Homophobes are Anally Fixated
People — queer or straight — who support social equality for sexual and gender minorities tend to consider the subjects of their advocacy as whole people. For instance, one might think of a married couple of gay men as two goofy dudes who listen to Heavy Metal and play video games, like Brian and Steve on The Sarah Silverman Show.
| The Sarah Silverman Program | Thursday, 10:30pm / 9:30c | |||
| Brian’s Proposal | ||||
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Homophobes are concerned with only one thing: who is putting what where. More specifically, they are really concerned with the unregulated interaction between the penis and the anus. Consider two recent examples. Barb Davis White has a little quip she uses to argue against the legitimacy of same-sex marriage as a civil rights issue:
“Rosa Parks did not move to the front of the bus to support sodomy.”
Technically, this is true. Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to an arrogant white man. She had had a long day at work and simply did not want to stand up just so this obnoxious asshole could express his social supremacy. True, this act of resistance was not wholly spontaneous — Parks was active in her church and in the NAACP. But while she had an awful lot of issues on her mind at that moment, sodomy was probably not one of them.
All of which is totally irrelevant to the question of social equality for sexual minorities. Yet to an anally fixated teabagger like White, this is a trump card.
“I’m here today to tell you that homosexuality and lesbian behavior is unhealthy,” claiming that gays and lesbians have higher rates of STDs than anyone else in the world, including “gay bowel disease,” an ailment that does not exist and is often used by religious right figures to paint gay men as diseased.
Okay, until I read the above quotes at Pam’s House Blend, I had never heard of “gay bowel disease” or “gay bowel syndrome.” For one thing, it’s discredited junk science. For another, the origin of the term goes directly to the heart of my thesis: GBS is the figment of the anally fixated.
In 1976, a group of physicians in private proctologic practice in New York City coined the illness “Gay Bowel Syndrome” in reference to a constellation of gay male anorectal disorders. Through analysis of biomedical discourse and popular media, it is apparent that Gay Bowel Syndrome is an essentialized category of difference that is neither gay-specific, confined to the bowel, nor a syndrome.
To be clear, there is nothing wrong with anal sex. There is something wrong with being so preoccupied with the anal sex habits of complete strangers that one becomes a deranged proponent of punitive social policies and irrational discrimination.
So you know that expression, “Get your head out of your ass”…?
These people just plain make things up in their heads, and then present them as though they are absolute fact. The above is an example.
I am a bisexual activist, and all the facts (genetics, history, etc.) are on the LGBTQ2I side. When someone posts a biphobic/homophobic comment on the Internet, I post the facts, with links to support my assertions, to contradict them.
Another example was when I posted a link to the research that shows that male bi/homosexuality IS genetic (same gene). The immediate response? “The researcher is gay.”
I am a little embarrassed to admit that I was so nonplussed by this that I didn’t answer. But I went back on the Internet and looked up the researcher. No matter how hard I looked, I couldn’t find anything about his sexual orientation. Then I realized I had been had. The responder had made it up in his head!!! If I couldn’t find it, he couldn’t either. However, I have found that if you confront them with the fact that they are making it up in their head they fold pretty quickly.