No homo(hysteria)

What if we let men love each other? Hold hands, cuddle, share a bed, kiss sometimes if they wanted.

To our Lady of Solitude, Dennis Scholl (2023)

I want to celebrate the fact that queers have always existed. And they have. But sometimes we’re over-eager to project homosexuality when we should be seeing more nuance in how intimacy manifests.

Romance and friendship aren’t opposites, not either/or. Desire is complicated. Context matters. People lived under different expectations of desire in the many centuries before ours. The idea of a “platonic” relationship does not easily translate between our reality and theirs. Ideas about monogamy and sex haven’t been constant.

Just a little over a century ago, it wasn’t uncommon to see men with their arms around each other, holding hands walking down the street, sharing a bed, writing each other love letters. Except they didn’t have to preface it, “no homo!”

“You will not endanger his secrets and will pardon his faults. Your first obligation is to serve him to the degree that you are able; to counsel him, to help him learn… You will thus make him happy and honored among all. Share your bread with him, your bed, and your dress, should he need any of these, love him with great fondness, care for him and wish him the best, for he is your love brother [hermano de amor] that you yourself have chosen.” – How to do Elementary Education for Children and Other People, Antonio de Lopez de Santa (1853)

Physically and emotionally intense same-sex friendships between men haven’t always been taboo, or shameful, or queer. It wasn’t until psychologists started investigating and writing about homosexuality that straight men, in particular, grew concerned about appearing gay. Homohysteria.

This week, I watched Portrait of a Lady on Fire while cuddled up on a pull-out couch with a friend. The film takes place in 18th century France; it is about the complexity of yearning rather than its disallowing, it is about the relationship between an artist and her muse, it is about the lasting impacts of romance, the slow burn. And it is deliciously gay.

Of course, gay sex wasn’t understood then as it is now. The film takes place in the 1770s. The word “homosexual” was first coined almost exactly one hundred years later. Though of course anti-sodomy laws and criminalization of homosexuals had been well under way.

I think about how Foucault argued that homosexual and heterosexual identities did not emerge until the 19th century. The terms used to describe practices and not identity.

He explains that society’s views on sex have massively shifted over the centuries. Sure, same-sex relationships and homosexual desires have always existed, but what’s new about our present is the idea that our desires reveal some fundamental truth about who we are and the conviction that we have an obligation to seek out that truth (in other words, the desperate seeking out if we really are “gay” or “just bisexual” or if the little crush we have means we can’t be “straight.”)

Maybe we should all have a little gay sex (no homo) every now and then without it being a life-altering experience.

In previous centuries, men had fraternal organizations to join to learn how to become men. They had the Freemasons, the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, the Benevolent Protective Order of Elks. They had lodges and union halls. Today, we don’t have anything remotely close to this scale, no place for this kind of community, except for maybe the military. Yikes.

Sociological research highlights that men have been increasingly emotionally distancing themselves from other men over many decades, seeing each other as competitors instead of as comrades or companions. It’s not that men are less emotional or don’t need to talk about their feelings or can subsist on beer and football. Our society has intentionally made it that way.

“I could as easily forget your name as the food by which I live; nay, it were easier to forget the food, which only nourishes my body miserably, than your name, which nourishes both body and soul, filling the one and the other with such sweetness that neither weariness nor fear of death is felt by me while memory preserves you to my mind. Think, if the eyes could also enjoy their portion, in what condition I should find myself.” – Michelangelo to Tommaso Cavalieri (1533)

Was Michelangelo gay? I don’t think this is the right question. Maybe he didn’t think of himself, or anyone else, through that lens. Maybe he wasn’t gay, just had gay sex. Maybe he didn’t have gay sex, just lusted after his friends. Maybe all of this is just an activity and not an identity. I don’t know!

I feel blessed to live in a time (and place) of flexibility around these questions. Whenever I have to fill out a checkbox about my sexuality I always mark the following: gay, lesbian, bisexual, queer, other. The only one I don’t check is straight. This isn’t a political statement, it’s just simply reality.

I’m worried about men today. Patriarchy, homophobia, transphobia harm all of us, not just those of us who are marginalized. Our society punishes men for their friendships and leaves them with few options for getting their physical and emotional needs met while simultaneously burdening women with meeting all of their needs.

The Left doesn’t have an answer to manhood, beyond the overwrought, “men suck.” I have lost count of how many women, recently out of a relationship with a man and maybe even exploring queerness for the first time, have told me “men are trash.” Asa Seresin calls this phenomenon heteropessimism: “performative disaffiliations with heterosexuality, usually expressed in the form of regret, embarrassment, or hopelessness about straight experience.” Heteropessimists rarely stop dating men. We all know these women.

On the other hand, the Right does have an answer to the question of manhood, and it is welcoming them with open arms. The crux of the biscuit is this: when liberal men’s masculinity is threatened, they start to develop preferences for aggressive political policies and behaviors (e.g., the death penalty, bombing an “enemy” country).

What if, instead, we let men love each other? Hold hands, cuddle, share a bed, kiss sometimes if they wanted. No homo or homo. Homo-ambiguous.

The same-sex intimacies may or may not be physical, may or may not be romantic may or may not be sexual. Regardless of their form, homosocial experiences facilitate our emotional and social maturity as we grow up and indeed throughout our lives.

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P.S. I quietly turned on the paid subscriptions for my newsletter for those of you who want to support my writing. Sending a million kisses to Kate, Beck, and Ben who encouraged me to do so despite how cringe it feels.