I'm not Gay, I'm Homosexual

On Machismo or Toxic Masculinity

There are many aspects of society that have made things really difficult for us: Religion, Politics and more importantly cultural believes.

Within the later probably one of the more harmful ones has been that of the "macho man"

In Europe this word is not very often used; nowadays some talk about "toxic masculinity" instead

In other cultures, like South American ones the concept of macho is very strict and clear:

_Men have to behave in a masculine manner. The hyperbolization of it being totally acceptable: Harsh behavior, bad manners, lack of hygiene and easy to be provoked into a fight.

_Men have to be into sports and ideally being competitive.

_Men can have as many sexual partners as he likes, women not.

_Men are the breadwinners, women should stay at home and take care of them, the kids and the house.

_Women are not allowed to contradict the husband; her attitude must be subordinate to his interests.

_Men do not cry or express their emotions.

_Physical contact among men is not seen as correct, all the opposite.

There are two ways that a society can change faster: one is thanks to its institutions and the other because their citizens demand it.

Being homosexuality penalized by religion and politics it seems logical that the way of breaking that pattern should have come from the people.

And that is what happened in New York in 1966 with Stonewall.

This action created a chain of actions that forced politicians to take action, even though it was a slow process.

The majority of the people who rebelled first was that part of the community that chose to express their sexuality and genre identity in a very contrasted way: camp men, travesties, transgender, etc. Remember the leader of the group was a drag queen.

And it was this image the one that the "straight" society associated with being gay. The stereotype was confirmed.

A sad testimony to this was the exhibition at the Tate Britain "Queer British Art"  where the curator invested a lot of time and effort portraying the gay community from the flamboyant point of view: crossdressing characters, female or male impersonations, etc a space for romantic love between two men or women? no, thanks. Queer equals gay so let's keep the stereotype.

Imagine what did it mean for a macho based culture to see their beliefs being challenged at that scale?

The ironic side of the situation is that many of those gay men felt attracted to very masculine guys, macho men many of them.

I can not say that in all cases but certainly in many of them these gay men wanted to take the place of the woman that would be with these kinds of men.

And that desire for copying the established role model of macho-man/woman would have a huge impact on the way a good percentage of gay people saw themselves and treated each other.

Use of feminine words for describing themselves, the sharp and offensive use of words when a masculine gay man did not want to take part in this model.

The gay community as a whole has had a fascist attitude in regards to the members of their community: You have to allow people to use the pronoun "she" when addressing you; they assume because you like men you are part of the "she ambition" so you have to accept this new status; you are the "woman" side of the couple if you are bottom if you are masculine either you have to be top or your masculinity will be questioned.

These approaches for me are based on a hidden deep hatred among gay people, it has been present in the so-called "gay community" for decades, fed by social believes and internal ones at the same time.

Something that time has shown us, again and again, is that human sexuality is extremely complicated and if to this you add issues regarding genre identity this is even more intricate.

The gay community should encourage among its individual respect for whatever they want to be: trans, a camp guy, a masculine girl, a masculine guy or a feminine girl. It should not matter but still, that macho homophobia lives within the community.

There are parades, there are screams for getting equal rights but that is just from the mouth out because within ourselves there is no equality, there is a constant untold rejection of who we are spreading itself into the education given to the younger ones and those not that young based on the normalization of offensive exchange of words for treating each other.

And that is why machismo is our heritage. Thankfully it does not need to be our legacy.