On Top
BuzzFlash interviewed Stephen J. Ducat, author of The Wimp Factor; this as the excerpt that caught my eye:
Stephen J. Ducat: Absolutely. In the world they [Republicans] live in, you’re either a top or a bottom. Mutuality, democracy, equality–that makes no sense to them.
BuzzFlash: Well, as Jon Stewart said recently in the context of the John Gannon/Jeff Guckert scandal in Washington, if you’re on top, you’re not gay. That may explain the inner circle acceptance of gays within the Republican Party, in spite of the gay-bashing national political line they give to their followers.
Stephen J. Ducat: The Republican homosexuals are not only honorary heterosexuals; they become honorary homophobes, as the most recent scandal illustrated.
BuzzFlash: Well, you know, Matt Drudge is gay and yet engages in homophobia. Ken Mehlman, who is the head of the RNC, is reportedly gay and was a leader of the homophobic charge. There are numerous Congressman who have been outed and Senators who are known as gay, and yet who stick to the homophobic line. It’s a strange permutation of anxious masculinity, but maybe, as Jon Stewart said, if you’re on top, you’re not gay.Stephen J. Ducat: He has intuited something that is actually pervasive across cultures and across historical time–that in male-dominant cultures, homosexuality is only taboo when it’s perceived as feminizing. This has its foundation in ancient Greece, where it didn’t really matter who you had sex with. What mattered was what position you occupied in the relationship of domination. If you were a penetrator, you were an unambiguous guy. If you were penetrated, you were virtually a woman. That dynamic operates in American prisons, and it operates in Middle Eastern cultures. It’s really a question of domination.