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A Gay Man Who Hates Adonis
The following is an excerpt from my book, Finally Out: Letting Go of Living Straight, a Psychiatrist’s Own Story, due for release January 12, 2011.
Joan Collins once famously said, “After a certain age, you get the face you deserve.”
The majority of negatives about aging come from attitudes about changes in the body. Men who are most deeply invested in their physical appearance seem to encounter the greatest difficulty.
As gay men age, fear of the loss of their external, youthful sexual attractiveness is often central to their fear of middle age. As Rebecca Mead wrote in The New Yorker, “The new idea offered by the contemporary culture of cosmetic surgery, is that it is the vessel itself that we must value, rather than the soul or spirit that it contains.”
Because this physically attractive body is the person they presented themselves to be, some have lived behind this façade with little concern about learning how to relate to others in ways beyond the physical. Others may not really have known them. They may become afraid to ditch that previous social persona and be left with nothing.
Stereotypes describe gay men as either limp-wristed and effeminate or obsessed with attaining the masculine body beautiful. The extremes of body image are captured by the exaggerated femininity in the form of drag and the exaggerated musculature of the “gym rat.”
Between these extremes there are an infinite variety of identities and lifestyles, but the unifying element remains the presentation of an attractive, attention-grabbing body.
Some gay men consider their bodies their most significant asset, and they seek affirmation of that through admiration and envy from others. Because of their anxiety about appearing feminine, they attempt to master it by exaggeration of the opposite. Their bodies are their ticket to power and success, and the goal is perfection, however unrealistic that may be.
Continual fixation on body image sometimes means attempting to radically alter the way we look by “having a little work done,” including the use of pectoral implants, steroids and penile enlargers. The enemy isn’t their body, it is their unrealistic expectations of what their body can be, must be.
Showering in a gym is surely as oppressing for a stocky, skinny or an aging gay man as it is for a woman trying on a new swim suit. Chiseled good looks are achieved by very few and remain only a dream for the majority. Not being able to achieve those good looks is sometimes perceived as a lack of commitment to body maintenance, and those who don’t achieve it may be accused of being slothful.
Age is seen as a disease that suggests a person lacks an unacceptable degree of self-control. The body becomes a project, perpetually in need of work and development to prevent it from reverting to its natural ugly state.
If the thin and muscular body beautiful is not attainable, a physically toned body is the next best thing. Our body image is the result of the difference between the perfect body and the way we see our body.
We are satisfied with our body image when we have a realistic expectation about what our body can be and seeing it as it actually is. The saddest and angriest gay men are those who have failed, feeling as intimidated by beautiful gay men as they are by straight men.
When gay men become overly concerned with physical attractiveness, too preoccupied with fashion, they may appear superficial or even threatening to heterosexual men. The American masculine ideal dictates that real men must not be concerned about matters of style and taste, all the while being blasted by images of men re-shaped by computers and wearing Armani.
The advertising industry created the word “metro-sexual” to describe a man who blends an interest in style, fashion and culture while not letting go of ball-scratching and beer-guzzling. These men have always been a part of the lives of wealthy men, but frosted hair and manicures are now more accessible to the average man. In Europe, they exist without a need to create a special category to describe them, but this cross-over is something we’re not yet comfortable with in the United States; it is just too queer.
Knowing someone’s age tells us little about them, but because of the importance of physical attractiveness in the gay community, middle age comes sooner to gay men than to heterosexual men. The work of every day life for a midlife gay male is maintaining the appearance of youth, but the fact that it is work must also be hidden so no one knows how difficult it is.
Harold Kooden wrote in Golden Men: The Power of Gay Midlife that the concept of a linear aging process is misleading. He suggested that gay men have four ages: chronological (clock age), biological (body age), experiential (heart age) and sexual (gay age.)
Kooden proposed that we age in each are of these four areas at different rates and times; chronological age represents only one portion of our authentic age. Another age might be added to Kooden’s list: geographical age. Age functions quite differently in urban and rural communities.
Portrait of the Sculptor Friedrich
Because men who have sex with men are conflicted about their sexuality, their sexual age may lag behind their clock age, body age and heart age. Geographical age may add an additional incongruity; men who grew up in the city may arrive at a homosexual identity at somewhat younger ages.
Men who are struggling with their sexual attraction to other men, may put their sexuality on hold; their sexual age and their chronological age are disparate.
Powerful Republican Comes Out at Age 43
In an article in “The Atlantic” called, “Bush Campaign Chief and Former RNC Chair Ken Mehlman: I’m Gay,” the author, Marc Ambinder, quoted Ken Mehlman as saying, “It’s taken me 43 years to get comfortable with this part of my life.”
