Introduction
‘Why Gay Men Don’t Need Feminism’ is a four-part series of articles adapted from a speech that was intended to be presented at the Second International Conference on Men’s Issues in 2015 by the author, Matthew Lye (a.k.a. Andy Bob). The four parts are:
Part 1: Challenging Assumptions
Part 2: The Takeover
Part 3: Gay Bashing
Part 4: Brotherhood
As these articles are written from the perspective of a Men’s Human Rights Activist (MHRA), they focus on the dysfunctional relationship between feminism and gay men. Feminism has had an entirely different relationship with lesbians which is irrelevant to this topic, and has been examined in detail elsewhere.
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All feminists, from influential academics to obscure, blog-publishing hysterics, have explicitly declared that all men belong to something called ‘the patriarchy’ which systemically advantages them as beneficiaries of unearned male privilege. This disturbingly reductionist belief is foundational to feminist ideology and demonstrates its profoundly ignorant understanding of how the world actually functions. It has also enabled feminists to rationalize their remarkable propensity towards freely expressing their often violence-infused fear, loathing and distrust of all men, [1] particularly those men who identify as feminists – men who don’t seem to realize that it is possible, even preferable, to support women’s rights without embracing feminism.
One of the hardest parts of coming to grips with the depth and breadth of the patriarchy is recognizing that there are no exceptions. Maybe you didn’t, personally, do anything wrong, but you were still born into a power structure that gave you unjust rewards…The fact is that even though you know better, and are truly a male feminist, you’re still stuck being the bad guy.” [2]
According to Kat Stoefell, all men are “stuck being the bad guy”, even the obedient ones who identify as feminists and “know when to sit down, shut up, and listen.” [2] Stoefell actually refers to her baseless and grotesque value judgement as a “fact” and refuses to acknowledge any exceptions. Even Jezebel, notorious cesspit of bilious misandry, and advocate of female-perpetrated domestic violence against men, [3] allowed that it was possible to be exempted from being labelled a patriarchal “bad guy”.
The only catch is you have to be the late Curt Cobain, or a man who is equally hip, cool, rich, successful, handsome, famous – and dead. [4] Feminists’ soft spot for ‘bad boys’, as distinct from “bad guys” (i.e.: men who aren’t ‘bad boys’) is but one example of their unparalleled ability to rationalize absolutely anything – including their vagina tingles – to fit conveniently within the framework of their relentlessly honed and reiterated narratives.
What feminists are not able to do, is refrain from casting men as the default villains in their ideological pantomime. They cannot even throw out the welcome mat to potential male allies without soaking it with suspicion and contempt, as evidenced in this unintentionally hilarious quote from an article entitled, Feminists Reach Out to Men and Boys – Rules of Engagement by that most obsequious of gay male feminists, Michael Flood:
We won’t make much progress towards gender equality without men’s support. Not because women are weak and can’t do it on their own. Not because poor men have been left out and are now the victims. No, but because men are the problem.”[5]
‘Men are the problem’. While informed egalitarians would concur that Michael Flood is correct in identifying himself as a problem, they would reject his contention that half of the world’s population should also be denigrated in this manner. If ever orchestrated feminism had a familiar leitmotif that has recurred with tedious regularity throughout the decades, the woefully bigoted assertion that ‘men are the problem’ must surely be it.
Prominent feminist theorists have always made a point of demonizing straight men as inherently dangerous problems that require urgent, government-funded solutions. However, many people may not be aware of the fact that feminists have been equally strident in their condemnation of gay men. These increasingly disobedient feminist allies are widely regarded by feminists as doubly problematic.
As men, gay men are accused of inhabiting some kind of tastefully appointed rainbow wing of ‘the patriarchy’ from which they benefit as recipients of those aforementioned unearned male privileges, making them ‘part of the problem’. As gay men, they demonstrate their inherent misogyny by rejecting women and being more impervious to feminist shaming, approval and manipulation than straight men. This was certainly the position taken by Redstockings co-founder, Carol Hanisch, at the dawn of feminism’s Second Wave. “Redstockings were also opposed to male homosexuality, which they saw as a deeply misogynist rejection of women.” [6]
Most problematic of all, is the tendency for gay men to unashamedly celebrate and enjoy their male sexuality without adequate feminist supervision, or the need to acquire signed and witnessed declarations of enthusiastic consent. The very existence of the overwhelmingly sex-positive nature of mainstream gay male culture openly challenges the widely-held assumption among feminists that feminists alone hold a monopoly on the topic of male sexuality.
