There can be no question that we live in tumultuous times with a society seemingly on the cusp of widespread proliferation of the civil rights of the GLBT community.
Certainly the press and blogosphere is rife with daily news of the push and pull of issues such as gay marriage or civil unions. But fortunately this is not going to be one those diatribes. What has received far less attention it seems to this writer is a discourse about the inner lives of gay men or perhaps men in general and the fear and anxiety that pervades it.
We don’t like to talk about our fears, particularly in a city like New York where fear is smelt 10 blocks away, emanating through the garbage and the dog pee evaporating on a warm summer afternoon. Of course our fear manifests into a multitude of forms. There are our neuroses about our appearance, our bodies, friendships, careers and our relationships or more pertinently, the lack thereof. More importantly there exists a profound uncertainty about our place in society. In a culture that fetishizes success, power, invulnerability and all over fabulousness, where does the gay man fit in? Are we a tribe? Do we have something that we can call a collective culture? Do we even talk in depth about the common narratives of our lives beyond that which only concerns our own problems and insecurities?
Perhaps a problem that we face is the fact that as a minority, we exhibit such a high degree of heterogeneity, not only in terms of race, demographics and education but also the way in which we manifest our homosexuality. So beyond large unifying civil rights issues in which we face oppression from a common enemy, what else is relevant?
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