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Why are we so afraid of the man-man love?

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Charles Dantzig
Charles DantzigJan 24, 2017 | 13:39

Why are we so afraid of the man-man love?

When one man loves another, and a woman loves another woman, there is nothing in it to create a scene. Although a scene is created often enough.

Especially in case of the man-man thing. Woman-woman is permitted. Everybody cares about moral authority. Who exercises it? In most of the countries in the world, it is the heterosexual males who maintain their position by creating families.

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And often, they are excited by the woman-woman images. What happens physically between a man and a man disgusts them. Yes, all this is what is being said.

What they themselves are saying. I am not so sure. Sexuality seems to me to be a diversion. Sexuality shocks a lot less than the various moral forces claim.

Everybody has their sexuality, everybody practices it, and everybody knows it is hypocritical to be shocked by it. Sodomy? Ha ha ha! This was the laughter of all the heterosexuals who practise it.

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Virility is just an armour. Picture: Dante and Virgil in Hell by William-Adolphe Bouguereau.

Love is an outrage. Love, I know not why, is judged to be a weakness. A girl thing. And are not girls more irrational than boys?

Many men protect themselves from love by forming a couple. Love in a couple is neutralised, thank goodness.

These men transform the couple, and even more so marriage, into comedy.

To each his or her role. The man pretends to let go of his omnipotence by saying things like: "Oh, it's my wife who decides everything!"

And he concedes to her all the domestic affairs to be better able to concentrate on what he considers serious, the fight outside for the domination of other males.

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That love is a danger to virility is their idea, their curious idea.

The problem in that is "virility" and their idea of it.

This idea, like "femininity" is a social elaboration that one has succeeded in passing off as elements of nature.

To parody the poem of François I, King of France (a heterosexual male who was not ashamed to be romantic) who said, "Often woman is mutable/ Foolish is he who trusts", I would say: "Often femininity is mutable/ Foolish is he who trusts."

And so is virility. Virility is an armour. It is not virility that is behind resolution, uprightness or courage.

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For a few years now, undoubtedly since 9/11, which gave rise to considerable regression in conflict resolution, we have gone back to king kongism.

Virility as an ideology has taken hold of political classes. I doubt I have any need to give the names of the present leaders of the world who are but King Kongs in suits.

And as usual, these machos are not very sure of themselves. Everything seems to them an attack on their virility, which acts as their thought, policy and ideology.

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Man-woman love being a weakness in their eyes, imagine what they would think of man-man love!

A double abdication of virility! A danger to society! Or some such other stupidity.

I don't need to list the great military leaders who were gay, Alexander the Great, Sulieman the Magnificent, Lawrence of Arabia, Marshall Lyautey, and Julius Ceasar himself.

The work of a novelist is to lock up the armours in cupboards, along with the prejudices and fears that accompany them (one would need a very big cupboard), and showcase the variety of life, with all its forms of love, as I have tried to do in Histoire de l'amour et de la haine.

Far from endangering life, they complete it, lighten it, and make it blossom.

Last updated: January 24, 2017 | 13:39
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