I'm starting to suspect nationalism/"patriotism" is code for closted gay

[jdj]

men. Is this the language conservative gay men use to attract each other? Is the flag a fetish for them? Is the brutishness of the military and war their secret garden of lust? Is that why they won't let gays be out in the military, because they are afraid the out 'n' proud gays will bring the house down upon them, since these men obviously have an internal conflict wherein they could never be an out gay man and still get the love and approval of their Daddies.

I've been thinking about this since the Gannon story broke. It's not the resignation to duty of regular soldiers, it's the fetishizing of eagles and red, white and blue, of splotched camo green, of sweat and blood and 'bravery'/'heroism'. Color me stupid, but I never looked at these things as aphrodisiacs. Not the way a woman does, as standing outside it and being enthralled by it (discounting female soldiers); but being within it, being in the trenches with a "brother", being in the blunt brute force of masculinity. Is the fantasy of that erotic to these lost men, who can't bear to be the fey gay that cultural stereotypes feed them, but instead insist on this perpetual war scenario so that they can have a reference point for a true self that their fathers would not reject. I mean, it's creeping me out, thinking that all this war may just really be about sexual desire...how else can you explain the willingness of republican administrations to go to war over and over for no damn good reason.

[fertilizeonarbusto]

1. Give this DU'er a cigar! n/t

[Name removed]

2. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[fertilizeonarbusto]

3. Um

I know closeted gay guys that think EXACTLY as he is saying. Scary. Sad. True.

[davidinalameda]

5. and I know closeted gay guys who love show tunes

more than the flag

do you possibly think we could bring up any more sterotypes?

[fertilizeonarbusto]

7. OK, you are obviously the one that has spent 21 years

in the gay world. Trust me, he's dead on about a number of people I know. And the reason stereotypes exist is because there is at least a grain of truth about them-not the whole truth by any means, of course. I know, that's not very PC, but neither is a lot of life. There's a lot of "Jeff Gannons" out there-especially in rural areas. I know my share.

[jdj]

4. feel free. rainbow colors. (I'm dead serious).

BUT, the question marks are honest.

[Proud2BAmurkin]

6. I have gay friends who say that is EXACTLY what it is.

I've been told by several gay friends that it's one of their better known "codes"

[jdj]

8. wow.

I didn't know that. But I only know one gay republican, so I guess that's why I never heard anyone say this out loud. The most dangerous ones are the ones like Bush (and probably Rumsfeld) who don't know at all they are gay, and kill hundreds of thousands of innocent people trying to not know it.

So I guess it's two categories, a) the ones who know they are gay and are closeted and are attracted to and by these things and b) the ones who are attracted to war and military symbols, but won't let themselves know why, these are probably the most dangerous, because they are seething with rage inside and half to blow up a lot of innocent people to quell it.

[Nimrod]

9. ::laughs::

Even if you're not joking, thanks for that post. :)

The fetishism of the military (and police or just about any other uniform for that matter) is tied to how masculine it is. For many men - and women for that matter - a male-male fantasy doesn't include what's known as the prettyboy. That appears as a cheap ripoff of a male-female fantasy. They don't want feminine characteristics, they want big guys with barrel chests who are pure guy. The standard portrayal of military men is 100% gold plated, double-barreled MALE (gorilla sounds optional). And so the fetish is born.

It doesn't even have to be blatanly sexual - think about how many guys watch Ahnuld movies and ask yourself if you REALLY think he's taking off his shirt "for the ladies"?

I know a lot of people (both sexes) who have the uniform fetish and would LOVE to get done by a HotMilitaryStud. It's a silly two-dimensional caricature of masculinity, but that's what fantasy is all about - living the fantasy.

[jdj]

10. no, I'm serious.

But the scary thing I'm talking about is the insistence on war, the throwing of war to perpetuate this environment where the 'freedom' fetishists can feel at home and normal in, I'm interested in how much of our foreign policy is dictated by this innate urge. The urge to copulate (some say breed, but I think its about sex, God tricks us into breeding with sex) is the strongest urge, sometimes stronger than the urge for sustenance.

