The point of the discourse on Master and Slave, if I recall correctly, was to describe not just a static, "essentialist" relationship, but a dialectic the result of which lay in the Slave's overcoming and Aufhebung of his subordinate status, by means of the rational faculty. By studying the Master and learning from him, making him dependent on yourself, you not only liberate yourself but become a Master in your own right. Some people can't hack that kind of relationship; like me, for instance. Never cared for mentors and the rite of passage. I always thought it was a way to enforce stupidity.

So Feeney makes some good points; it's true: men can admire each other and not be gay. But I still can't help but wonder why Feeney has to conclude with the assumption that "gay" is an insult, a way to put another man down. Gay men can also be men of accomplishment - in any area of life. Pardon the Pride Blurb, but when it comes to bravery, intelligence, resourcefulness, creativity of every sort, gay men have it; if Feeney wants to rehabilitate the idea of men sharing a narcissistic bond forged in mutual recognition of personal gloire, I would think being mistaken for gay would be something he'd strive for. Certainly when it comes to the eros of physique, I would gladly hazard that gay men are way over-represented, percentage wise.

Part of the problem there, however, I will freely admit, might lie with us gay guys. Most of my fellow gay men have come to consciously abandon any heroic model; they want to fit in with the shlumpy, mealy-mouthed straight-guy, regular-dude ideal of suburban anti-heroism. They're apolitical and mildly bourgeois and they kinda like sports and military adventurism, as a hobby, as a thing to sit around bullshittin about with their pals. Their protagonist, you can't possibly call him a hero, is the decidedly mediocre and idiotically popular Andrew Sullivan. Mr. Sullivan smugly displays his oafish callowness, his blubbery man-tits and moronic cackle as signs of his ordinariness, hence his straightness. It's supposed to come off as "unironic," which is just too rich for words.

Gay men (and straight men, for that matter) won't be truly liberated from a kind slavish puerility until they get over the fear of what other men think of their manhood. Feeney and the rest of us need to quit cowering in terror at the stupid label, the mere phoneme "gay."

See, in the Dialectic of Phallus, it's the fear of das Ding, not the Ding an sich, that prevents the dialectical becoming we all want to become. You have to take das Ding and make it a Ding not only an sich, but fur sich as well, remember? Then you will be a magnificently proportioned and enlightened man.

Hegel, by the way, few people know this, was actually a really hot dude. Every afternoon, after summarizing another moment in the negation of the negation, he'd whip off fifty, sixty pushups, like nothing. He had crazy lats, man, and his glutes, you know, kicked ass, so to speak. So I would suck his cock for hours . . . . he'd just stand there, mumbling "fuer sich und dann an sich" in a low moaning rasp.

Mark -- as always, I love your posts.

"Gay men (and straight men, for that matter) won't be truly liberated from a kind slavish puerility until they get over the fear of what other men think of their manhood. Feeney and the rest of us need to quit cowering in terror at the stupid label, the mere phoneme "gay." "

~Really excellent stuff there - facinating stuff.

Recently I was watching televison, and the pride parade came on -- this guy who I was watching with went to the old cliche "I have no problem with gay guys, as long as they don't hit on me. But I don't understand why they are out there like that, its really gross. I don't want to see what they do".

This bizarre gay obsession that straight people have is something that has got to stop. It's just really weird, I don't get it - I don't think I'll ever get it.

Also, I'm not sure how I feel about Hegel and Keanu Reeves in the same sentence. Funny, but stupid.

Thank you morphic, for the kind words.

I agree with the sheer mystifying oddity of the paranoia of "homophobia." The thought crime of trying to put scenes of another kind of sexuality in the minds of innocent straight men, trying force such thoughts into their minds against their will. This idea indicates nothing so much as the extraordinary sensibility, the exreme insecurity of male straightness. As if were the highstrung awareness of being straight to leave your mind for a second, you could never get it back. You'd be permanently impotent. When I hear a straight guy talk about being horrified at the mere sight or imaginary thought of two men getting it on, I can't help but think how fragile this person's sexuality is.

The only thing comparable to the fragility of male straightness is listening to a fanatically fundamentalist religious person talk about what it feels like to be a fundamentalist in a modern, secular world. The way they express a sense, not of being offended, not just indignation, but anxious, fretting defensiveness: if you're not with me, you're against me; it's not just non-belief, it's actively malignant dis-belief. There's no neutral agreeing to disagree - if you are an unbeliever, you're an agent of evil and your agnosticism actually an attack on the faith.