Ken Mehlman, Former Chairman of RNC
Mehlman was President Bush’s campaign manager in 2004 and a former chairman of the Republican National Committee. He is the most powerful Republican in history to identify as gay.
Many of us who came out late in life, or have yet to do so, can understand what Mehlman meant when he said, “Everybody has their own path to travel, their own journey.”
Although concealment of sexual orientation occurs for a variety of reasons, I know from my own experience that it is possible not to be able to accept it even when there are so many things in our lives that would point in that direction. As someone once wrote, “I don’t want to want what I want.”
Mehlman has found that his family, friends and current and former colleagues were far more supportive than he had imagined. In fact all of us before we come out magnify the potential negative consequences and minimize the potential positives.
Mehlman said, “The process has been something that’s made me a happier and better person. It’s something I wish I had done years ago.” Many of us have felt that way, but a variety of circumstances seemed to interfere with that process.
Mehlman said that he now wants to become an advocate for gay marriage. Because he is well connected to the powers in the Republican Party, he is in a position to influence those in power who offer resistance to it.
Some gay activists will say he is a hypocrite, and he is not welcome within the gay community. But whether you come out as a young man, a middle aged man or an old man, all of us before we came out were hypocrites who lied about our sexual orientation. The only real difference is that Mehlman was in a much more powerful position than most of us. But each of us has the power to change minds about what it means to be a man who has sex with other men.
At the same time we may want to offer Mehlman some understanding about the personal conflict he faced while delaying his coming out, he must still be held accountable for his role in using hatred of gay men and women as a political tool to manipulate voters. Watch this video as Dan Savage addresses this topic.
One of Harvey Milk’s classmates remembered him this way: “He was never thought of as a possible queer—that’s what you called them then—he was a man’s man”.. Milk is said not to have come out to his mother before she died.
Harvey Milk
Some political commentators have said that Mehlman’s coming out is the result of the Republican Party’s recognition that public sentiment about homosexuality, and gay marriage in particular, is changing. They see that anti-gay rhetoric has lost its power as a wedge issue that can motivate their political base. I would like to believe that Mehlman’s coming out is more than that.
Mehlman was aware that Karl Rove, President Bush’s chief strategic adviser, had been working with Republicans to make sure that anti-gay initiatives and referenda would appear on November ballots in 2004 and 2006 to help Republicans. I would prefer to believe that Mehlman was tormented by his feeling paralyzed to move against Rove and Republican Party consensus.
Karl Rove had gay stepfather.
Karl Rove’s step-father, Louis Rove, divorced his mother and lived the rest of his adult life as an openly gay man.
I want to believe Mehlman because I want others to believe me when I say I really didn’t understand I was gay until I was forty. Mehlman said. “I can’t change the fact that I wasn’t in this place personally when I was in politics, and I genuinely regret that. It was very hard, personally.”
Mehlman asks of those who doubt his sincerity: “If they can’t offer support, at least offer understanding.” I offer my understanding, and even though I disagree strongly with his politics, I support his new life as a gay man.
Mehlman is quoted, “I wish I was where I am today 20 years ago. The process of not being able to say who I am in public life was very difficult. No one else knew this except me. My family didn’t know. My friends didn’t know. Anyone who watched me knew I was a guy who was clearly uncomfortable with the topic,” he said. I could have said those same things.
To read the entire article in “The Atlantic,” click here.
AIDS, Culture and Gay Men
Approximately 7 million adult gay and bisexual men live in the United States with about 120 million adult gay and bisexual men globally.
Yet to better understand the social and cultural dimensions of the disease, and to halt the spread of HIV, it is essential to recognize and understand the culture of men who have sex with men (MSM).
AIDS, Culture, and Gay men (University Press of Florida, 2010. Feldman D, editor, Ginesville, FL)
is a highly readable volume of original essays exploring the cultural dimensions of AIDS among MSM. This book compares experiences from the United States and Australia.
Celibacy, Homosexuality and the Pope
Here is an excerpt from a very interesting essay written by Com Toibin in the “London Review of Books.” Toibin reviewed a book called The Pope is Not Gay by Angelo Quattrocchi:
Pope Benedict (Previously Cardinal Ratzinger)
There are very good reasons why homosexuals have been traditionally attracted to the priesthood. I know these reasons because I, as someone ‘confused about my sexuality’, had to confront and entertain the idea that I should join the priesthood.
Some of the reasons why gay men became priests are obvious and simple; others are not. Becoming a priest, first of all, seemed to solve the problem of not wanting others to know that you were queer. As a priest, you could be celibate, or unmarried, and everyone would understand the reasons. It was because you had a vocation; you had been called by God, had been specially chosen by him.
