As normal as McDonald's Apple Pies

A nifty fellow was scanning some of my old entries today. He made a comments on a few of them. One entry had been my complaint about the contempt androgynous, unmasculine gay men are often subjected to by hetero-acting homos.

Part of it has to be fear of taint by association. Ordinary males are often worried about their masculinity they say. Maybe they are more worried that others will think they lack it. For another to be trailing pixie-dust confirms the wearisome image that gay males are necessary less manly than a shrimpy, white-collar straight guy.

On a less particular level most gay men just want to fit in. They are as conformist as the kids who go to pep rallies. A daffodilly (my favorite bit of queer slang) is limp-wristed evidence that some queer folk don't fit into the cult of mom, flag and blueberry pie.

Lots of these guys are strolling naked and sucking and fucking at Jordan Lake nearby. I'd say they are living a pretty untrammeled edition of the American dream. Lots of folks would want to stop this if they knew about it. A goodly chunk of them would put them in jail for having such an ungodly good time.

Minorities aren't necessarily as tolerant as you'd expect. Creole and light-skinned blacks used to look down on their darker kith (sounds odd without the obligator 'and kin').

The only logical result of gay liberation is to be completely accepted. The paradox, dialectical tension, or maybe silly worry of the wine-sipping guy writing this is: is that when gay people are wholly accepted any gay sensibility will most likely vanish. 

Not that I'd want to be pinned down and have to define gay sensibility. Irony has to be a part - from Oscar Wilde to Gore Vidal and David Sedaris. A strong dose of aestheticism. The art of insult. That parallels the African-American verbal game, the dozens. Hostile wit may be a natural heritage of minorities.

Even if the ultimate goal of gay politics is conformity there isn't any other possible outcome. (Idealists who disagree should go curl up with a comfy self-help book.)

Skipping to a more radical parallel. The black blues musicians that found a worshipping audience among the white bourgeoisie had lost many of their black listeners. Or so I've read. It reminded the newly middle-class blacks of a low past they'd escaped.

Excepting a few scum we all hope for the days black ghettoes live only in history books. For decades black musicians have been the main driving force in popular music: 

I had to stop because the list would've grown out of control.

If our society managed to miraculously abolish racial equality would this unique flow abate? Not that it wouldn't be worth the price.

Lots of folks feel that if managed to abolish inequity we'd establish utopia. Reminds me of how my left-leaning friends thought the internet would force liberal democracy into being.

I'm too 'cynical' to have an eschatology. I think if the world were to become completely comfortable people would watch move TV, spend more at Wal-Mart and make the junk-food franchisers even richer.

Not a novel view. There have been plenty of cheesy science fiction novels where a man of 'our time' woke up in a utopian future. He'd find people had lost their creativity, maybe even their ability to reproduce. Being a regular 20th century kind of guy he'd shake up those 49th century nabobs and show them what they were missing.

On a crude and narrow level this is where the tedious complaints about politically correct language come from. Of course the humorless feminists who want to, say, rename San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf as Fisherperson's Wharf don't help. Psychotics aside, everybody moderates their speech. It is one of the things we do to make our days livable.

Um, what is the point of this (other than Charles isn't here)? Perhaps that individuality and diversity are born in conflict. Hardly a remarkable observation. Since Shangri-la isn't around the corner not something to worry about.