A DC dichotomy in the form of a tattooed, sardonic, preppy, dancing queen blended together into a freelance journalist/social media aficionado. Engage me!

He also has a blog, and  I ended up there, this morning as I was web surfing, where there is a blog post about Ricky Martin coming out. I was never a bog fan of Ricky Martin, in that I didn’t go out and buy his music or have photos of him on my desktop, but I always that he was a powerhouse of a performer, and the epitome of hot and handsome. and there, in this blog post was a picture of Martin that exemplifies that in a big way.

I have been thinking a lot recently about what it is underneath all the hate-filled rhetoric- what is it that makes  homophobia flourish? Why is it that being gay is not OK, and those who seek to oppress gays, lesbians, bisexuals and trans folk work so hard to paint a horrific picture of who we are and what being gay is all about. How much of it has to do with defining masculinity?

After Ricky Martin came out, there were tons of blog posts- some congratulating him, while others chastised him for not coming out sooner. My personal opinion is that everyone deserves to self-disclose or not. No one should be forced out of the closet as long as their actions are not directly being hypocritical or hurting others. This happens most frequently in politics and Roy Ashburn was a great example. Here he is, a closeted gay man, yet he is voting anti-gay in his legislature. Otherwise, everyone deserves to come out at their own rate and to whom they choose to come out.

But this wasn’t meant to be a post about the protocols for Outing. Check out the picture. Isn’t Ricky Martin a hot, purely sexy man? So who gets to define masculinity?

Do some straight men hate gays because gay men seem more free to fit whatever mold of masculine they choose? Some guys are more rugged and butch, others more flamboyant, and many somewhere in between. We can, but don’t always choose to fit into some tight stereotype mold of what it means to be a man. Yet, as Ricky demonstrates, we can set the mark for what it means to be masculine.

What do you think? Who gets to define masculinity? Should any definition of it become a constraint others are forced to comply with? Is there a connection between masculinity and homophobia?

Ricky Martin: ” I am proud to say that I am a fortunate homosexual man. I am very blessed to be who I am.” « Better Call Tyrone…..

I’m happy to say that I am completely male… I just happen to be female bodied. I never plan on having bottom surgery as a penis does not make me a man. My feeling male makes me a man.

I do everything a man is ‘supposed’ to do. I play video games, I love movies, i’m not that interested in fashion, I enjoy looking at beautiful women (and alot of beautiful men too), I pee standing up, I even shave although I’m not yet on Testosterone. So surely I’m a man? My friends know me as a man, the actually don’t know any different. My parents are beginning to accept me as their son and my girlfriend, although a lesbian, accepts me as male. But would my status within my friends change if they were to find out that I don’t have a penis and testicles like they do?

The T Word: The ‘Male’ view of Transsexualism and Transgender?.

If I’m honest, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about A-Rod’s gay picture since I saw it last evening. Does that make me a shallow fag? Maybe I’ve just been so focused this week on heavy-duty topics and now at the end of the week, I need a diversion.

I had seen some mention of it earlier this week, but whatever it was it wasn’t enough to drag me in to check it out. But is was Fallon’s parody photo that got me to the real thing. By the way, I think Fallon’s spoof is funny as hell.

While the focus of the pic is the self kiss, what gets me is his arm. I’m a chest and arms guy. I’d type a smile emticon here, but I have pledged never to use emoticons in my blog.
But the kiss is the big deal and what I want to write about, and actually fits with all the heavier-duty stuff I’ve been writing about.

Before I dig in, let me say for the record, that I don’t think there is really anything gay about the picture, except it is a guy kising a guy type pic. And possibly it is the quitessential gay fantasy of hot identical twins…. I said, I needed a diversion, right?

What I see in the picture however, is this notion of hyper-masculinity, as if the steriod use is justified and both accepted and worshiped. Everything I have been writing about in terms of marriage equality or equal rights- the underlying issue is what it means to be a man or a woman. Heterosexuality loves its idea of what that means, and it is pretty selp-obsessed with maintaining it that way. So when others see the pic and dismiss it as narcissistic- well of course it is. Heterosexuality is totally obsessed with itself! It is one reason why straight culture (or part of it) works so hard to squash queerness, because it suggests there are others way of being male- other norms. By dismissing the photo it diverts the attention away- we never stop to question how heterosexuality perpetuates stereotypes of maleness. His team mates claim they will give him a hard time, but in reality, they will be glad he did it. For his actions help substantiate their own maleness.

Fallon, on the other hand, really got criticized, for he isn’t the overly macho testosterone driven beast of a man. For him to look so self-obsessed seems foolish, seems wrong- seems really gay. But in reality, it is the finer question- the more accurate review of what is maleness.