Ask a Dude with Ken: Questions from a Gay Man, Episode 4, Part 1

In this new Ask a Dude series, our panel consists of Emmy and Ken, with Nick as our dude.   In this episode, we talk about how misogyny and homophobia are related and the movie "Close" and the often painful separation enforced upon young male adolescent best friends. 

Music by Lemon Music Studio from Pixabay.

www.sacred-truths.com

Transcript

Welcome to Episode 4 Part 1 of a new version of “Ask a Dude” series, our panel consists of myself and Ken. “Ask a Dude” with Ken: Questions from a gay man. 

This is Sacred Truths with Emmy Graham. 

Emmy: Hello and welcome everyone, this is Emmy Graham with Sacred Truths and we are back with “Ask a Dude” and we have our dude today who is Nick. Hello, Nick.

Nick: Hello. Hi, everyone. Great to be here.

Emmy: And today for our panel we have myself, Emmy, and we have an invited guest, Ken. Hi, Ken, welcome!

Ken: Hi Emmy, hi Nick. 
 
 Emmy: So, Ken, why don’t you start us off, go ahead.

Ken: Alright, thanks, Emmy, well I’ll start off by saying, first of all how much I’ve appreciated the podcasts of “Ask a Dude” that I’ve been listening to, and recently, one of the last podcasts, I started thinking about a lot of the research and a lot of the thinking I’ve done around homophobia.

Being a gay man myself for as far back as I can remember at least, having dealt with a lot of homophobia and internalized homophobia of course and coming to process with myself as a gay person where I am in the world and what that identity means to me.

I thought a lot about where it all comes from and lately all the polarization that is going on. I often ask myself the question, “Why do they hate us so much?” and I ask it over and over, “Why is this getting worse, why is this going on, what is the deal?” 

And I kind of gone back to my notes that carry around with me and listening to Nick’s talking about men and knowing about the Mankind Project a little bit and their work, just thinking about how they go work together, how they work together, how does misogyny and all of its many forms, how does it impact what we see in homophobia and transphobia and biphobia and all the other phobias and so I thought it would be worthy of a discussion.

Nick: Fantastic. Yeah, I’m really interested in that topic. I love thinking about the connection between misogyny and homophobia, that’s something I’ve thought about myself. But I would love to hear if you have a topic or an observation or kind of a starting point to dive in. 

Ken: I think I do actually. Well, in general I think of homophobia is like a big wheel with a lot of spokes, I don’t believe it’s caused by or it exists by any one thing. I’ll put that out right away. Obviously, there is socialization and hetero normativity. You know, we get messages from our parents, we get messages from our peers, and messages from our grandparents, from our school, everything growing up as to what’s normal and what’s acceptable. There’s that, and I suppose that’s obvious in a way.

One of the reasons fear of gay people exists, fear of lesbians, LGBTQ+ exists. But what I’m really interested is in woundedness because you talked a lot about woundedness, and I think one of the things that really have always interested me is the adolescent boy, or the pre-pubescent boy whatever age you want to talk about.

And I recently saw something on Netflix, I think it is, on TV, whatever, streaming service, about this movie coming out called “Close” and the director and producer is talking about how he researched over 150 boys between the ages of 9 and 13 about their best friend and what their friends mean to them and he said his findings were pretty much across the board astonishing, in that these relationships, are the most important relationships these boys have in their entire lives and almost like a lover, the level of intensity and intimacy, sometimes even physical intimacy but not always, but just emotional intimacy that these boys have with their best friend. And then all of a sudden, as they grow up, as they all grow up, something happens to make that separate, make it not happen anymore, to cause of separation in the relationship which is of course, what this film is about.

Incredibly sad, I’m not sure I can even watch it. It causes a great wound, sometimes it’s their peers, sometimes it’s a tremendous fear that there’s something wrong with this level of intimacy with another boy and so the boys grow apart. 

And it happens for so many people, and so I’m wondering in my head if that somehow causes some kind of emotional energy that has to be displaced somewhere, and you, know, men may see….I’m talking subconscious, I’m not even talking about something that’s conscious, but some kind of displacement of that sadness onto other men they see sharing some kind of physical intimacy. Somehow, not feeling shame about their emotions, shame about who they are, shame about their closeness. I don’t know. I’m just thinking about it, I wonder about it. 

Nick: That’s a fantastic question and observation, and I actually just hearing this conversation start, I think that from my observations and my experiences, I really feel like misogyny and homophobia really do have a single common origin. I really do. 

