One would almost think that people don't let historical facts stop them using 'history' to justify whatever they fancy.
Active homophobia as a pillar of "traditional" masculinity is relatively novel, though, because it require a visible gay population to react to, which doesn't really emerge until the 1960s. That's not to say that homophobia doesn't predate the gay rights movement, of course, otherwise you wouldn't have needed the movement, but it didn't haunt the imaginations of insecure men in the way it does today, so there wasn't the same impulse towards expecting everything for the barest trace of homosexuality. By the time that emerges, the cowboy myth is already well-entrenched in the American imagination.i still find it odd that the symbol of white masculinity are a group of people who engaged in a ton of homosexual sex and behaviour and considered it the norm. Not that I'm complaining since normalizing homosexuality in our conception of gender isn't a bad thing, but considering how hard people usually try to tie gayness into not being manly it's weird.
I was only pointing out that the analogy to cheap immigrant labour actually helps explains why white men would and did become cowboys, rather than why they would refuse to become cowboys.Nevermind that I never said whether those white men were or were not immigrants, that is somehow relevant.
Active homophobia as a pillar of "traditional" masculinity is relatively novel, though, because it require a visible gay population to react to, which doesn't really emerge until the 1960s. That's not to say that homophobia doesn't predate the gay rights movement, of course, otherwise you wouldn't have needed the movement, but it didn't haunt the imaginations of insecure men in the way it does today, so there wasn't the same impulse towards expecting everything for the barest trace of homosexuality. By the time that emerges, the cowboy myth is already well-entrenched in the American imagination.
I don't think this is quite right. Barring a few well-known exceptions homosexuality has been viciously repressed for most of human history. The concept of 'homophobia' is almost unhelpful in this reflection because the entirety of most human societies was structurally anti-homosexual (well, anti- anything not heterosexual, I should say). Family composition, legal systems, religious teaching, all manner of cultural practices, norms and mores more or less completely excluded openly homosexual individuals. This is true throughout the world, and throughout the majority of human history (again, barring a few exceptions here and there).
I can't say whether or not it 'haunted the imaginations' of the people of the past, but many of them certainly showed a very strong aversion to it.
Well, as I said, homophobia certainly isn't new, but traditionally it was more narrowly about hostility to perceived sexual deviance. It's only relatively recently that "homosexual" has become a synonym for "unmanly", and so only relatively recently that "gay" and "straight" became the lines along which gender norms are policed.I don't think this is quite right. Barring a few well-known exceptions homosexuality has been viciously repressed for most of human history. The concept of 'homophobia' is almost unhelpful in this reflection because the entirety of most human societies was structurally anti-homosexual (well, anti- anything not heterosexual, I should say). Family composition, legal systems, religious teaching, all manner of cultural practices, norms and mores more or less completely excluded openly homosexual individuals. This is true throughout the world, and throughout the majority of human history (again, barring a few exceptions here and there).
I can't say whether or not it 'haunted the imaginations' of the people of the past, but many of them certainly showed a very strong aversion to it.
Well, as I said, homophobia certainly isn't new, but traditionally it was more narrowly about hostility to perceived sexual deviance. It's only relatively recently that "homosexual" has become a synonym for "unmanly", and so only relatively recently that "gay" and "straight" became the lines along which gender norms are policed.
I don't follow?
Alongside that, however, homosexual behaviour seems to have raised much fewer eyebrows - or at least raised them less far - than it does today. Pre-Christian Rome would be my classic example of that structural 'homophobia' operating alongside generally much more permissive social ways of doing things - yes, marriage and fatherhood were huge parts of what masculinity was supposed to mean, but it was almost expected that men would indulge in some level of homosexual sex, and far from uncommon for them to end up going without marrying, or marrying largely for the show of it. The institution of adoption - much more common than today - helped this along: it wasn't unusual to take a relative's child or a protege as your 'son', and that wasn't looked down upon at all. I certainly think that modern ideas of straight masculinity explicitly set themselves up against an idea of homosexuality - not just the acts, but also the stereotypes of what gay men are like. Thinking about what it means to be a straight/ordinary man means thinking about what it means to be a gay man, in a way that I don't think was true only a couple of centuries ago. It comes down to what TF was saying - that to have an identity which is essentially not-gay (that is, which defines itself as the opposite of whatever gay men are like), you need a visible number of people whom you can label as gay.
...it's universally considered insulting to refer to a straight man as a homosexual.
Alongside that, however, homosexual behaviour seems to have raised much fewer eyebrows - or at least raised them less far - than it does today. Pre-Christian Rome would be my classic example of that structural 'homophobia' operating alongside generally much more permissive social ways of doing things - yes, marriage and fatherhood were huge parts of what masculinity was supposed to mean, but it was almost expected that men would indulge in some level of homosexual sex, and far from uncommon for them to end up going without marrying, or marrying largely for the show of it. The institution of adoption - much more common than today - helped this along: it wasn't unusual to take a relative's child or a protege as your 'son', and that wasn't looked down upon at all. I certainly think that modern ideas of straight masculinity explicitly set themselves up against an idea of homosexuality - not just the acts, but also the stereotypes of what gay men are like. Thinking about what it means to be a straight/ordinary man means thinking about what it means to be a gay man, in a way that I don't think was true only a couple of centuries ago. It comes down to what TF was saying - that to have an identity which is essentially not-gay (that is, which defines itself as the opposite of whatever gay men are like), you need a visible number of people whom you can label as gay.