Things like this astound me. I honestly can't think of anything gayer than feeling the need to proactively deny ones homosexuality. If a guy compliments my shirt I don't think he is thinking about my penis. If that same guy then goes on to explicitly say that he wasn't thinking about my penis, well, now I know that he was thinking about my penis. Saying 'no homo' is akin to complimenting a girl's necklace and following it up with a ramble about how you weren't looking at her breasts. Not that they aren't nice breasts to look at, they are, but really the necklace is just pretty, not that she isn't pretty, cause she is . . . You get my point.
The natural next step of the 'no homo' phenomenon is the need to put a disclaimer on the use of 'no homo' itself. So I'm going to be the first to coin the phrase 'no homo squared.' It both declares that the speaker is not a homo for whatever he just said or did, and that he is not a homo for saying 'no homo.' Of course this will lead to natural 'no homo' inflation, but we'll worry about that as a culture when we get there.
Thanks for reading as always, I love you, no homo squared.
It's intriguing that this kind of anxious masculinity attached to generally non-dominant cultures: in this case, black rappers. Obviously, blacks are not the only homophobic group in the US, but generally speaking, homophobia tracks very strongly with lack of political/social/cultural power.
ReplyDeleteThis is true both domestically and internationally: in generally wealthy, powerful Europe, gay marriage is mostly legal. Canada, too. The most brutally homophobic nations tend to be the poorest: Uganda, Jamaica, Saudi Arabia, Iran. Mississippi.
You can follow the gendering pattern: power as dominance, dominance as penetration, penetration as masculine. With mainstream power gone, the need to reinforce masculinity - and an aggressive, misogynistic masculinity - requires a complete rejection of homosexuality as the greatest possible threat to what's left of the power structure.
That's a good point about power generally. You see it with racism as well, in that racism is strongest among the poor. Always about hierarchies I guess.
ReplyDeleteMy big worry now is that I find the phrase 'no homo' hilarious and want to use it all the time. Eventually I'll slip up and say it around someone who doesn't know I'm joking.