Instilling fear of male sexuality is one of the principal tactics employed by feminists to demonize men, and forms the basis of their attempts to persuade the world that it should be alert to a feminist-manufactured global crisis known as ‘Rape Culture’. [7] Unapologetic gay male sexuality impedes those efforts and directly contradicts this essential tenet of feminist dogma – and feminists bitterly resent gay men for it.
It is indeed fortunate for researchers looking for insights into what feminists really think and how they really feel that feminists have the rather quaint belief that their multiple points of intersectionality [8] give them some kind of impunity from criticism whenever they feel compelled to share their invariably hateful and bizarre opinions with the world.
It is equally fortunate that the Internet has forever broken the seal on what used to be feminism’s safe and comfortable echo chamber. It is no longer the challenge it used to be to demonstrate that the various attitudes that feminists have expressed about gay men are profoundly ignorant, and riddled with envy, contempt and ill-disguised revulsion. When reading what many feminists have to say about gay men, one can almost envision a group of gullible Amish teenagers huddled around a campfire swapping horror stories about what goes on in the steam room at their local YMCA. It is a sad indictment of modern academia that feminist dogma has ever been confused with valid scholarship.
In 1983, Distinguished Woman Philosopher of the Year, Marilyn Frye, [9] published the most influential of her collections of speeches and polemic, Politics of Reality: essays in feminist theory. Included is a chapter called Lesbian Feminism and the Gay Rights Movement: Another View of Male Supremacy, Another Separatism. [10] In this one epic bitch-fest, Frye manages to distil the anti-gay male rhetoric of the prominent feminists who preceded her, adds a number of convoluted addendums of her own, and provides something of a blueprint upon which future feminists have projected their own rationalizations and justifications for demonizing gay men. This is the principal reason why Frye’s homophobic screed is required reading in many Women’s/Queer Studies courses across the globe.
Frye contends that the gay male rights movement and gay male culture are “more congruent than discrepant” with what she calls ‘the phallocracy’ – her term for ‘the patriarchy’ – which, “is so hostile to women and to the woman-loving to which lesbians are committed.” Frye lists six fundamental principles of ‘the phallocracy’:
1. The presumption of male citizenship.
2. Worship of the penis.
3. Male homoeroticism, or man-loving.
4. Contempt for women, or woman-hating.
5. Compulsory male heterosexuality.
6. The presumption of general phallic access.
Before exploring these principles, Frye makes the following observation which is prophetic in a way that she would never comprehend due to her crudely warped understanding of men of all sexual orientations: “As one explores the meaning of these principles and values, gay and straight male cultures begin to look so alike that it becomes something of a puzzle why straight men do not recognize their gay brothers…”
Frye begins her muddled journey through her ‘phallocratic principles’ by expressing her confusion about the fact that gay men lay claim to ‘male citizenship’, declaring that it is more “logical” for them to challenge the presumption of this ‘citizenship’, and believes that, instead, gay men should proudly demand ‘citizenship’ as women. She is affronted by the notion of gay men self-identifying as men on the grounds that it results in gay men providing inadequate service to feminism – demonstrating that feminists have been rousing on gay men about their disloyalty for decades.
Frye laments that: “In so doing, they acquiesce in and support the reservation of full citizenship to males and thus align themselves with the political adversaries of feminism.” Even more damning is her claim that, “gay men generally are in significant ways, perhaps in all important ways, only more loyal to masculinity and male-supremacy than other men.” How naughty of them.
Frye contends that one of the main reasons why gay men prefer to identify as men is because, like all men, they are obsessed with what she calls “the magic of the penis”, the mystical deity that all privileged members of ‘phallocratic culture’ worship. Baffled? Frye helpfully explains:
It is a culture in which an identification of the penis with power, presence and creativity is found plausible – not the brain, the eyes, the mouth or the hand, but the penis. In that culture, any object or image which at all resembles or suggests the proportions of an erect penis will be imbued with or assumed to have special mythic, semantic, psychological or supernatural powers.
If worship of the phallus is central to ‘phallocratic culture’, then gay men, by and large, are more like ardent priests than infidels, and the gay rights movement may be the fundamentalism of the global religion which is Patriarchy. In this matter, the congruence of gay male culture with straight male culture and the chasm between these and women’s cultures are great indeed.”
