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PaperclipPerfector  12d ago (text post)   33246 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 10, 2025

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Gay is an identity (something you are).
Banging other dudes is an action (something you do).

Men do, women are, so men naturally assume that when you ask them this, you're asking them to apply the woman's label. Unless you're a man predisposed to Gayness (which forms part of the problem with Gays, from the average man's perspective), that is inaccurate, insulting, and outright dangerous.

Of course, that also means they won't be part of any discussion when women and Gay men are trying to create an identity to describe this phenomenon, so it's not like the mistake theorists in those groups are even going to get a chance to know that. And the conflict theorists do it intentionally because male-coded sexuality bad.

I’m rather confused by this post.

Are you trying to say that there are no “gay men” because “gay” is an “identity” and “identities” are “for women”?

Do you believe that there’s a legitimate distinction to be made between “gay men” and “men who have sex with men”?

Do you believe that there’s a legitimate distinction to be made between “gay men” and “men who have sex with men”?

Yes, I find Sin's wording a bit odd regarding the women thing, but I like the are versus do description. There is a legitimate distinction there. Gay men are a particular subset of MSM, and part of defining the subset is the cultural component.

Do you believe that there’s a legitimate distinction to be made between “gay men” and “men who have sex with men”?

Gayness is a white construct, other (sub)cultures may reject the term.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down-low_(sexual_slang)

Down-low is an African-American slang term[1] that typically refers to a sexual subculture of black men who usually identify as heterosexual but actively seek sexual encounters and relations with other men, practice gay cruising, and frequently don a specific hip-hop attire during these activities.[2][3] They generally avoid disclosing their same-sex sexual activities, even if they have female sexual partner(s), they are married to a woman, or they are single.

Gayness is a white construct

On the contrary, it’s a colorless reality!

subculture of black men who usually identify as heterosexual

Much the same as how men can’t “identify” as women, your capacity to alter reality through self-identification is quite limited!

In the overwhelming majority of cases, a man who continually seeks out sexual contact with other men is doing so because man ass/dick turns him on. We have a word for such men, and that word is “gay” (or, occasionally, “bisexual”).

In the overwhelming majority of cases

This is only true if you restrict the scope to the West (I suspect the key criterion is "countries formerly but no longer dominated by Abrahamic religion"). Globally, the overwhelming majority of male-male sex happens in the context of machismo-based homosexuality, and the man dicking another man doesn't think dicking men is gay, or at least not in the context he is doing it in.

He accounts for the existence of "gay men" as a population distinct from men having sex with other men.

I suppose the evidence (e.g. prison sex) indicates that there is a distinction to be made. Although in the majority of contemporary cases, it’s being used as a cope.

In 19th and early 20th century Britain you were a homosexual if you liked to be penetrated by men, but if you were the one doing the penetrating you were not considered homosexual. This is similar to the culture of the Roman empire, which saw nothing wrong with man penetrating another man but considered being penetrated to be shameful. All that to say, the conception of the "gay man" as being someone who wants to have any kind of sexual activity with other men is historically quite recent.

I don’t think it’s quite true that gay topping was even remotely socially acceptable in Victorian England.

Who ever said it was acceptable? It wasn’t: sodomy was a sin and a crime, both for the sodomizer and the sodomized. It’s just that the sodimizer wasn’t considered to be homosexual. He’s just a guy who stuck his penis in the wrong place, like someone who commits beastiality. They wouldn’t consider someone who shtups sheep a zoophile with a sexual identity, he’s just a guy who did a sex crime.

The most famous case, Wilde, involved someone who was probably a top (impossible to prove from the historic record, but my impression is that he was relative to Lord Douglas).

Unacceptable like cannibalism, or "unacceptable" like adultery?

Turing was sterilised, wasn’t he? Although I never heard of that happening to anyone else.

I think it was a case of ‘unacceptable like adultery’ unless it was absolutely proven in the public eye in which case it became ‘unacceptable like paedophilia”.

I think OP’s point is that Turing was sterilized specifically for being a bottom and not for being “gay” in general. In other words, had he been a top or celibate he might’ve been considered an oddity but that would’ve been the extent of it.

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I'm pretty sure I could find a Victorian committing suicide over the fallout of their adultery if I worked at it. "Much closer to adultery than cannibalism" would be my intuition, at any rate.

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There was a researcher from the mid twentieth century whose name I forgot said this is basically supported by the psychological research.

Being the top or bottom is more than a preference, they’re really more like two separate sexualities in which very few people naturally gravitate towards both.

Tops are much more likely to be bisexual using modern terminology.

I understand the objection to “gay” as a label in this context, although I have no dog in this fight. People also use the term “gay” to essentially bind extremely disparate people whose behaviors vary wildly into one essentialist unit of cultural and political valence, which I imagine some “Men who have sex with men” would object to.

I’m sympathetic to this because I suffer from a mental disorder but I find attempts at building cultural and political solidarity amongst people who suffer from my disorder or a cluster of related ones to be absolutely abhorrent; I’m not a member of a “community” with proscribed political and economic interests, I’m just someone with a fucked up brain.

This is one of the few things Freddie deboar gets 100% right.

I think basically how we moderns think about identity is fundamentally harmful and stupid, getting in the way of understanding behavior which is the real interesting and functional bit with regards to how individuals interact with society writ large.

Freddie deboar

It’s DeBoer; he’s (nominally) a Dutch/Afrikaans farmer, not a swine.

I almost don’t want to correct it, it’s too good.

It would have been better if I misspelled it DeBoor drum roll

The English word boor is indeed cognate to the Dutch/Afrikaans boer; both etymologically come from roots meaning “peasant farmer”. The English word villain comes, via the French, from a Latin word with the same meaning.

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it’s being used as a cope

Why do you believe men feel the need to use it as a cope, and why is there anything to cope with?

Why do you believe men feel the need to use it as a cope

Because they are gay, and they would rather not be.

I reflect rather than endorse. I think there's a pretty clear political division, though, looking back over history, so the argument seems colourable.

Men do, women are, so men naturally assume that when you ask them this, you're asking them to apply the woman's label. Unless you're a man predisposed to Gayness (which forms part of the problem with Gays, from the average man's perspective), that is inaccurate, insulting, and outright dangerous.

I think there is something interesting here but I can't figure out any of this. Can you clarify?

"Women are human beings, men are human doings". Men are valuable because they can do stuff for you, women simply are valuable, innately and without meaningful argument. Advocates of this assessment generally hold that it emerges from biology: sperm is cheap, eggs are expensive. A tribe that loses three quarters of its men will bounce back in a generation, while a tribe that loses three quarters of its women will bounce back maybe never.

The claim here seems to be that "Gay" connotes innate nature, "being", rather than activity, "doing". Hence, the women's label?

Very helpful, thanks!

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