Androphilia: Rejecting the Gay Identity, Reclaiming Masculinity
by Jack Malebranche
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Book Summary Information
Author: Jack MalebrancheEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2007-03-01
ISBN: 0976403587
Number of pages: 144
Publisher: Scapegoat Publishing
Book Reviews of Androphilia: Rejecting the Gay Identity, Reclaiming Masculinity
Book Review: The Homosexual Matrix
Summary: 4 Stars
Every once in a while a book like this comes along, disputing old assumptions, and challenging some readers to reconsider their sense of self and place in the world. At times while reading Androphilia: A Manifesto, I imagined the author--like Morpheus in the first Matrix movie--offering his readers a choice between a pink pill and a blue pill.
Enter the gay world by taking the pink pill. Malebranche describes gay culture as providing a "just-add-vodka instant lifestyle" complete with social group, affected behaviors, anti-male feminism, victim mentality, leftist politics, diva worship, fruitcake symbolism, and fixation on superficial features like looks and fashion (p. 108). Readers who are involved in gay culture outside of bars, circuit parties and pride parades, will likely raise objections that Malebranche portrays the most stereotypical facets as representative of the whole. But the further one reads, the more Malebranche's appraisals of gay culture ring true; and his dislike for its emasculating influence is palpable. Although Malebranche credits the gay rights movement with the relative tolerance that homosexuals in the West enjoy today, he encourages men who love men to discard gay identity and its effeminate affectations so that they can fully embody the masculinity that many gays regard as a burden.
Or take the blue pill. And become a . . . . Well, actually, becoming a man is nowhere near as easy as ingesting a pill. Thanks in large part to the influence of the feminist movement, 'masculinity' is often regarded by many gays as some kind of 'straight-jacket': a set of stifling expectations about how men are supposed to dress and walk and talk. Malebranche, however, is concerned about more than mere appearances. His presentation of masculinity includes cultural ideals for men to strive after: values like self-reliance, accountability, courage, integrity, achievement, and honor. Becoming a man requires effort, dedication and discipline; it means proving oneself time and again by being "Mr. Make-It-Happen" (p. 71).
Those readers who peer through the lavender-and-rose-colored glasses of feminist-influenced queer theory will automatically dismiss the author with descriptions like 'self-loathing,' 'assimilationist,' `misogynist,' `homophobe,' perhaps even 'femiphobe.' But 'phobe' means 'fear'; and Malebranche isn't afraid of femininity. Clearly he regards effeminacy in males not only as distasteful, but also potentially harmful. Without a code of values, Malebranche observes, many men tend to run wild, driven by pursuit of their desires. In light of this, Malebranche anticipates the charges of his queer critics by contending that "the real internalized homophobia is the belief that you can't truly be a man simply because you love other men" (p. 63). Thus, he encourages androphiles to forge strong bonds with straight men instead of allowing differences in sexuality to alienate and segregate.
Androphilia: A Manifesto is a temple to manliness where the sacred cows of gay culture are slaughtered as offerings before the stern gods of masculine idealism. The author's frank, aggressive tone will rebuff some readers and inspire others who will applaud his scathing attacks on gay herd mentality. Malebranche has issued a poignant, impassioned call for men who love men to be autonomous, live by masculine ideals, and work toward accomplishments that will generate genuine self-esteem, not the "synthetic opiate of 'gay pride'" (p. 87). Towards the end of the book, the author presents some excellent "basic principles and catalysts for self exploration" for men interested in reclaiming masculinity (p. 110). Even men who have no interest in abandoning gay identity could benefit by trying out some of these suggestions.
Summary of Androphilia: Rejecting the Gay Identity, Reclaiming Masculinity
The word gay has never described mere homosexuality. Gay is a subculture, a slur, a set of gestures, a slang, a look, a posture, a parade, a rainbow flag, a film genre, a taste in music, a hairstyle, a marketing demographic, a bumper sticker, a political agenda and philosophical viewpoint. Gay is a pre-packaged, superficial persona--a lifestyle. It's a sexual identity that has almost nothing to do with sexuality.Androphilia is a rejection of the overloaded gay identity and a return to a discussion of homosexuality in terms of desire: a raw, apolitical sexual desire and the sexualized appreciation for masculinity as experienced by men. The gay sensiblility is a near-oblivious embrace of a castrating slur, the nonstop celebration of an age-old, emasulating stimga applied to men who engaged in homosexual acts. Gays and radical queers imagine that they challenge the status quo, but in appropriating the stigma of effeminacy, they merely conform to and confirm long-established expectations. Men who love men have been paradoxically cast as the enemies of masculinity--slaves to the feminist pipe dream of a 'gender-neutral' (read: anti-male, pro-female) world.
Androphlia is a manifesto full of truly dangerous ideas: that men can have sex with men and retain their manhood, that homosexuality can be about championing a masculine ideal rather than attacking it, and that the wicked, oppressive 'construct of masculinity' despised by the gay community could actually enrich and improve the lives of homosexual and bisexual men. Androphilia is for those men who never really bought what the gay community was selling; it's a challenge to leave the gay world completely behind and to rejoin the world of men, unapologetically, as androphliles, but more importantly, as men.
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