So, what I experienced, what I still observe around, this is not all men but a really common thing that I see is a hyper masculine standard and that standard for me started getting enforced, when I was pretty young, and this is really in school, not at home, this is at school, you know, maybe 8 or 7, even earlier than that where there were some…a very clear masculine standard that was really rigid and the alpha boys were enforcing that standard almost constantly.

Growing up, I was under observation almost constantly and every little thing I did got pointed out as being….whatever, there are some words I can’t say, I have a hard time saying the words, very derogatory words being used to enforce that standard on my behavior.

And the words and abuse and harm and also violence. This was a hyper masculine standard that was enforced with violence and so when I tune into this, this is not controlling me as an adult, but I can still feel it inside of me. 

Yeah, it’s trauma, I mean, that was consistent, persistent abuse my entire upbringing to conform to a hypermasculine standard, and so it’s this giant well of trauma and I think that is the engine of misogyny and homophobia. That pain is still there and so any, slight deviation from that into the feminine or away from the hyper masculine, anything, caused immediate attack either verbal or physical, sometimes serious, people getting beat up bad, or killed, you know really serious violence to enforce that standard and so anyone who is carrying or a lot of people are carrying this well of trauma so when they see anyone…

Certainly, it is the othering that you mentioned, so it’s just different. Different is bad, but beneath that is that pain. So, when they see anything that’s been stomped out of them, with violence and trauma, it provokes that reaction and that reaction can become really venomous, that is expressed as hate, really intense hate that’s driven by that pain. 

So, I don’t,,,that’s certainly not an excuse at all for bad behavior, or violence or anything that’s not in no way.  I think that is the engine of both of those things: Homophobia and misogyny. 

So that’s been my observations and that’s what I feel inside of me. 

Ken: And I think both of those things go together and I agree with you. As a football player growing up, I definitely experienced that hyper masculine and I see that still today. I work with kids in an after-school program and I see it still being carried on. And the boys that don’t fit the mode, I don’t see them being bashed, but I do see them being excluded and finding their own.

One boy just yesterday in fact said, he doesn’t play with boys because they are just too aggressive and this is definitely a soft boy, he’s frail and, you know, I see his future, I think, and he’s extremely isolated and it’s sad as a result of being isolated.

So, I don’t know, but what you’ve talked about and what I’ve talked about woundedness of best friends and the male bonding, don’t include each other, I think they are part of the same wound. 

I’ve also witnessed in a lot of other places besides our country, in places where women, women’s rights are oppressed in big giant ways,, some Middle Eastern countries and other countries I’ve had the privilege of working in. The greater level for oppression of women, the higher the level of homophobia, it just goes, it tags along, that’s almost proof positive 

Fear of execution and fear of violence for the men and the same for the women and that really points to it for me, that evidence.

And I worry for my country because I see this nostalgic return to even more hyper masculinity happening. I’m not sure what it’s tied too. But you see it everywhere, these gangs of men who return to the brotherhood, of “Bros’ before hos” kind of mentality and I don’t know whether it’s a lack of empowerment, feeling of not being heard, the religion impact, by that I mean by that organized religion, conservatism: you know, have a family, build a family, the more kids the better, whatever that is, I see a definite return of this mentality backslapping, hey dude, and  look at the levels of gay bashing going on, the levels of civil rights….

I’m kind of babbling now, (Laughs), but I think of all of it, I don’t know what words to give it.

Nick: So, my thoughts of that and we talked about this when we were talking about misogyny in one of the other episodes is that the whole system is a system of power, 

It is a social order that has certain type of hierarchy and the people at the top are benefiting, they are benefiting directly from this social structure and that social structure is maintained with violence. And that is just how it works. And so, misogyny is the enforcement arm of that social structure. I don’t think of it as hatred of women, that’s not what is going on there. This is something that Kate Manne really articulated well in her book DOWN GIRL where she described this as a specific social system and that misogyny has a specific social purpose for maintaining a social order through violence. 

And I think the same thing is true for homophobia. This is not hatred of a group of people, this is a social structure that is being maintained with violence in all forms for the social purpose of benefitting the people at the top. 

And that’s why I think this is ramping up right now because the demographics are shifting. Things are becoming more acceptable. What we traditionally call “white people” are now inching toward not being the majority.