For other boys, the idea of never having sex with a woman was something they could not even entertain. For you, such sex was problematic; thus you had no blueprint for an easy future. The prospect, on the other hand, of making a vow in holiness never to have sex with a woman offered you relief. The idea that you might want to have sex with men, that you might be ‘that way inclined’, as they used to say, was not even mentioned, not once, during that workshop in which everything under the sun was discussed.
Before the creation of a post-Stonewall gay identity and the presence of gay role models on television and in the movies, most gay men worked out a strategy, in early adolescence, to do a perfect, lifelong imitation of a straight man, to move around in that gruff, rangy way straight men had invented for themselves.
For many homosexuals, the stereotype of the mincing, high-pitched queen was the most frightening idea that ever walked towards them. They hated it and feared it and worked out ways not to look like that themselves, or to be invisible when they did so.
Two clauses later, Ratzinger moves from associating homosexuality with disease and madness to pondering the question of coming out, or remaining in the closet. Ratzinger makes clear that he favours the closet.
“The ‘sexual orientation’ of a person is not comparable to race, sex, age etc also for another reason … An individual’s sexual orientation is generally not known to others unless he publicly identifies himself as having this orientation or unless some overt behaviour manifests it.
“As a rule, the majority of homosexually oriented persons who seek to lead chaste lives do not publicise their sexual orientation. Hence the problem of discrimination in terms of employment, housing etc, does not usually arise.”
Priests prance around in elaborately fashioned costumes. Bishops and cardinals have even more colourful vestments. This ‘overt behaviour’ on their part has to be examined carefully.
Quattrocchi draws our attention to the amount of care, since his election, Ratzinger has taken with his accessories, wearing designer sunglasses, for example, or gold cufflinks, and different sorts of funny hats and a pair of red shoes from Prada that would take the eyes out of you. He has also been having fun with his robes.
On Ash Wednesday 2006, for example, he wore a robe of ‘Valentino red’ – called after the fashion designer – with ‘showy gold embroidery’ and soon afterwards changed into a blue associated with another fashion designer, Renato Balestra. In March 2007, for a visit to the juvenile prison at Casal del Marno, he wore an extraordinary tea-rose-coloured costume.
Married Bisexual Man Seeks Hook Up
Married Man Seeks Same for Discreet Play
by David Amsden
Excerpt from New York Magazine:
Photo by Charles Cohen
It is hard to fathom, the notion of a gay man living a closeted life in New York City in 2007. The life of someone like William seems at the very least anachronistic.
Typically, the “closet” brings to mind small towns, intensely religious communities, and, at the most cosmopolitan level, the lives of Jim McGreevey and Mark Foley: gay men operating in a world so inherently duplicitous that their choosing to lead a shadow life follows, sadly, a certain logic.
And yet the thing about desire—frustratingly, thrillingly—is that few things are so resistant to reason and categorization. “I used to think I was bi, but now I really believe that I am gay and just was not in the right situation,” William wrote to me in an early message.
“I think I like a particular kind of guy and when I went out looking I never found him, so I gravitated toward women. I found what I liked on the Internet, but I was already married.”
To read the entire article, click here.
Testosterone Replacement Therapy and Viagra
I asked Dr. Abraham Morgentaler, Director of Men’s Health Boston, and Associate Clinical Professor of Urology, Harvard Medical School to read the manuscript for my book, Finally Out: Letting Go of Living Straight, A Psychiatrist’s Own Story. Dr. Abraham Morgentaler is the author of Testosterone for Life: Recharge Your Vitality, Sex Drive, Muscle Mass and Overall Health.
Here’s what Dr. Morgentaler had to say about my book: “Finally Out: provides insight into a hidden population of men who have sex with other men but who may not identify themselves as gay. It is a fascinating account that broadens our understanding of human sexuality. A must-read.”
In reading through the manuscript, Dr. Morgenthaler updated some of the information in the book which I would like to pass on to you.
Concerning Viagra: One of the frequently mentioned precautions in the use of Viagra and other medications used for erectile dysfunction is priapism (a continuous and painful erection that may last several hours). Dr Morgenthaler said the frequency of priapism is “vanishingly low.” In other words, it is much talked about but unlikely to occur.
Concerning Testosterone Replacement Therapy (TRT):
The possibility that TRT might be an anti-aging tonic appeals particularly to older men, whose sexual functioning sags along with their muscles and energy. Testosterone is critical, not only for how the brain responds to sexual thoughts and stimulation, but also for the proper function of the penis, by affecting its ability to get hard, to release the necessary chemical signals and to maintain the proper types of cells that are essential for good erectile function.
Symptoms of testosterone deficiency can occur with normal levels of testosterone, and in some cases, the symptoms may not occur even when testosterone levels are low.
