So I thought I should talk about: 'Gay'

6/9/17


The play I’m working on, Hommo, is about masculinity and the (homo)sexuality of hypermasculine relationships when they come into conflict. I see this sexual conflict in the gym and on the sports field, as the obvious examples, but it can also be seen in radically different circumstances. I want to ask what circumstances create the use of ‘gay’ as a negative term, and why men say ‘that’s gay’.

‘Hommo’ follows two men as they plan to kill a woman, and simultaneously one dates a different woman. This narrative confronts sexuality on many levels: heterosexual desire for the woman as a sexual object, both in the act of sex, and assassination. But the central focus is the sexual-conflict between the two men as they battle with each other to establish their total masculinity. .

I feel that all relationships, of any gender, exhibit what’s known as the ‘master-slave dynamic’. All couples, partners, lovers, will have realms of life in which one is the superior, the more capable, and the other has to take a secondary role. These realms can be as broad as ‘work-home’, in which one partner is the worker, and the other the home-keeper. Alternatively it can be as narrow as ‘confidence as a swimmer’. A degree in gender studies is not required to know that men historically take a universal dominant role and expect, force, disempower women into the passive role. Men have assumed dominance, superiority, power over women and this dynamic is enhanced every day. It is in light of this that homosexuality throws the cat among the pigeons for patriarchists.

Homosexuality would seem to buck the traditional male-female master-slave relationships. When lesbian couples are asked ‘Who’s the man?’ heteronormativity rears its head in its plainest form, as it implies that instead of assuming the dominant-passive relationship, one partner must be simply ‘filling in’ for the man. The tacit suggestion is that homosexual relationships are inadequate, or missing a component: the man. Instead, of course, homosexual couples, like all couples, have dominant-passive dynamics in all realms, and they aren’t somehow missing the interjection of a dominant man.

The relevance of this to my play is that the master-slave dynamic takes an unexpected turn when two hypermasculine, man-men come into contact. As all relationships must form a dominant-subdominant pattern, the men are forced into conflict. One of the two must adopt a subdominant role, otherwise they cannot interact. But the subdominant position is traditionally associated with the female, and hypermasculine men see this as a non-option. So man-men are placed in an impossible situation: in order to engage, they must assume the master-slave relationship, but this forces one into the submissive.

It is in the battleground of this conflict that I believe the current use of ‘gay’ finds its genesis. I think that when masculine men use the word ‘gay’ they are not actually referring to homosexuality, the attraction between members of the same sex, love, desire, intimacy or anything at all to do with gay-ness at all. Instead, ‘gay’ used to mean ‘less than a man’: ‘that’s gay’ is a negative statement that something is more feminine than masculine, inadequate, submissive. ‘Gay’ is wrenched from its actual meaning as a descriptor for homosexuality and warped into a negative statement for something less than masculine. When two hypermasculines conflict, one must submit: the outcome of the conflict is that the ‘less than masculine’ becomes the ‘gay’.

There are reasons why ‘gay’ is chosen as the designated word for ‘less than’. For me, it can be analysed in very basic terms: sex can be understood as a simple act of dominance and submission. Though they need not be so, these roles are traditionally gendered: men give and women receive. This can be understood on the simple biological level: men are the actors of sex, and women are the audience. In this way, women are submissive in the sexual act: therefore, for a man to ‘take it’, is to be submissive.  

I, of course, don’t accept this warping of homosexuality, for several reasons. First, I don’t feel the compulsion to be a dominant male, and am content to be the lesser partner in any relationship without feeling I am ‘less than a man’. Second, because the notion of transgenderism or queer gender clearly makes a mess of the simplistic dichotomy of master-slave. Finally, sex doesn’t have to be such an unequal act, and it certainly doesn’t have to be man in control. Therefore it is only really the hypermasculines who use ‘gay’ in this specific way.

Let it be noted that I, as a straight man, am not pretending that this argument is especially new, nor am I pretending that I have an authority on the experience of others. Obviously. All I am doing here is fleshing out the thinking behind my writing and how a play originally about masculinity, ended up being about sexuality. Once again, this is the straight man speaking, and I know that for those in the LGBT/queer community, this aint new.

My play, Hommo, follows two hypermasculine men as they confront their competition with each other. They battle and fight to establish dominance, and initially desperately ignore the sexuality of their relationship, but later come to see it and try to understand if they are comfortable with it. I feel that the hypermasculinity of their relationship forces them to confront the sexuality of conflict and what their conceptions of manliness mean for their relation to each other.