Brokeback Mountain: Our Community's Common Bond > Brokeback Mountain Open Forum

One Man Men

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Jack_ME:

JCinNYC2006 thank you for your thoughtful post.

I think you and I would agree on many points, points which I've been trying to bring up for discussion here and elsewhere. It's good that folks think about what they mean when they use the phrase: sexual orientation.

The whole realm of ones sexuality, sexual orientation, sexual identity, are NOT automatically interchangeable. They DO represent different facets of a person's being. When folks unthinkingly slap a label on someone else, they are denying these important differences.

It's amusing that one of the arguements for "gay rights" is that "we are just like you", yet the "gay" culture is very much about saying the opposite most of the time in action and deed!

There is no doubt that mental, emotional, spiritual wholeness and health are important to the well being of every individual. And there is also no doubt that many homosexual people have suffered due to negative sick-making thinking foisted on them by institutions of culture, which they've adopted and through which they view themselves. That is tragic and very sad and what we should all want for each other, is to beome more whole and more healthy in ourselves. So it is true that some folks are in denial, and those folks need to come to terms with things they have INTENTIONALLY repressed or denied. But it does NOT follow that ALL homosexuals are suffering in that way, UNLESS they make some public statement or change of culture around their sexual orientation. Many homosexuals are healthy and whole and know their sexual orientation but choose to keep that part of their lives private, and in all other ways are simply average members of their society.  These labels which get tossed around are too limiting, and becasue they are too limiting, we force individuals under the one we decide is most suitable. And it's pretty evident that the labels Hetero, Homo, and BI are just not going to cover every person and every circumstance, becasue those labels are loaded with implications which are not accurate for all people. A Hetero who engages in a Homo act, or relationship. A Homo who engages in a Hetero act or relationship (who marries for instance). These simplistic labels force other implications of denial/repression which while true in some cases are simply not true in all cases.

More thoughts.....
Jack in Maine

Aussie Chris:

--- Quote from: Jack_ME on March 25, 2006, 12:27:05 am ---Chris, you slightly miss my point, or I did not clearly express it. I DO feel that people tend to apply labels unthinkingly, only motivated by a shorthand simplistic means of distinguishing "others" from themselves. For a person to SELF-identify as anything s/he wants is fine. And for another to THINK about and consider some whole individual and then come to some conclusion (and label if appropriate) is also fine.  It's the automatic labeling based soley on some single element that I object to and which is so common.

--- End quote ---

Wow, I only slightly miss your point?  I'm glad because I was worried that we were just stuck on semantics.  But I think the penny has finally dropped.

Ok, so you see a distinction between homosexual behaviour (sexual activity with someone of the same gender but without necessarily identifying with that behaviour) and gay (a person that identifies themself as being part of a community of homosexuals).  Is this a fair summary of your point?

You also have a problem with the double standard where it is apparently ok for “heterosexual” women to have homosexual encounters and retain their “straight” status, but with men a single homosexual encounter forever brands them as gay and in denial.  Again, is this fair?

For now, I’ll just assume that you’re ok with these statements and within this context I agree with you that Jack and Ennis were not gay.  However, I still struggle with your contention that Ennis was innately heterosexual.  If you say this because Ennis may never have had a homosexual encounter at all had he not met Jack, I think that misses the point that Ennis had it within him to fall romantically and expressively in love with Jack in the first place?  Apart from the possible exclusion of youthful experimentation, I just don’t think heterosexuals do this, innately or otherwise.


--- Quote ---So many people say: man has sex with man then HE IS homosexual, and if he doesn't embrace that identity then he is in denial.

--- End quote ---

Hmmm, there’s that identity thing again.  For the record, I don’t think that if a man has sex with another man it automatically makes him homosexual, but at the risk of being yelled at, if he has a 20 year sexual relationship with another man, when exactly does his inherent heterosexuality end?  Without making any accusations, isn’t this a question of maturity?

I’m going to move now to your rant (meant lovingly) about the double standards of female versus male sexual diversity and labelling, and more importantly how these are used as tools of discrimination (though I don't get to this until the end of this post).

This issue runs right through society on just about every level, particularly straight western society.  Just about every straight person I have talked to about art has professed that the female form has more artistic merit than the male one.  They gleefully describe how a female’s shape is more interesting to paint/sculpt/view.  In my early days of coming out I accepted this along with many other declarations along those lines.  At the time this bothered me but I didn’t have the words to counter it.  But there was one other aspect to this that made it difficult for me to argue: you see I personally don’t have a problem with the female form.  I am definitely gay, but I still see beauty in the feminine physique and I don’t see the need to find fault in women just because I’m a gay male.  The fact that the heterosexual world seems to be caught up with this silliness is their problem, not mine.


