldn’t be offended even if I tried. He is arguably the thickest skinned individual I’ve ever seen.
It’s certainly true that some gay men have a horror of female genitalia, something I’ve dubbed ‘fannyphobia’ in the past (‘fanny’ in the UK is slang for front bottom, not back bottom), though I don’t happen to share that horror. And yes, many fannyphobic gay men would nevertheless like a cute straight man to put out for them (perhaps thinking their back bottom sexier than any front bottom).
But I don’t see how that is ‘the problem’ here. I somehow doubt straight men are terribly worried about gay men’s opinions about their sexuality – but I suspect very concerned indeed about what other straight people think.
How is that relivant Pedro? It puzzles my that you are always trying to be offensive, and you are not even on topic. . It just seems that you are trying to create bad feelings, which certainly Mark nor anyone else deserves.
The problem is that gay guys think that it’s perfectly normal that horny butch straight guys are really “open” and “horny straight guys will have sex with anyting”, but when you suggest that if this is true for straight men, that it should be true for gays as well and that they should have sex with women, they go into the “ew, pussy, gross” routine. It’s pathetic. What is good for the goose is not good for the gander.
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