So, #metoo makes you uncomfortable? Makes you concerned about false sexual assault allegations? Well, try being a gay guy. Living life as a gay man means that you have to fight for equal rights while simultaneously being accused of being a dangerous sexual predator.
Want to compete for a job on the merits free of discrimination? Well, first you have to listen to the right wing anti-gay bigots drop the P-bomb (predator accusations) into the discussion. “What about the children….”
Want to get married? Same P-bomb gets detonated. Want to serve in the military? Well, a P-bomb is dropped there too, but this time its not children but all the red-blooded American soldiers are going to be raped by gay men. Our patriotism is written off as a cover for evil lewd desires. Maybe since DADT repeal passed you haven’t thought of it, but the same script is written about transwomen today.
We in the LGBT community, specifically, gay men and transwomen, need to join the discussion on sexual assault, but not because we are predators, but because predators disproportionately target gay men and transwomen. Pedophiles love to target the ostracized lonely child, the misfit, etc… and all too often that means gay and trans boys and girls. Gay bashers don’t just beat up gay men, they often rape them as well. Gay men often live with these crimes in secret in a deep sense of self-blame. Sometimes other gay men pile-on when the topic is broached by a victim, because all the gay listener here’s —- any second — is the gay-men-are-predators bomb that is dropped into every discussion on gay rights.
This is one of the most troubling and psychologically damaging myths to hear about oneself. As a gay man it always seems to be hanging around like an unexploded ordnance waiting to go off… Want to be a school teacher? Why would youuuuu want to be a school, teacher? How do you make yourself seem like the non-threatening type of gay guy? Maybe hide it altogether. Anytime you are gay and get seen with children, and someone who knows you are gay can give you THAT look… Who are those kids you were with? My nieces and nephews. Well I never saw you with them before...
Maybe those are perfectly normal questions. But maybe there was innuendo in them. You never know. You just let them past. During this whole #metoo thing have you started feeling that way? That just being a guy brought suspicion on yourself? Welcome to the party. We know the feeling. I understand the impulse to say #notallmen.
But you know what? #notallgaymen was never enough for us. We didn’t just have to clear our individual-selves from the predator label, we had to prove we were no more likely than any other man to be predatory. We presented decades of social science research that showed not only were we no more likely to be predators but less likely to be sexual predators .Yet, the anti-gay right persisted in spreading the myth. And unsuspecting straight people fell for it. Even other gay men believed the myth. I have spent hours and hours disabusing gay men of the myth that we were uniquely predatory.
A failure to understand the nature sexual abuse is a big part of it. Men who sexually abuse boys or other men are not necessarily gay. Abuse isn’t about sexual attraction. It’s about power and domination. That’s why gay-bashing straight men rape gay men, (most gay men who are raped are raped by straight men; #7 here). Men, gay and straight, have been very reluctant to discuss the real nature of sexual abuse. For men who are abusers they can con themselves with respect to their abuse of women: I just thought she was hot. Men, particularly gay men, can con themselves about their abusers: he just thought I was hot.
The latter con job, I know too well. I have tried to convince myself of that assertion for nearly thirty years. It hurts to be a victim, in any situation, but to be simultaneously thought of as a predator only compounds the issue. Most sexual abusers are men. That’s a tough reality to deal with whether you are gay or straight. It’s hard to talk about it under any situation. It’s harder when your equality, your rights, your dignity is pitted against the interest of those who are abused, and even worse, when you are innocent, and when you know your compatriots are innocent.
But hard does not mean impossible. And because I know just how hard it is, I will never begrudge you of a #notallmen here or there. But here’s the thing, even though, gay men may even be less likely than others to sexually abuse someone, there are gay men who do sexually abuse others. And all men must be open to this discussion. Because while your behavior might be impeccable, the environment for sexual abuse is born within the world of males:
Within the world of misogyny that men perpetuate, within the gay world where misogyny is practiced by proxy where more feminine men or reputed “bottoms” are proxies for women, and thus target of misogynistic behavior, where we celebrate perceived masculine sexuality and demean perceived feminine sexuality (if you ever, for any reason, whether the perception was true or false, shamed a woman as a slut or a whore, even as a joke, you have partaken in this), where men are cheered for agressive sexual behavior, where men are shamed for modest or more passive sexual behavior, where manliness means the right to others’ bodies, or where manliness means belittling those who are nervous in approaching those they find romantically or sexually attractive, where “getting none” is scorned, and sexual fulfillment is conquest.
We men, even when we personally defy these dysfunctional norms, still help its continuance, and help to allow to fester the world in which predators are born: the world of males.
It’s hard to talk about, and when you try to change it, you are outnumbered, and then you become the proxy for misogyny. So, it is harder still. But we can’t just say the most creative feminist thing a man can say on Twitter, we have to be that in our lives.