Symptoms of testosterone deficiency
• Decreased sexual function
• Lower vitality
• Loss of muscle mass and strength
• Increased fat mass
• Mood changes and depression
According to Dr. Morgentaler, memory loss is often cited as a symptom of testosterone deficiency, but the evidence supporting this to be a testosterone-related event, and thus reversible with treatment, is weak.
TRT can be administered in several different ways. One of the most effective and convenient forms of treatment is injection of a long-acting testosterone pellets under the skin of the buttocks. This treatment produces good levels of testosterone for 3-5 months.
TRT by injection is given about every two weeks. Injections are inconvenient and therapeutic levels and symptom relief may fluctuate between the injections. Patches are applied nightly. The gel in rubbed onto the skin of the abdomen, chest, arms and shoulders. The gel is less irritating than the patches but it is possible to transfer the TRT agent to a sexual partner, or even a pet, through skin-skin contact. The buccal treatment is a pill that is applied to the upper gums.
Potential Benefits of TRT:
Improved muscle mass and strength
Increased bone density
Thickened body hair and increased oiliness of skin
Improved sexual drive
Increased energy
Reduced depression and irritability
Potential Risks
Possibility of stimulation of prostatic cancer.*
Non-cancerous enlargement of the prostate and difficulty with urination
Testicular shrinkage and reduced sperm production
Breast enlargement
Stimulation of breast cancer if present
Aggravation of sleep apnea
Potential heart problems
Acne
I have made other posts on MagneticFire.com about testosterone and TRT. By putting “testosterone” in the search above on the right, those other articles will become available.
Germany’s Highest Court Rules on Same-Sex Inheritance
Germany’s highest court, the Federal Constitutional Court, has ruled that same-sex couples who are in legal civil unions are entitled to the same inheritance tax rules as married couples, according to an article on GayAgenda.com.
The court found no valid reason to discriminate against gay couples in registered partnerships. Although many think civil unions are equal to marriage, this is one reminder that they are not as the same holds true in U.S. law.
To see the article on GayAgenda.com, click here.
Gay Marriage, Public Opinion, and the U. S. Supreme Court
Michael Klarman wrote this interesting opinion piece for the Los Angeles Times:
Courts are almost never at the vanguard of social change. In general, they have required sweeping cultural shifts such as school desegregation only when it was clear that a substantial percentage of Americans supported them. So what does this portend for same-sex marriage litigation, which is likely to end up before the Supreme Court eventually, especially in light of recent federal court rulings in Boston and San Francisco in favor of same-sex marriage?
When the gay marriage issue gets to the Supreme Court, the decision is likely to turn, as do nearly all important constitutional rulings these days, on the views of Justice Anthony M. Kennedy — probably the most powerful justice in the court’s history. Kennedy sits squarely in the middle of today’s ideologically polarized court. From his written opinions, we know that Kennedy is more supportive of the constitutional rights of gay Americans than are his more conservative colleagues. We also know that he is not oblivious to the judgment of history.
Although it would be mildly out of character for Kennedy to interpret the Constitution to impose the views of a mere handful of states on the entire nation, by the time a gay marriage case reaches the court, several additional states may be permitting same-sex couples to marry. Moreover, Kennedy can read handwriting on the wall as well as anyone else. What better way is there to win the plaudits of future generations of Americans than to author the Supreme Court opinion eradicating one of the last formal barriers to equal citizenship for gays and lesbians?
Michael Klarman is a professor at Harvard Law School and the author of “From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality,” which won the 2005 Bancroft Prize.
To read the entire piece, click here
Pro Athletes and the Closet
I found this opinion piece by Pat Griffin on Opposing views:
Why it is that no male professional team sport athletes in the United States have come out while they are still actively competing.
Gareth Thomas
I wonder if the resistance to accepting a gay man in the locker room and on the team doesn’t have more to do with the fragility of masculinity and the illusion of superiority that being a heterosexual male athlete confers on the chosen ones who get to be part of that “band of brothers” sharing that locker room. I wonder if some guys worry that if a gay man is tough and talented enough to make the team and earns his right to be in that locker room, then the whole experience of being a pro team sport athlete is cheapened in their eyes.
Greek Oil Wrestling
We need more heterosexual men in sport to step up, to be team leaders, to have the courage to speak out publicly against homophobia in men’s sports and in support of gay rights in general. Fortunately we are beginning to see some role models who are doing just that in professional and college sports. Scott Fujita, a Cleveland Browns player; Hudson Taylor, University of Maryland wrestler; Jim Tressel, Ohio State Football coach; and Brian Burke, Toronto Maple Leafs General Manager are a few of these outspoken men.
To read the entire piece, click here.
Ted Olson’s Interview on Fox Defending Same Sex Marriage
This brilliant interview with Ted Olson is a must watch