Visit transcendmovement.com for some very interesting and provocative articles and podcasts on transgender, crossdressing, crossdreaming, sex, gender and sexuality.
“Hey, thanks for the follow, but I wanted to ask something you seem to have extensive knowledge of. So there is girlfag and guydyke. We’ll, what would you call a straight man who’s infatuated with male homosexual couples? A guyfag?”
My answer:
To my knowledge there is no word for this, in the same way there is no word for lesbian women who watch gay male porn (which is actually quite common).
The fact that straight men who like gay relationships or who watch gay porn are so rarely heard of is, I believe, that they break the ultimate taboo. A man who gets turn on watching two men having sex is per definition gay. But we know that it is not as simple as that.
I asked my friends over at the Facebook girlfag/guydyke forum about this, and some of them brought up the general fascination for boobs, found among both men and women, gay or straight.
I suspect men and women share some inborn triggers to specific visual clues, but that we as kids and adolescents are conditioned not to react to the triggers defined as belonging to the other sex.
I would also guess that many straight men react positively to the idea of being penetrated. Again our culture tell us that men are not supposed to feel this urge, as all manly men are presumed programmed to be the pro-active penetrator.
Notice how in the Hangover movies, anal penetration and feminization is considered the most humiliating experience a man can have. Still, the male film makers are so fascinated by the concept that they just have to include the scenes!
In a misogynistic culture opening your body up to another human being is considered feminine and submissive, and therefore inferior. In the real world the embracer may perfectly well be the one leading.
The fact is that biologically speaking men are equipped with an insane number of nerve endings in the anal area. Moreover, the stimulation of the prostate alone can be enough to bring a man to orgasm. To my knowledge no evolutionary oriented sexologist has ever tried to explain why evolution has given men this ability, most likely because the idea scares the shit out of them.
I would also add that some straight men’s fascination for gay couples may be caused by other factors. Some gay men are allowed more leeway when it comes to expressing emotions – feelings that are often considered “feminine”. Some may also be fascinated by the liberal attitudes to promiscuous sex found in some parts of the gay community.
In others this fascination may reflect a suppressed bisexual or transgender nature.
One of my friends over at the girlfag/guydyke forum summarized all of this quite nicely:
“I will never get why people assume that categories are a faithful picture of human nature. Many straight women love lesbian porn, many gay men love straight porn, etc. Straight guys just don’t talk about liking gay porn because of the stigma. There are studies that show that all men love to look at penises, gay or straight. It’s similar with women who often love to look at boobs, or at naked women.”
Mark Simpson has written a great essay on why male bisexuality is taboo, while female bisexuality is considered erotic.
Here is an excerpt:
“Straight women now have something to gain and little to lose by admitting an interest in other women. Rather than exile them… (click here to read it all)
"i’m all for talking about how the heteronormative ideals negatively affect bi men, btw, because i get that they totally do. but i am not okay with anyone, especially men, saying that people finding women’s bisexuality “erotic” is in any way positive for women because it is so fucking not. and i am REALLY not fucking okay with an article like this, which is basically celebrating the fucking sexualization and victimization of bi women, being posted in the bi tags without so much as a trigger warning.
repeat after me, people: fetishization is not acceptance.”
It is possible that I have not expressed myself clearly, but my point was in no way that the fetishization of lesbian women is OK.
I am not looking at this from the perspective of the male gaze, but to what extent men and women are allowed to live out their sexualities in their daily lives.
What I see is that in cultures that are seriously messed up sex and gender wise, this is an area where men are punished much harder than women, basically because the homophobia is so much stronger among men than among women.
There are probably many reasons for this, one being that we are living in cultures that even now understands “manhood” as something far more valuable than “womanhood”. Another may be the one you are pointing to, the male fascination for lesbian love.
So, the system stinks, but an unintended consequence of the extreme male homophobia is that women, whether they are heterosexual, bisexual or lesbian, can more easily get away with same-sex intimacy and sex.
That does not mean that being a bisexual woman is easy. Nothing is easy in this system. But she is most often allowed more freedom than the bisexual man who is forced to stick to the curves at all costs, avoiding the ambiguity in between. As Simpson points out, for men ambiguity equals emasculation.
And what I find truly bizarre is that researchers like J. Michael Bailey (who Simpson refers to in a critical manner), reinforce this suppression of male bisexuality.
These researchers have developed a model where women are naturally bisexual while men are not. This research therefore reinforces the dogma that bisexual men are perverts, while bisexuality in women is natural. The research reinforces male homophobia.
This also affects the transgender community (where I come from). Not only are male to female transsexual women classified as men by researchers like Bailey; any ambiguity they must feel as regards their sexual orientation is also immediately interpreted as proof of perversion. A gynephilic trannsexual woman cannot be attracted to men, per definition. This is one of the reasons why trans activists like Julia Serano must fight to be recognized as bisexual, not only by male scientists, but also by radical feminists and fellow trans women.
You write that Simpson’s article is “basically celebrating the fucking sexualization and victimization of bi women”. I don’t read it this way. Take for instance the following paragraph:
“It’s unquestionable that female bisexuality is today much more socially acceptable than male bisexuality, and in fact frequently positively encouraged, both by many voyeuristic men and an equally voyeuristic pop culture and also, perhaps slightly paradoxically, by women’s new-found desire to assert themselves sexually.”
Like you, he argues that some of this tolerance is caused by what you call “fetishization” (and he calls male voyerism), and he does not argue that this fetishisation is OK. Nor do I. I am just pointing out that sometimes bigotry can have unintended consequences, in the sense that it can make life easier for one group compared to the other.
But, obviously, life would be easier for all if we could get away from this patriarchal, sexist, crap altogether.
My friend Natalie from Thailand has suggested that I add the term “inner gender” to my Creative Crossdreamer Vocabulary, to accompany the terms gynephilic (attracted to women) and androphilic (attracted to men).
She says:
“The definition [of an androphilic, man-loving, or gynephilic, woman-loving, sexual orientation] should ideally pertain to the inner gender the person is attracted to rather than the outer physical sex.
"In case of transgendered people, it refers to their inner gender as much as for non-transgendered people. For transsexual people, this inner gender does not change but it is the outer sex that is changed to match this inner gender. So it is the inner gender that should always assume a greater significance.
"This makes it also significant in non-transgender attractions because a masculine-man<->effeminate male sexuality is not same as masculine-male<->masculine-male sexuality. In various cultures including traditional Thai society, while the former is referred to as ‘gay’, the latter is accommodated silently within the mainstream 'straight’ category without giving it any social marker or identification at all!”
In other words: In some contexts and in some cultures people are able to see past the biological sex and affirm the inner identity of another person even if this identity is different from the one found in his or her passport.
I’m an admin at the blog mental-health-advice. We help with all sorts of issues ranging from self harm to eating disorders to relationship and sexuality issues. It would really really mean the world to us if you could follow/post this for your followers, so we can help even more people. But, make sure that if you do follow, it is on mental-health-advice rather than this (my old blog) Thanks in advance, Pauline
Humon has made a wonderful set of comics depicting the diversity of sex and sexuality in the animal kingdom.
They are important because many of them completely debunks the dominating myth of proper sex and gender roles. There is same-sex activities, different “transgender” morphs of males and females, dominant females and reactive females.
This means, of course, that dismissing gay, transgender and genderqueer identities and sexualities as being “unnatural” makes no sense at all. Human diversity is most likely as natural as the one we see in other species.