As the anointed ones in this ‘phallocratic culture’, Frye warns that gay men are to be regarded by women in general – and feminists in particular – with even deeper fear and suspicion than they regard straight men because:
Women generally have good experiential reason to associate negative values and feelings with penises, since penises are connected to a great extent with their degradation, terror and pain…So far as living with the threat of rape permits, many women’s attitudes toward penises tend to vacillate between indifference and contempt.”
“Indifference” and “contempt” are the only two points between which heterosexual women’s feelings and attitudes towards penises vacillate? This is hardly a surprising claim from someone who once declared that, “widespread heterosexuality among women is a highly artificial product of the patriarchy” and that, “most women have to be coerced into heterosexuality,” [11] but it is not scholarship. It sounds more like the embarrassingly absurd ramblings of a bitter ideologue who spent too much time under the sun on Lesbos.
Like many feminists – Kate Millett springs to mind [12] – Frye cannot conceive of any relationship among men as anything other than an expression of a power dynamic with varying degrees of closeted perversion. She describes heterosexual male culture as “homoerotic” and derides all male attachments to other men as “man-loving” – going so far as to claim that most straight men are incapable of loving women because their love is reserved exclusively for other men.
The people whom they admire, respect, adore, revere, honor, whom they imitate, idolize, and form profound attachments to, whom they are willing to teach and from whom they are willing to learn, and whose respect, admiration, recognition, honor, reverence and love they desire… those are, overwhelmingly, other men…From women they want devotion, service and sex.”
This is a staggeringly hateful and insulting denigration of straight men. Dismissing straight men’s capacity to love women is a blatant denial of their essential humanity. It echoes Shulumith Firestone’s startling declaration in The Dialectic of Sex that “men can’t love”. [13] If Frye perceives men’s ability to love other men as a manifestation of their penis-worshipping embrace of ‘phallocentric culture’, then one can only assume that she is going to direct her most virulent censure towards gay men – and indeed she does:
Gay male culture is also homoerotic. There is almost nothing of it which suggests any extension of love to women, and all of the elements of passion and attachment, including all kinds of sensual pleasure and desire, are overtly involved in its male-male relations. Man-loving is, if anything, simply more transparent to the lovers and more complete for gay men than for straight men.
If man-loving is the rule of phallocratic culture, as I think it is, and if, therefore, male homoeroticism is compulsory, then gay men should be numbered among the faithful, or the loyal and law-abiding citizens…”
Frye is echoing some of the ideas put forward by the aforementioned Kate Millett in her seminal work Sexual Politics [12]. Millett refers to ‘phallocratic culture’ as ‘men’s house culture’, but is no less suspicious of the ‘men’s house institutions’ in which all-male relationships flourish with the “throb of homosexual sentiment.”
The tone and ethos of men’s house culture is sadistic, power-oriented, and latently homosexual, frequently narcissistic in its energy and motives. The men’s house inference that the penis is a weapon, endlessly equated with other weapons is also clear.”
Throughout her polemic, Millett conflates homosexuality with sadism and violence. She contends that the taboo imposed on the latent homosexuality inherent in ‘men’s house institutions’ is inevitably channeled into violence, going so far as to cite the, ”Nazi experience as an extreme case in point here.” This is a particularly ignorant and offensive reference in view of the fact that the “Nazi experience” for thousands of gay men was to be herded into concentration camps before being gassed to death. [14] Millett may be offering her idea of a white flag to gay men by conceding that the, “negative and militaristic coloring of such men’s house homosexuality is, of course, by no means the whole character of homosexual sensibility”, but that white flag looks like a pink triangle to me, as it probably does to most gay men.
Frye states categorically that, “woman-hating is an obvious corollary of man-loving.” Men’s Human Rights Activists (MHRAs) are frequently targeted by feminists with the accusation that their valid concerns for the rights and welfare of men and boys is irrefutable proof of what feminists wrongfully assume to be their hatred of women. [15]
Feminist activist, Amanda Levitt, invoked this familiar threat narrative to justify her participation in organizing one of the feminist protests against the 2014 International Conference on Men’s Issues in Detroit, U.S.A: “The protest really came out of the fact that what they say is not about men’s issues, it’s about violence against women, it’s about blaming feminism for issues that feminists in a lot of cases actually work [on].” [16]
Levitt maintained this threat narrative by posting an on-line letter to her fellow feminist activists warning that, “due to concerns for physical safety we have decided the best way to oppose the conference that is now going on in St. Clair Shores is to keep our distance.” [16] Other feminist activists, like Emma Howland-Bolton, exploited the threat narrative in order to justify advocating the use of violence to intimidate conference speakers and participants into silence. [17] She failed.
