perry bass- games male chauvinists play

The games people play go on and on—especially in that most cruel of human games, cruising. In cruising, the hunt is on and the hunter becomes the hunted. Eventually the tension becomes so high that the whole aspect of meeting someone, the prospect of an evening of pleasure, even a lifetime of satisfaction, becomes lost in this confrontation of wills. Cruising is one of the great male chauvinist games: I can be tougher than you can be. I won’t open up to you until you open up to me.

  Most men try to set up their own roles in the first moments of this contest of wills. Whether the playing ground is the street, a bar, or the beach, there are always the same roles, often being played by the same men, only wearing different faces. It might be the extreme caricature of masculinity who believes it’s below his masculine dignity to approach anyone else. He usually stands like a steadfast tin soldier for hours on end, wondering why this isn’t his night.  Next to him is the aggressive animal, the tiger stalking his way through the scene, looking at everyone but seeing no one. He is looking for the perfect fulfillment of some adolescent sex fantasy (his “type”) based on his first love at the age of twelve (his first “type”) and whom he expects to appear momentarily.  

Then there’s the verbal bully who thinks the best way to captivate his latest is to out-man him (voice three octaves below normal) or outwit him (except that you’ve heard it all before) or outtalk him (most of which you’ve heard even before he tried to outwit you).

  And there are the always-with-us clothes queens (nothing below Bonwit’s), size queens, body queens, height queens (nothing below six feet), race queens, blonde queens, chicken queens, astrology queens (his sign always agrees with yours), drug queens, campus queens (world’s oldest frat men), muscle queens, and even queen queens.

  There are the “numbers” guys who always announce that you’re going to be their first of the evening. They constantly tell you what the cruising report is for every port between here, San Juan, and Dubrovnik. In other words, if you’re lucky, you’ll make another swell number in his address book.

  And the put-up artist, who has to first embarrass you with how you’re the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen (since the last most beautiful thing he’s ever seen).  

Or the put-down artist, who thinks he has to shake you up to get you out.  There are the fantasy creeps who stare at you all night—till you walk over to them, and then they walk away. They’d rather not know you too well.  All of these men add up to a frightening lack of self-understanding and self-confidence. They can’t face up to a situation unless the roles are predefined, the definitions clearly stated. 

We are all too afraid to find out that the gorgeous “number” over there is just like we are inside: afraid and alone, trapped in the role he has learned how to play successfully but outgrew years ago, whether it be the gorgeous “number” or the twittering little boy of thirty.  Gay roles in the whole of society are designed by fear. Just as we act in straight society out of fear that they will discover us, we react with each other out of fear that we will discover ourselves.

  It’s no small wonder that because of this self-straightjacketing, many gay men develop a real hatred for men, just as many straight men hate women because of the roles they must act out. Because we are forced to live in a society that condemns us as half-men, many of us feel that we must become men and a half. This means shutting out all the real tenderness and sensitivities associated with femininity. 

Gay life is a gay drag when it forces a man to reject most of himself and only leaves him a shell, a mask he wears in order to live with the reality of our situation: that we are all outcasts. 

 We must reject what straight society has straightjacketed us with and form our own lives as real people, not just go on playing the old male-chauvinist roles left over from a dodo society. It’s very simple, men. It’s just a matter of getting together or falling apart.