And I don’t think that’s lost on anybody consciously or unconsciously. They are well aware of that clock ticking. And I think that the more cynical people are consciously aware of that, and are fanning the flames of that for a specific political purpose. And a lot of people are just unconscious, just, whatever, “go along with the crowd, whatever, getting caught up, expressing their pain through some other channel.” Whatever but I think that’s why this is ramping up so much because the flow of rewards, social rewards that has been going to that top tier, is being threatened. That’s what I think and there is a sense that if that power balance shifts, and that group is no longer dominant, they will be destroyed. That collective mindset is all about power and if you aren’t at the top, you’re dead. 

So, I think that is why this is ramping out and why you can feel that sense of desperation starting to build and that lashing out. 

Emmy: I just don’t want to lose that original question and I want to return to the original question that you mentioned, Ken, about the movie “Close”. I find that intriguing because as a young girl, friendships between girls are so important, they’re crucial. 

It is a love ….I would say it’s a love affair. It’s an emotional love affair, it’s a love of the heart. I’m speaking for myself but I think many girls feel this way.

That best friend is crucial or a few very, very close friends.

And we’re allowed to have them in elementary school, we are not harassed, and they very often continue into our teen years and maybe in adult life.

So I’d be curious to know, Nick, how was that for you when you were a young boy, how was it with your best friends, how did it change as you grew older, how do you feel about that. 

Nick: Fantastic, I’m glad you returned to that question, I’m glad you returned that. So, my experience, I had a really close friend, and close friends in junior high and high school and I was able to keep those friendships, those friendships stayed healthy and close through high school and to today, really. 

I personally feel so lucky, that I had that experience. However, I watched what you’re describing happened. When I saw it start to happen was in middle school, what we called Junior High back then. And there was a shift, right around puberty, that was when that hyper masculine standard shifted into another gear.

It went into a whole, it morphed into something more elaborate and that’s when the comments started happening about close male friends, and it became, just, I wouldn’t say ‘unacceptable’, because I got through it, and I wasn’t really on the radar and I was pretty good at staying off the radar, and so I got through it and my friends go through it.

But in the general environment I started seeing those friendships get sanctioned and there was just no way that you were going to go have a meal with your male friend. Two males were going to go have a meal together and talk things over? together. Nope. Go for a drive together? Nope. You could go do something, do a sport, sure, or go off and play golf or I don’t know what. But there was a whole bunch of close friend activities that stopped being okay, right in that middle school/junior high, phase. And I saw that happen.

It’s like a betrayal and it’s really, really difficult and painful and, yes deeply wounding to have a friendship like that because usually one or the other person suddenly pulls away. There’s a comment or something and they feel socially vulnerable, it doesn’t happen simultaneously, agghhh! Suddenly, something happens and they pull away, it’s just gone and it’s just over and they can’t even have a conversation about it. Yeah, I saw that happen and that’s  really wounding and that’s a really important part of this whole system and how it evolves in the early teen years. 

Ken: Wow, you said so much,,,,Whooo! Everything you were talking about society and the power brokers all of that, I had so many thoughts while you were sharing that. I have
 new thoughts about relationships among us when we are young. Exactly, the fact that it’s not simultaneous, it’s one boy feeling so vulnerable and targeted, that they have to pull away and the other one is often left just, as you said, feeling betrayed, feeling alone, not knowing what went wrong, what happened?

Yesterday we were having sleepovers, or hanging out, and now today we can’t. It’s such a deep sadness, and I can’t help thing on what impact it has on the environment, there are still men, many men are carrying that around and it’s having some kind of impact. I as a gay man feel it, I absolutely feel it, I don’t know what I can do about it, I can’t change it. 

So, we’re kind of left hanging, like what did I do that’s so wrong? So, I end up feeling the sadness too in a weird way.

I’m sad for people who lost their best friend. It happened with me in a weirder different way. When you’re a gay man and you have a best friend and you break up with your straight friend and it’s often very different and often you are feeling unrequited love for that person and you as a gay man, gay kids don’t know what to do with it. 

It’s a different dynamic but there’s still woundedness, there’s still a wound.

 This is Sacred Truths with Emmy Graham with music by Lemon Music Studio from Pixabay and with special thanks to our dude, Nick Oredson. 

This concludes Episode 4, Part 1 of “Ask a Dude” with Ken: Questions from a Gay Man. Please join us for Part 2.
 Please visit our website www.sacred-truths.com
Thank you for listening.