Some 500 years ago, Michelangelo broke from his chisel and hammer. Having seen enough Carrara-moulded dong to sculpt David’s stoic phallus 10 times over, perhaps blindfolded, he lurched for the real thing, penning sonnets in the hundreds and gifting superior works to a young nobleman of dashing looks who likewise possessed an eye for the arts, Tomaso de Cavalieri.
Pull the curtain back to Han China and you, peeping inquirer, might find an imperial tradition of encouraged fornication between emperor and scribe. And, though misrepresented by recent erotica (see: The Song of Achilles & co.), scholarship on “Socratic love” — Greek same-sex relationships — magnifies the dignity awarded to members of elite societies still functioning in matrimony yet granted a pass on homosexual sexual civil-military affairs; a touted ‘fact’ to be later invoked by historical liberationists and waking 19th century liberals to categorize the power dynamics of ancient civilizations into psychiatric classifications.
What was once an act or series thereof became, between the end of the Second World War and the American Civil Rights Movement, generalized into a separate, visible group of identities unrelated to man’s stature or character. The modern conception of the ‘gay male,’ his form and habit, has not been such a curiosity among human complexes for centuries in the making, but invented, a trait inborn that’s now stratified into groupings numbering in the hundreds.
Despite the upward success of those in such catch-all categories, our cozying into West Village bars, cultural hubs, like San Francisco and Amsterdam, and leveraged attention from mega-corporations to global rights watchdogs to a fraudulent GLAAD, has pitied gay men through means of seclusion and political weaponization. The community, since the decriminalization of sodomy and extensions of civil rights protections to sexuality, has not become more integrated with the alleged opposing group (the straights). It has been pawned, its history overwritten, morphed into a tool for suppression and containment — simply through its acceptance as an imprinted persona.
It’s argued that homosexuality displayed in its upper echelon, kept sacred, not separate from day-to-day life, is now a relic of times past. Whereas there were substantially less official routes towards the contemporary goalposts in, say, marriage, mobility in labor and social life, sexual identity did not override larger facets of man’s ego. Politics, consciousness and power were foremost, with his phallic attractions in the tailwinds. The man, not judged on tendency but aptitude or morale, was no less free than we are today.
Could it be possible that in spite of these freedoms and leaps in progress, the modern gay has been made susceptible to generalizations? Has the expanse of idiomatic sexual expressions and cultural infighting not distracted the wider American politic from pragmatic issues? And in the chronically online era, did an epidemic of radicalism, coining queer theory and dissociative identity disorder and spurring voluntary TikTok satirizations of the colorful urbanite’s seemingly universal experience instead redirect men from cultivating a persona and culture distinct from sexuality — toward culture wars stamped in rainbow mud?
To all these questions I agree: The excessive categorization of male homosexuality, as an identity versus a slice of his personhood, has totally overwhelmed the true meaning and cultivation of consciousness among fellow brothers. Framing this perspective, which I know many of you probably have already gawked at by way of your deeply held convictions and political staunchness (‘intolerance’), allow me to paint a picture.
Imagine for yourself a ‘typical’ gay man.
He likely has an eye for good dress and fitness. Culturally, he’s entrenched in matters de l’heure, from pop fandoms to fashion editorials, and concerns himself with the useless theatrics of his GBFs (girl-best-friends). On Tuesdays, he’s out of Equinox at the same hour he’d depart the club Thursday. And politically, he stands only for the blue party that b(r)ought him gay marriage over 10 years ago and, in a daze, heralds a Kamala Harris ’28 ticket, the sole female candidate any male subset would vote for at a disproportionally higher-than-average rate. Don’t forget the slang lexicon that has multiplied tenfold since the era of bathhouses, ballrooms and cruising grounds — ‘DL,’ ‘cunty’ and recently ‘trade’ have not only come to define who is gay and who isn’t, but also been gamified by girls and online cliques who want in on the fun.
If these identifiers summon but a glimpse of your idealized homo, embrace the title of stereotypical. It does not come as a surprise that in typifying a group’s traits and overgeneralizing men on the basis of mere acts, one finds themselves in contradiction with all they know to be progressive. So then, why has a double standard — the playful, yet unconsciously oppressive labeling game — been accepted as an equalizing agent to the zeitgeist?
Though it may seem absurd to reduce this phenomenon to bare bones, resistors have struck the root of today’s mania. Foucault, philosopher and post-structuralist, recognized this plight before the parades and corporate pridewashing. Whereas pre-Christian ideals centered man’s identity on his native homeland or role in ancient hierarchy, the net cast by the Church encompassing all same-sex acts within the category of ‘sodomic’ paved the way for powers to take aim on a tightly-defined rung of citizens. Gore Vidal similarly noted that the ‘gay’ qualifier was no less than a ‘ghetto,’ shoving well-adjusted men whose lifestyles differed only in fluidity of sexuality into exploitable corners at the expense of recognition beyond sex.
I’m not suggesting that we, as a minority, regress to historical definitions of attraction; no gay I know would trade sexual liberties for penpal exchanges, pederastic dominance ploys or keeping anal to closed quarters — though sadly many circles still exist in that light. It would be unthinkable to constrain an ever-expanding domain of sexualities, subcultures and types. But from gay to gay, I humbly ask you look beyond ‘the apps’ to counter the beasts of tyranny. You are remarkably more than your desires, and your manhood has higher traits to flaunt prior to your position in bed.
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Francis Xavier Jaso '28 is an Opinion Columnist and a Government and Economics student in the College of Arts & Sciences. His fortnightly column “A Contrarian’s Calamity” defies normative, dysfunctional campus discourse in the name of reason, hedonism, and most notably, satire. He can be reached at fjaso@cornellsun.com.
