Last sunday's
Sopranos episode & a sociology class today made me wonder about something. The subject of gay marriage was being discussed in my class, and the professor asked an interesting question:
Are lesbians more "accepted" in soceity than homosexual men? If somehow gay-marriage was only about women getting married, would it have more support from the public at large? Since we talk about this kind of stuff here, I thought I would get some other opinions.
I think there is a seperate reaction from most heterosexuals to watching two women kiss or be affectionate than two males displaying the same behavior. Speaking as a heterosexual who supports gay people being able to live their lives as they see fit with equity in soceity, there is still something of an "oddity" (for the lack of a better term) about seeing two men showing affection with each other. However, I'm sure that soceity once had strange feelings when seeing a white woman & black man being affectionate too. Social taboos are overcome with time.
Is there a difference to soceity's treatment of lesbians & gay men? Why is it?
One thing I've always found fascinating is the
cognitive dissonance of humanity. One place you can see it when it comes to homosexuals is porn. All heterosexual porn has lesbianism in it. In the deepest darkest heart of "
Red America", I can gurantee that there are guys who have titles like these below hidden in a closet away from the wife...
...They'll go to church on sunday & "amen" to how gays are going to hell, go to the polls & vote for amendments to ban gay marriage, but then come home & jerk off to Jenna Jameson fucking another girl with a strap-on. How much do you wanna bet that some of the same people who had problems with Brokeback Mountain have "all-girl" porn in their house? If there is a difference in treatment, I wonder if this is the basis of it? We as men can get off on the idea of two women being sexual together, while having the exact opposite reaction of two men, and that "bleeds" into soceity.
The official answer to all of this today in class was gender roles. Gay men represent a bigger deviation from accepted norms, than gay women. Men being effeminate is seen as weakness. The Sopranos episode from last sunday exemplified how guys react to this...
- Johnny "Sack" Sacrimoni crying while being led aways from his daughter's wedding by U.S. Marshalls
- Vito, a closet gay gangster, being discovered by other wiseguys at a gay bar dressed like one of the Village People
- Tony Soprano's feelings of being inadequate & weak around other memebers of his crew, while recovering from being shot in the stomach.
Here's the reaction that Johnny Sack got for crying...
Phil Leotardo: Let me tell you one thing, and I'm not ashamed to say it, my estimation of John Sacrimoni as a man just fucking plummeted.
Tony Soprano: Give him a break will ya. It's an emotional day.
Phil Leotardo: To cry like a woman? It's a fucking disgrace.
The same kind of feelings led Tony to
beat the shit out of his young musclehead bodyguard in front of his crew. Even though he spent the next 5 minutes puking up blood, he did it to reassert his strength among his crew. Gorillas, our primate cousins, do the same thing to reassert authority over their family groups. We are creatures that respect strength...
