Male-Male

Homosexuality between males carries with it a terrible risk. (No, I don’t here mean HIV or other STDs for the unprotected, nor sociologically in the more intolerant parts of the nation which could result in violence.)

In general, males aren’t at ease about sex with males. In that sense (and in that sense alone, about which more will be said, so wait before reacting) gay sex is “unnatural,” or perhaps better, has an “unnaturalness” hurdle to get over.

Wait. Stop. Hear me out before you decide what I’m about to say. Wait before you click away, muttering "another anti-gay religious fruitcake.” This is not that, and this essay isn't going there.

Before I go on, full disclosure requires me to say that though I am more on the hetero-end of the spectrum, I must emphasize that I see nothing wrong with any form of sexual activity or personal bond between consenting adults, especially including homosexuality. I personally believe, too, that for many reasons (not excepting the role of sensual affection and sexual activity in easing social tensions), bisexuality would be the best default condition for our kind, and that an inherent propensity for this in our species is forestalled by the phenomenon I’m about to discuss. This isn’t some anti-gay attack. One further note: in the following I’m purposefully leaving aside the questions around intersexuality and transexuality… though some of what follows might pertain. That would be for readers to decide.

There are reasons why (male) “gay counterculture” in our society has taken the form it often has, and why in this era of homosexuality’s rising acceptance there yet remain deeply closeted homosexual men, and men in denial about some of their desires.

There are reasons that male-male sex yet remains a freely embraced (or acknowledged) activity for only a minority of males.

I mean to suggest that these reasons aren’t only cultural, or as a result of anti-gay prejudice, and I mean to suggest that one especially important characteristic of our kind (and our gender) explains not only this “reluctance,” but much about the way male sexuality and homosexuality becomes expressed in our species.

We should note that within cultures traditionally more open to homosexuality (and sexuality in general) male-male sex has tended to happen between social, economic or age unequals, with the primary exception to this appearing in the form of deep friendship (often in myth, arising out of rivalry).

We might consider recent gay and lesbian history in light of the very contrasting ways these patterns of behavior came to be expressed within the two genders. (Bath-house sub-culture we’re looking at you.)

There is something within male nature that struggles with homosexuality.

I’m not the first to point to our species’ sexual dimorphism as a source of so much that bedevils us, in which the danger to children and females (and smaller males) comes often from other males, and in which too often, for a female to become politically or economically successful, she has to “take on maleness” through dress and mannerism in order to prevail.

And, I’m not the first to suggest that male-aggressive dimorphism is tied directly to our species’ propensity for male-led, male-dominated warfare.

What I’m presently pointing to here is the particular obstacle this places in the path to free and easy expression of male sexuality.

First and foremost—evolutionarily built-in by default—males are rivals to other males, possibly even enemies. It’s difficult to over-estimate the effect of this upon almost everything. (The much-lampooned unwillingness to ask for directions, or to be the one to go first at an intersection are but two simple examples.)

Second, male dominance hierarchies are recognized as a mechanism for socially controlling and regulating male rivalry, but the very nature of hierarchy itself precludes the kinds of free activities that can take place between social equals. (And when sex does take place, very often the participants choose or accept roles of “top” or “bottom”—and not entirely as a simple function of physiology.)

Humans are by nature a ritual-evoking and ritual-invoking kind. Among their many other roles, rituals allow us, or grant us, permission to do things… even things otherwise taboo. Rituals that are not simply ours alone, but are shared and shared alike between members of a group greatly amplify this permissive effect, hence, the many forms of counter-cultural expression, including gay counterculture. Gay counterculture is one way that males can more easily slip over the barrier to male-male sexuality. This isn’t to suggest at all that the only kind of homosexuality is gay counterculture, but for those for whom gay counterculture works, it works well.

As little as a century and a half ago, forms of what today we might identify as sexual physical male affection were commonplace, yet the record suggests that these forms of physical contact weren’t primarily sexual. (How much of this led to actual sexual activity we cannot know, but it’s clear that that wasn’t true for the majority.) In our time we have the rise of “bromance,” but as yet this is less overtly physical.

(https://www.artofmanliness.com/people/relationships/bosom-buddies-a-photo-history-of-male-affection/)

For interesting reasons still not well understood, the present era in Western (and even global) history follows a collective social change in the understanding and practice of male affection. It’s now viewed through the lens of homosexuality, and because homosexuality is tied more or less to the aforementioned (evolutionarily driven) male-male wariness (where submission is defeat and dominance is victory), rituals of close male affection have gone away, at least for some time.

That’s too bad, because rituals (as noted above) are the very means through which allowance can be made.

By the way, on the matter of why we have seen the sea-change in expressions of male affection (now creeping into expressions of female affection, too), some might argue that a religiously-ardent renewed fear of homosexual sin (“abomination“) has been the driver for this change. It’s hard to find, though, a more sin-conscious period in recent time than the 19th (and 18th) centuries. I tend to think the change may well be the result of the past century of industrial and political violence in the context of a series of lasting conflicts between hyper-capitalist enterprises (with their client states) and authoritarian socialist polities. It has been the isolating effects of near constant warfare, economic violence, wage-slavery and the valorization of industry by Commerce or Party over all competing interests that’s done the job.