[Nimrod]

11. It's quite possible

The urge for sex, especially when it's unsatisfied, can translate to the urge for violence. I know because I'm guilty of that at times, although all I do is go rent a movie where a lot of shit gets blown up.

Although you may really be onto something - I've worked in lumberyards and industrial plants and the like and I come from a long, proud tradition of hillbillies. The image of the rough, swaggering, swearing, unshaven, rough-n-tough blue collar worker isn't far off, especially among the younger of the breed - and it amazes me how much time they spend talking about their penises (peni?). It does seem that genuinely straight men wouldn't spend that much time thinking about other men's sexual organs...

In any event, it's probably all linked together. When the "Male Ideal" is constantly pictured as a man in a uniform with a gun of some kind, it's bound to get sexualized.

[MsTryska]

12. *lol* i read this post and i think of Pulp Fiction...

bring out The Gimp!

[jdj]

15. who was it, Scott McClellan?

he can't form a proper sentence, but I think he speaks in phrases on purpose, so he can get out of being accused of lying, because if you read the transcripts of his press briefings, he rarely ever makes a complete statement about anything.

[MsTryska]

17. hmmm scott as the Gimp?

maybe but he's too much of a weenie to take the role of a true masochist, methinks.


maybe Rove. he thinks he's powerful.



incidentally you know what's really freaky? when Scott mclellan grins. it's liek the bottom half of his face makes a grin, but the rest of his big-ass head doesn't move.


vera disturbing.

[riverwalker]

13. most liberal women already knew that

most freepers, once you start to know them, end up more like Gannon than not. Most RW'er are twisted freaks and it comes out in one way or another. I agree with Mike Malloy when he noticed most of these high profile child pornographers and molesters turn out to be extreme RW Republicans. There is a REASON for that.

[jdj]

14. but is that the motivating factor behind all this war?

and the selling pt of patriotism? Aren't normal, well-adjusted people naturally patriotic, when it comes to our country, not our government.

[yodermon]

16. Read: "War as Righteous Rape and Purification"

http://www.psychohistory.com/htm/eln06_war.html

"War! It meant a purification, a liberation
...and an extraordinary sense of hope"
-Thomas Mann

Happy people don't start wars. They don't need "purifying" or "liberation," and their everyday lives are already full of hope and meaning, so they don't need a war to save them from anything.

What sort of strange emotional disorder is it that war cleanses, liberates and saves people from? And how can killing, raping and torturing people be acts that purify and restore hope in life? Obviously war is a serious psychopathological condition, a recurring human behavior pattern whose motives and causes have yet to be examined on any but the most superficial levels of analysis.

STANDARD THEORIES OF CAUSATION OF WAR
All standard theories of war deny that it is an emotional disorder at all.1 War, unlike individual violence, is usually seen solely as a response to events outside the individual. Nations that start wars are not considered emotionally disturbed--they are either considered as rational or they are "evil," a religious category. Although homicide and suicide are now studied as clinical disorders,2 war, unfortunately, is not.

Most historians of war have given up in advance any attempt to understand its causes, claiming "it is simply not the historian's business to give explanations."3 Genocide, in particular, appears outside the universe of research into motivations, since if one tries to understand Holocaust perpetrators, one is said to "give up one's right to blame them." At best, historians avoid the psychodynamics of the perpetrators of wars entirely, saying, "Leave motivation to the psychologists."4
...

[jdj]

18. what is so bad about giving up the right to blame?

Blame is the main factor our society needs to get over, in that we all have the capacity for destructiveness.

I would disagree with the whole thrust of that argument.

Giving up one's right to blame is the key to unlocking the door of peace, because with it you give up the right to have an "other" upon whom you can project your disowned traits, and because of that imply liscense to destroy them.

But the overt sexuality of all this jingoism in Gannon's sites and pics has just kind of opened my eyes. This is about B/D, this is doing scenes, this is about sex. The whole theater of war may be about sex, because it gives the latent facist men their needed excuse to draw near to each other and celebrate their masculinity (their fetish)in a way that nothing else does, but in order for this facade to be erected (sorry) their has to be a pathological other to play the part of target, so they can just allow themselves to be gay, in these circumstances, wrapped in the drapery of nationalism and duty and heroism. I honestly feel like I've been had, in a way I've never felt before.