Section:GDN 1J PaGe:5 Edition Date:190808 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 7/8/2019 18:37 cYanmaGentaYellowblac
Thursday 8 August 2019 The Guardian •
5
How can a man
be too straight
to rec ycle?
purely by more recycling or fewer plastic bags – but the
study is revealing. Both men and women see caring
about the environment as “feminine” ; and men associate
feminine behaviour by men with being gay.
Here is a little-discussed feature of homophobia. We
know that its principal victims are, of course, LGBTQ
people: from the life long impact on mental health
caused by abuse and rejection, to the constant menace of
verbal and physical assault. But homophobia can harm
straight men, too.
From a very young age, boys are taught that real men
get into fi ghts, say demeaning things about girls and
women, show extraordinary athletic prowess, avoid
looking studious, don’t do anything to display supposed
emotional “weakness” and prioritise competition over
cooperation. It is an invisible authoritarian regime,
but one – like any dictatorship – enforced through
intimidation and violence. Perceived dissidents are
liable to suff er everything from being cussed in a school
corridor to being thumped, and worse.
The abuse will begin with calling the victim a “girl”
or a “poof ”, and the message is the same: you have
deviated from true masculinity and you must be
punished for it. This is gender policing: homophobia is
the border guard of patriarchy.
This isn’t to be self-righteous – as a gay adult I can, to
my own shame, recall engaging in homophobic abuse
as a child. As Jean-Paul Sartre put it: “Half victims, half
accomplices, like everyone else.” What this formative
experience does is install an internal policeman in the
heads of men, whether they are straight or LGBTQ ,
which barks at them “don’t do this or you will look gay ”.
Among queer men, this internalised homophobia can
mean failing to correct a stranger who asks about your
girlfriend because you’re too embarrassed to say. But it
also leads d ispiriting numbers to reject camp men, often
in hurtful and demeaning ways; to say they only fancy“real men”; to suggest that such displays of feminine
behaviour attract homophobia, in depressing displays
of victim blaming. Some put “straight-acting guys only ”
in their dating app profi les (sorry to break this to you,
but no man looks “straight-acting” when having sex
with another guy). It causes shame and self-loathing,
which drive mental distress.
Among straight men, there’s a simple test for the
internal policeman: even many men who avowedly back
LGBTQ rights will show off ence if someone mistakenly
thinks they’re gay.
It can lead to grown men refusing to back down or
walk away when an argument gets dangerously out of
control. It can mean competing with male friends to say
the most degrading things about women – normalising
a culture that leads to women and girls being assaulted
and raped. And it can also mean that men who suff er
depression and anxiety feel it’s unmanly to talk about
their feelings. Suicide is the biggest single cause of
death for men aged under 45 in Britain : countless others
suff er silently. Here are men caught up in the barbed
wire lining the frontiers of unreconstructed masculinity.
It’s clear that the success of the LGBTQ rights
campaign would free straight men, too. Already,
combined with feminism , it has changed what it is to
be a man. Men talk more about their feelings than they
once did, have more female or gay friends, and spend
more time helping to raise children – albeit still not as
much as they should. When patriarchy fi nally lands on
history’s scrapheap, all – men, women, non-binary – will
be free to be themselves, unpoliced. In defi ance of the
protesters outside school gates , aff ronted that children
should be taught that some kids have two mums, our
education should do even more to challenge oppressive
norms. Who knows: one day men might even recycle
rubbish without caring that someone may think they
want to elope with another guy.S
o that’s how the world’s going to die,
is it, because straight men are scared
people might think they are gay?
According to new research by Penn
State University , men are avoiding
environmentally friendly activities
because they fear that anyone who
catches them recycling or carrying
a reusable shopping bag m ay think they’re seeking
romantic trysts with other guys. So when men are
scrabbling around in the sun-scorched dirt for food,
or swimming their way through Covent Garden, or
sheltering their family from Mad Max-style societal
breakdown, they can at least comfort themselves that
their precious heterosexuality remains intact.
Of course , climate emergency won’t be solvedOwen
Jones
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