I remember a story my friend Chuck told me that happened in
Facebook. He saw a former classmate from high school, and like any decent
person who wanted to catch up, decided to add the guy as a friend. A few days
later, Chuck received a message.
The
message said that the classmate couldn’t add Chuck because the former had
developed a“slight homophobia”.
Chuck was first shocked, then angry, then mortified. He couldn’t believe that
he went out on a limb to give this guy an opportunity to be Facebook “friends” and the guy gave him the electronic
equivalent of a slap in the face. So, like any other person addicted to
Facebook in the Philippines, he decided to update his status.
“I
just added this guy from high school and he said that he can’t add me back
because he developed a slight homophobia. I’m regretting the fact that I added
him in the first place.”
A wave of sympathetic comments flew in from the “let’s
get this guy and destroy him” to
the “it’s good you’re being a class act by not going down to his
level” type. I even
threw in an insult or two. Besides, what is a “slight” homophobia?
(It reminded me of this piece a spoken word poet once performed,
lamenting this generation’s lack of conviction when speaking. He said that
every idea we posit is really an invitation towards a shared disbelief, and
that every sentence we speak is really a question. I thought if the classmate
was going to “develop” homophobia, he might as well have the
balls to admit that it is definitely more than a “slight” one considering that he just insulted
a decent gay man who tried to be polite.)
The number of sympathetic comments wasn’t a surprise, but it got
me to thinking (as Carrie Bradshaw would have said): Is our generation moving
away from and is in fact consciously rejecting traditional macho culture?
This reminded me of another conversation with my friend Mike.
Now, Mike is a gay man, but outside of the fact that he likes Mariah Carey and
having sex with his boyfriend, no one can tell he’s gay. That’s because he is a
complete slob. (In case he’s reading this, he’s also very very intelligent.
Love you Mike! We’re still friends right?) He confessed that he doesn’t take a
bath everyday because he thinks it’s a waste of time. His longest run was two
weeks, and he was only forced to take one because his roommates could no longer
stand how he smelled. In fairness to him, he was suffering from depression
then, but the not-taking-a-bath-regularly-thing kind of stuck.
I remember telling him that I used to think he had a gray pallor
every time we went out. At first I thought it was a skin condition. I didn’t
realize it was a thin coating of dust. I received a rather painful punch on the
shoulder for my mouth.
I also told him that we’re already being marginalized for
wanting to sleep with men. Why would you want to be gay, and then keep that
aspect of traditional macho culture that makes straight men, well, icky?
In case people haven’t realized it yet, straight men have been trying to look
gay for the past several years (under the guise of the politically-correct term “metrosexuality”).
Why be marginalized on both fronts: one, for wanting to sleep with men, and
two, for looking like a dirty straight man?
I asked if he was insane. I got another punch in the shoulder.
There was this guy (whose name escapes me at the moment) who
decided to jumpstart a movement that was a response to the feminist philosophy.
He wanted men to re-take their manhood because he believed that the current
cultural and social landscape has emasculated them.
Emasculated them. What a joke. (The first
time I read about it, I thought the writer was being satirical.) The whole
movement was an ironic WTF blip in the whole of human history. No one could
take it seriously. The very concept of a real macho man is isolated, silent,
unmoving: a lone wolf. How can they possibly do that as a group? By sharing
their feelings of emasculation? Isn’t that what they
were trying to stop in the first place; all this touchy-feely stuff? How does that work?
In the (admittedly upscale) school I used to go to, a guy can
get teased by his other guy friends because he keeps on wearing pleated slacks.
My older brother (who, it may be argued, is too straight,
considering the number of girlfriends he had) is even more brand-conscious than
I am. I know another guy, not gay, who will kill you if you touch his hair.
These all used to be very “gay” characteristics. (In fact, you would
have gotten beaten up and bullied for exhibiting them not too long ago.) The
former macho men are now encroaching on what used to be regarded as “faggot
(bakla)” territory;
so much so, that it has actually become unfashionable to look like, well, what
we used to call a guy’s guy, a macho man. Acting tough is now a liability:
in all probability, people will laugh at you rather than applaud you.
And this general encroachment has had a ripple effect, and is
starting to impact other aspects of our culture, particularly where the
heteronormative and homosexual perspectives collide/intersect. There are
examples now, like that of Chuck’s classmate, where straight men are publicly
skewered for declaring homophobic beliefs. It’s still okay to be homophobic,
our society says, you just can’t admit it.
(I mean, just look at My Husband’s Lover and how Filipinos have embraced the
ideas it espoused and the themes it has embraced. That’s one huge effing leap
for mankind.)
This made me realize that the homophobes, ironically, are now in
the closet gay men used to occupy. And the idea is the very soul of karmic
retribution. The world is moving towards a new direction, and if more gay men
bravely step out of the closet, then we’ll have more space to stuff the
homophobes in.