In many ways, Frye’s assumption of men’s inherent hatred of women is hardly surprising, as feminists have always regarded ‘woman-hating’ as one of the conquering tools of ‘the patriarchy/phallocracy’: “Contempt for women is such a common thing in this culture that it is sometimes hard to see.” Not for Frye. Through the feminist lens which distorts every feminist’s vision, Frye sees “contempt for women” everywhere – even in the discrimination that many gay men have endured. Frye interprets violence against gay men as a form of indirect violence against women, and claims that it is perpetrated by the very ‘phallocracy’ in which she accuses gay men of enthusiastically colluding as its most dutiful and civic-minded, penis-worshipping ‘citizens’. The following statement is nothing short of transparent victim-blaming at its most logically tortured:
In the society at large, if it is known that a man is gay, he is subject to being pegged at the level of sexual status, personal authority and civil rights which are presumptive for women. This is, of course, really quite unfair, for most gay men are quite as fully men as any men: being gay is not at all inconsistent with being loyal to masculinity and committed to contempt for women. Some of the very things which lead straight people to doubt gay men’s manhood are, in fact, proofs of it.”
According to Frye, gay men are the most real of ‘real men’ due to the fact that they hate women even more than straight men hate women. Frye offers what she considers to be evidence of this by referencing what she calls, “the gay institution of the impersonation of women,” which she claims, “displays no love of or identification with women or the womanly.” Quite the contrary:
What gay male affectation of femininity seems to me to be is a kind of serious sport in which men may exercise their power and control over the feminine, much as in other sports [in which] one exercises physical power and control over elements of the physical universe.”
Men ‘mocking’ women by donning women’s attire has long been a problem for the now mercifully retired Sheila Jeffreys. [18] When policy was being proposed to protect the rights of transgendered women in Australia, Jeffreys fretted that cis-gendered men wearing frocks would exploit these laws to fulfil their vouyeristic fetishes. She complained that, “transgender people will access women-only housing, toilets and prisons,” [19] as though it were the ambition of Australian transgendered women, cross-dressers and drag queens to hang out in women’s toilets and prisons in order to prey on unsuspecting cis-gendered women and girls.
Under the right to gender identity, male-bodied persons, in many cases with penises intact, are likely to be permitted to enter women’s toilets,” she says in a submission to the Senate inquiry. “There are quite a surprising number of cases in which men wearing women’s clothing have been arrested for … secret photographing of women using the toilets and showers, peeping at women from adjacent stalls … (and) luring children into women’s toilets in order to assault them.” [19]
In a conversation with Julie Bindel, [20] Jeffreys articulates her concern that gay male fashion designers are prone to expressing their ‘woman-hating’ through their collections and runway shows.
Jeffreys argues that many male fashion designers are “projecting their misogyny on to the bodies of women”, and gives examples of collections featuring images based on sexual violence – Alexander McQueen’s show for his masters [sic] degree was entitled Jack The Ripper, and depicted bloodied images of Victorian prostitutes. A later show in 1995, Highland Rape, featured staggering, half-naked, brutalised models. And John Galliano, in his 2003 collection for Christian Dior, Hard Core Romance, used the imagery of sadomasochism, putting his models in seven-inch heels and rubber suits “so tight they had to use copious amounts of talcum powder to fit into them”. [21] Tasteless nonsense in the name of art perhaps, but only a militant, separatist feminist like Jeffreys would interpret these examples as evidence of gay men’s desire to inflict sexual violence on malnourished runway waifs.