--- Quote ---I am simplifying in stating the cases, but perhaps you get my point in wanting to have a discussion on sexual orientation in general, and Jack and Ennis's in particular.

--- End quote ---

Definitely, although I can’t help but think that the use of labelling to discriminate is unduly influencing this conversation.  As I alluded to earlier, I’m a bit of a “sticks and stones” sort of person; I cannot be damaged with words unless I give credibility to those words.  I am gay, and like any of the characteristics I have (height, nationality, gender, age, etc) - I cannot be made to be offended by what simply is.


--- Quote ---Can a person be a homosexual and NOT be gay? Yes.
Can a person be "gay" and not be a homosexual? Theoretically yes, practically no. (There is a slang term to describe a heterosexually oriented woman, ie, a woman sexually attracted to a man's body, but who rarely or never dates heterosexual men, and who instead surrounds herself with male homosexuals, and who sometimes falls in love with male homosexuals......that woman is "gay" in the sense I mean and stated above. Her "gayness" is NOT about her sexuality so much as it is about her cultural and societal constructs.)

--- End quote ---

Ok, sorry but you’ve completely lost me here.  I was prepared to accept the notion that there was a difference (for you) between being gay and homosexual in the degree of acceptance, but I cannot accept that you can be gay without being homosexual.  And a woman who falls romantically in love with a gay man is neither gay nor homosexual - she is simply foolish unless she didn’t know he was gay.  [winces in preparation for being flamed on that point]


--- Quote ---To clarify, I am not giving any value judgements, I am simply trying to make the point that the label "gay" has lots of implications which do not fit all homosexuals, and just because that label does not fit some homosexual individuals does not mean THE INDIVIDUALS are in denial or wrong, it means the LABEL is wrong and limititing.

--- End quote ---

Let me ask you this: if there was no discrimination in the world, or if the individuals that might be accused of being gay didn’t care what others thought, how could this label be either wrong or limiting?  And the fact that they feel they need to conceal their sexuality through secrecy or abstinence, isn’t that the very definition of denial?

Peace Jack, when we take away sadness, what’s left is happiness.

JCinNYC2006:
Hey Jack, thanks for your reply.  I agree, we are in synch on many points about orientation vs. identity and how they are used interchangeably when they can also mean different things.  And a main gripe for me is when there's an effort to put a label on someone, as many fans of BBM want to do with Jack and Ennis, and when we try to understand how the person identifies him or herself.  I'm a gay man.  I am a social worker and I have tended to concentrate mostly on LGBT cilents.  My doctor was gay.  My therapist was gay.  My dentist was gay.  Even an old accountant of mine was friggin' gay.  For a long time I surrounded myself in a community where being gay was a big focus, and I think that I did so as I was creating my own identity.  How good it was for me is debateable now (i.e. I don't have many straight friends, over-reliance on an increasingly splintered gay community, etc.) but that was my process. 

In a way, gays have become as dependent on labels for orientation being fixed in the same way that straights are - the label gives the illusion of thinking that you know all you need to know about this person and who they love or what they do in bed.  It's comforting to think that way, but limiting.  Taking on an identity like gay has political meaning as much as personal value, and like African American, the term has evolved as gay people have had more power to define how to identify ourselves.  We went from inverts to homosexuals to homophiles to gay, all the way to today where there's a move to reclaim queer as a more all encompassing identity.  And for many people, there's just less conception of even being able to claim an identity - situations like with Ennis where being 'normal' meant being a man who gets married and has kids.

It can be interesting to speculate on whether Jack would have adapted more easily to a gay identity at some point.  He certainly seems to have more potential as  he made more of an effort to at least be more comfortable and accepting of his attraction to men, to the point of suggesting over and over to Ennis the idea of living together and building a life together.  His relationship with Lureen had more mixed motivations.  I don't doubt that he had feelings for her and could probably sustain a sexual relationship as well, but clearly to a degree his motivation was more financial stability.  This is a position that women have been in since I don't when and has only changed in the last few decades, and obviously not for all women.  I guess I just can't say that because Jack could have more easily come to identify as gay means that he was gay, and I know plenty of people disagree with that perspective.