Bindel also notes that in one of Jeffrey’s books, Unpacking Queer Politics, she writes of her concern that gay male culture has had a detrimental effect on women, especially lesbians, by promoting sado-masochism as an expression of gay liberation, thus eroticizing the power differences inherent in heterosexual practices. Susan Brownmiller, the singularly destructive Second Wave feminist and notorious ‘rape epidemic’ hoaxer, conflates all sex between consenting gay men as a form of violent homosexual rape. In her most influential work, Against Our Will, Brownmiller simply cannot distinguish between the two. [22]
John Stoltenberg, [23] author of the appropriately titled books Refusing to Be a Man: Essays in Sex and Justice and The End of Manhood: A Book for Men of Conscience, as well as an article called Why talking about ‘healthy masculinity’ is like talking about ‘healthy cancer’, [24] is also convinced that heterosexual sex is an expression of sadistic male supremacy: “I also believe that male supremacy constructs male sexuality such that there is a literal eroticism of owning that accompanies both the private-property and the public-property views of women’s bodies.” [23]
As the man who carried the oafishly repellent Andrea Dworkin over the threshold, Stoltenberg doesn’t need to convince anyone that he is an authority on masochism, but as a gay man, he has some gall holding forth on the sexual dynamics of heterosexual relationships. He is a still-living testament to the perils awaiting gay men who swallow feminist dogma while maintaining willful ignorance of its poisonous contents. John Lauritson rightly dismisses Stoltenberg as both a feminist and as an enemy to gay men everywhere:
Stoltenberg attacks all of the goals of the gay liberation movement, claiming that if realized they would only give gay men equality with straight men; he puts forward the propositions that males concerned with “gender justice” should embrace “a total repudiation of masculinity” (including a repudiation of erections and pelvic thrusts during sex), and a total repudiation of male relationships…Stoltenberg deserves only our contempt when he dismisses the yearning men have for male affection by writing: “…all he was ever programmed to long for in relationship with men connects at its center to a process that keeps women oppressed.” [25]
There it is again: the feminist claim that men are incapable of loving women.
Marilyn Frye would wholeheartedly agree with Stoltenberg. She yearns to be critical of gay men’s alleged promotion of power differences in sexual relationships as an expression of their supposed dedication to male sexual supremacy, yet she becomes so obtuse and convoluted in her claims and conclusions that one wonders why she included “compulsory heterosexuality” as a principal of ‘the phallocracy’ in the first place.
Then again, Frye is a feminist. This means that she is never inhibited about making outrageous claims that don’t even make sense to her. For example, Frye claims that straight men resent gay men for not engaging sexually with women, or what Frye calls, “not pulling [their] share of the load.” In other words, straight men are annoyed with gay men for not subjugating women through sex as much as they should. Perhaps Frye’s confusion would be alleviated by being enlightened about the realities of sexual competition among men. Straight men do not resent other men from removing themselves from that particular field of competition. In fact, they’re generally very happy about it.
Frye, however, is not at all confused about what she calls, gay men’s presumptive right to “general phallic access”. In fact, she waxes hysterical about what she believes to be gay men’s most damnable contribution to ‘the phallocracy’ in which they reign hedonistically supreme: gay men’s insidiously arrogant belief that they are entitled to engage in unsupervised, consensual sex with whomever they choose. It is necessary to examine Frye’s contention in some detail here because it encapsulates many of the fundamental gripes that numerous feminists today have in regard to gay men – especially their deep distrust of gay men’s freely-expressed sexuality combined with their almost palpably envious response to it. Rose McGowan’s snide swipe at gay men for believing in their “right to stand on top of a float wearing an orange speedo and take molly,” [26] is infused with the same resentment which is so discernable throughout Frye’s following diatribe:
The proscription against male-male fucking is the lid on masculinity, the limiting principle which keeps masculinity from being simply an endless firestorm of undifferentiated self. As such, that proscription is necessarily always in tension with the rest of masculinity…As long as males are socialized constantly to masculinity, the spectre of their running amok is always present. The straight male’s phobic reaction to male homosexuality can then be seen as a fear of an unrestricted, unlimited, ungoverned masculinity.
To assuage this fear, what the rhetoric and ideology of the male gay rights movement has tried to do is to convince straight men that male-male ass-fucking and fellatio are…expressions of male bonding…What I want to note is just this: if it is the claim of gay men and their movement that male-male fucking is really a form of male bonding, an intensification and completion of the male homoeroticism which is basic to male-supremacy, then they themselves are arguing that their culture and practices are, after all, perfectly congruent with the culture, practices and principles of male-supremacy.
According to the general picture that has emerged here, male homosexuality is congruent with and a logical extension of straight male-supremacist culture. It seems that straight men just don’t understand the congruency and are frightened by the “logical extension.” In response, the male gay rights movement attempts to educate and encourage straight men to an appreciation of the normalcy and harmlessness of gay men. It does not challenge the principles of male-supremacist culture.”