One point that Chris made, about if someone is accused of being gay and he doesn't care, how could calling him gay be "wrong or limiting"?  Two people come to mind:  Ricky Martin and Liberace.  Liberace did have relationships with men, and went to his grave denying this, even to the point of winning a libel case against a British newspaper.  That we now know he was involved with men, I guess yeah, you could say that made him "gay".  The necessity for him to be in denial about it, which I see as a maladaptive way of coping, is more important to me though, than claiming his as gay. 

Ricky Martin comes to mind as well because there are rumors that he is also gay.  He has denied it, saying something to the effect of "those people who want to think of me as gay are welcome to, and so are those who want to think of me as straight".  An evasive answer I suppose, and I know plenty of people who call it denial, and one friend who actually claims he was propositioned by him!  But what if he is heterosexual?  Then the label is inaccurate.  And when we will know?  If he decides to come out?  After he's dead?  Will it never be proven?  The identity gay has to be owned by the individual; otherwise I see it as short hand.  Useful, but limited, shorthand.

Juan

Rayn:
"...to be human is to have sexuality and to be human is also NOT to have sexuality limited to physical impulse such as animals have for the purposes of procreation. Humans are sexual beings, and humans are emotional beings. Humans need bonding, and humans need love. There are those times when two humans bond and love and that leads to physical desire and sexual expression regardless of the genders of the two humans who  love each other."

Jack in Maine


    I want to respond to Patrick's question about "One Man Men" then a bit to the insightful post by Jack in Maine.   I do agree with Jack in Maine that for Ennis it's all about Jack, the person.  Ennis loves Jack and isn't interested in other men because he has more true intimacy with Jack than he's had with anyone else in his life. 

He loves Jack for that reason first.  It's not about Jack's body so much as it is Jack's heart and mind, but he loves Jack's mind and heart so much that it finds expression in physical form.  It's clear to me that Ennis and Jack are soulmates and souls, though they exist in bodies, have no gender.  This is confusing for Ennis at first, but it is his love that wins over his confusion and his fear to a great degree too.   

Jack is an oasis of intimacy and understanding for Ennis and that is part of the beauty of the relationship.  Ennis is one of the walking wounded, rememeber?  His folks are killed in a car accident, he was raised by siblings who, in the end have their own interests and who finally leave Ennis on his own, but more importantly, Ennis has suffered the terrifying trauma of seeing Earl, the tough old bird, lying in a ditch brutally maimed and murdered.  His own father may have had a hand in that, but regardless, his father makes a point of exposing his own nine year old son to this horror.  That left a deep and lasting fear in Ennis, but still, he loves Jack, still he cannot stop seeing Jack, he needs Jack.  It's a wonder that he can being so nearly emotionally crippled by the fear of homosexuality and what might happen to him if he ventures into that area of his sexuality!    So, it really is a testament to the power of real love that Ennis can fall in love with Jack at all. 

Love is a force of nature! 

That is what is so clear in Jack in Maine's post too.  I agree about 98% with Jack in Maine's views on the fim and characters, but the heart of what he says, the real gem within the lotus is  ..."Humans need bonding, and humans need love. There are those times when two humans bond and love and that leads to physical desire and sexual expression regardless of the genders of the two humans who love each other." 

Jack in Maine, it couldn't have been said better!  Thank you for your post. It was a three course meal with dessert.

Now, Patrick... I do know of men who are One Man Men.  Some guys are completely happy with one partner and find all they need in being with one man.  I don't think that we are all like that, but many are and personally, I think a guy is damned lucky to find a partner with whom he can be one with on as many levels as possible.  It's an ideal not many reach or reach for, but it's possible. 

Personally, I have been in two relationships where my partner was all I needed.  Oh, it didn't mean I didn't look and feel attraction for other guys, but I never felt much need to go outside the relationship of physical intimacy.  I think what Jack in Maine's post poiints to also is the many layers of experience, feelings, ideas and history that human beings, each of us really is.  No one is one dimensional.  Ok, that's it from me... before I begin to ramble.   

Peace,
Rayn

Front-Ranger:
I just wanted to reply to this because it's the site of my very first post on this board, back on March 8, 2006. We were a wordy bunch back then, weren't we!! Thanks and love to all of you who are still here today, and there are quite a few! Funny thing is, I don't think we have resolved this topic yet!!!

Thanks especially to Impish on this occasion, for introducing me to the "One Man Man" Rufus Wainwright!!

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