Is Frye attempting to warn straight men that gay men are out to persuade them that gay sex is ‘normal’ in an effort to infect them with ‘gay’, resulting in feminists being confronted with their ultimate nightmare: the “spectre” of unbridled masculine lust “running amok” in a world that would render women all but sexually irrelevant? If so, then she is engaging in the all-too-familiar feminist tactic of creating fear and suspicion among men of different sexual orientations in order to undermine their unified opposition to feminism. Here, Frye is trying instill straight men with fear of gay men.
Feminists know instinctively how to manipulate men, and gay men have proven to be especially vulnerable to this divide-and-conquer strategy. All feminists have needed to do is convince gay men that straight men are their enemies and that feminists will provide them with protection – feminists never tire of telling gay men that they must now reciprocate for this ‘protection’ by pledging their loyalty to feminism. The problem for feminists is that many gay men are now waking up to the fact that they’ve been scammed all along by ideological racketeers and starting to reassess their alliances. The only mystery is why it has taken gay men so long to realize that feminists have always despised them as much, sometimes even more, than their straight brothers – it’s not as though feminists have been particularly secretive about this.
Frye evokes Orwell’s O’Brien by demanding that all potential gay male allies, “must come to understand the values and principles of phallocratic culture and how his own life is interwoven with them, and must reject them and become disloyal to masculinity.” Like John Stoltenberg, gay male allies can demonstrate their loyalty to feminism by refusing to be men. This would certainly be a key step in achieving the feminist utopia envisioned by Shulumith Firestone:
The end goal of feminist revolution must be, unlike that of the first feminist movement, not just the elimination of male privilege but of the sex distinction itself: genital difference between human beings would no longer matter culturally.” [27]
Firestone was predicting the ‘end of men’ long before Hanna Rosin was celebrating it. [28]
It has been more than thirty years since Marilyn Frye revealed her staggeringly ignorant and contemptuous condemnation of gay men as penis-worshipping colluders in her phantom anti-woman ‘phallocracy’. Feminists have not only failed to refute any of Frye’s warped and bigoted assertions in the intervening decades, they have actually developed them further into what has become a deafening cacophony of stern and reproachful lectures on gay men’s ‘failure’ as worthy feminist allies. Here are but a few screeches from that whiny and entitled din:
Gay men need to stop perpetrating misogyny and ally themselves to the feminist movement. And the first step to becoming a true ally is listening to women speak about the issues that are important to them, whether its wage equality, reproductive rights, access to birth control or anything else. We can start there.” [29]
So many of us are only familiar with the idea that male privilege being the province of straight men that we discount how gay men are able to exert dominance and control over women.” [30]
In order to combat misogyny, gay men should claim feminism as allies, but not in a queer-opting or mansplaining way.” [31]
Gay men are men. They rape women just like straight men etc.” [32]
Azalia Banks claims not to realize that the word ‘faggot’ is a derogatory word for gay men: “And it was always just a man who hates women…you can be a straight faggot. Faggots are men who want to bring women down…control them…When I use the word ‘faggot’, it comes from a feminist point of view, not a homophobic point of view.” [33]
Yes, Azalia Banks; men, regardless of their sexual orientation, know all about your use of the word ‘faggot. It’s called gay-shaming – and it isn’t acceptable just because you do it in the name of feminism, or that you do it to straight men too. Banks is actually proud of the fact that she does not discriminate between gay men and straight men when she engages in gay-bashing. Honestly, you just can’t make this stuff up.
It was foolish of feminists to assume that gay men would “sit down, shut up and listen” [2] to this kind of offensive tripe forever. In March 2015, the influential gay men’s magazine, The Advocate, published an article in which it issued an unequivocal rebuke to feminists for their endless censure of gay men for being remiss in their duty to feminism. It is clear that MHRAs aren’t the only people who have paid close attention to the wisdom of John Lauritson:
Furthermore, the “women have helped the gay movement” line of reasoning is as grandiose a generalization as the contention that gay men are misogynistic. Yes, many women have lent support, but in 1969 (the year of the landmark Stonewall riots), the radical feminist group the Redstockings was founded and claimed that male homosexuality was a blatant rejection of women and therefore completely objectionable. What’s more, a 1976 book, Dangerous Trends in Feminism, goes into detail about the rampant criticism of the gay movement by certain feminists, adding that gays were too polite to reciprocate the attack.” [34]
Gay men are starting to revolt against this tirade of feminist abuse and casting off the ideological yoke that feminists have used to train gay men to support their corrupt hate movement for far too long. Here is a response from a gay man who is obviously very familiar with the feminist orthodoxy on gay men which has been promoted by ideological vanguards like Marilyn Frye – and has concluded that he definitely doesn’t need feminism:
Feminism expects me to own up to “male privilege”, then tells me I’m oppressed by the Patriarchy because I’m gay, then tells me that this oppression is really oppression of women because it’s secondary misogyny, and finally still expects me to be a feminist, because feminists are supposedly the reason I’m gradually gaining equality in this society. No. Feminists aren’t the sole saviors of LGBT people. LGBT people themselves (along with straight allies) are the ones who deserve the credit for fighting for their own equality. Leave your totalitarian ideology out of it.” [35]
Feminists cannot leave their “totalitarian ideology out of it” because feminism is a totalitarian ideology – an ideology that is built on the premise that all men are privileged by a so-called patriarchy/phallocracy in which all men collude for the primary purpose of oppressing women. Gay men don’t need feminism for the same fundamental reasons straight men don’t need it. Not only is it foolish to embrace an ideology built on faulty premises, but there is absolutely nothing to be gained from supporting a movement whose most influential thinkers have targeted you for nearly five decades as their enemy. Moreover, it is morally indefensible to support an ideology that promotes violence, bigotry, injustice and division. In this regard, women don’t need feminism either – nobody does.
In the 4th and final part of Why Gay Men Don’t Need Feminism, we will examine the many ways in which the Men’s Human Rights Movement [MHRM] addresses issues relevant to the rights and welfare of all men and boys, regardless of their race, religion, nationality, ethnicity, age, ability or sexual orientation. It is aptly titled, Brotherhood, which is something which can never be achieved until gay men reject the hate-mongering ideology that feminism has always been, and proudly take their rightful place alongside their straight brothers with whom – as the vanguards of feminism have been telling them for years – they have far more in common than not.
References:
[2]http://nymag.com/thecut/2014/10/you-want-to-be-a-male-feminist-maybe-dont.html#
[3] http://jezebel.com/294383/have-you-ever-beat-up-a-boyfriend-cause-uh-we-have
[4] http://jezebel.com/5985693/what-do-we-want-from-male-feminists
[5]http://www.xyonline.net/content/feminism-needs-men-men-need-feminism
[6] http://www.digplanet.com/wiki/Redstockings
[7] http://www.wavaw.ca/what-is-rape-culture/
[8] http://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/Hierarchy_of_oppression
[9] http://www.philosophy.msu.edu/people/faculty/marilyn-frye/
[10] http://www.feminist-reprise.org/docs/fryegayrights.htm
[11] http://www.azquotes.com/author/42046-Marilyn_Frye
[12] https://www.marxists.org/subject/women/authors/millett-kate/theory.htm
[13]http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/31/nyregion/shulamith-firestone-feminist-writer-dies-at-67.html?_r=0
[14] https://www.facebook.com/ThePinkTriangle
[15]http://msmagazine.com/blog/2014/06/06/protest-saturday-misogynistic-mra-conference-in-detroit/
[16] http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/mens-rights-conference-feminism
[19] http://www.sheilajeffreys.com/
[21]http://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/jul/02/gender.politicsphilosophyandsociety
[22]http://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/prison/report5.html
[25] http://paganpressbooks.com/jpl/DTF.HTM
[26]http://www.bilerico.com/2014/11/charmed_star_rose_mcgowan_gay_men_are_misogynists.php
[27] http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/04/15/death-of-a-revolutionary
[28]http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/16/books/review/the-end-of-men-by-hanna-rosin.html
[29]http://thetab.com/uk/cambridge/2015/04/01/feminisms-duty-gay-men-response-49779
[30]http://jezebel.com/the-myth-of-the-fag-hag-and-dirty-secrets-of-the-gay-ma-1506868402
[31]http://www.huffingtonpost.com/aaron-barksdale/more-gay-men-need-to-claim-feminism_b_8106446.html
[32] http://imgur.com/gallery/H75B00k
[33]http://www.feministcurrent.com/2015/02/19/azealia-banks-calls-out-the-misogyny-of-gay-men/
[34]http://www.advocate.com/michael-musto/2015/03/12/gay-men-can-t-take-criticism
[35] https://www.facebook.com/idontneedfeminismbecause/posts/820029058065082