Talk Like a Man

No, I would never have believed I would say something like this in years past:

Are you not fed up with listening to faggots on every show, in every commercial, in every interview?

I don’t mean “homosexuals.” I mean faggots. There is a difference. Homosexuals are attracted to men. Faggots have obnoxious valley girl accents, they are on the bleeding edge of adopting every new “it phrase” (“circle back,” “the cinema space”), they use the passive voice, they lisp, they have sibilant S’s (sounds like a snake hissing in every S word), and they talk only about style and feelings.

They don’t “adopt” new business methods, they “embrace” them. They don’t apply themselves, they “lean into” projects.

They are everywhere, all the time. You can’t get away from them. They’re on mainstream news. They’re all the government spokesmen. They’re the pitch man in every advert. They’re the guest on every podcast, left or right (more left, yes, but it’s bleeding into the right, too).

Think about it; it’s the kind of thing you only notice in the aggregate after years of consistent exposure. Think about the way men spoke when you were younger. Imagine the cadence, tone, word choice, and accent.

Now think about what you hear today. Have you noticed this too? The almost complete takeover of sissy-sounding men with flibbertigibbet interests? When was the last time you heard an adult man speak confidently with correct but not prissy enunciation, and without hissing and inserting “like’ between every clause?

I meant it when I wrote, “I don’t mean homosexuals.” My friends, this is straight guys, too. Have you noticed that? How faggy straight men have become?

22 years ago I moved to Vermont (point and laugh; I was a lefty). I found it surprising that there was only one gay bar in the whole state at the time, but I thought to myself, “Society has changed, so this must mean that anti-gay sentiment is so low that everyone hangs out at the same bars now. What wonderful social progress.”

That wasn’t quite right, but it wasn’t quite wrong. Yes, anti-gay sentiment sharply declined from my schooldays in the 80s. But it didn’t stop there. Pro-gay sentiment—politics, aesthetics, affect—ramped up. And then it became culturally enforced.

We are living with the results. So many men in public life are far sissier than I remember most actual gay guys being for most of my life. Anyone who has watched my weekly show knows that I play up the gay in some bits for comic effect, but it is a theatrical choice, and it’s not constant. I don’t actually talk that way in real life, and when I’m not doing a funny bit, I don’t think my speech and cadence is that femmy. Yes, I know that most people can pick up a gay affect in my speech but I’m not the queen I was as a teen and in my young 20s (thank God).

As a kid, I was very soft and artistic and sensitive and intellectual. I was the classic sissy boy who was afraid of other boys, had no talent for sports, never had a father (only a violent my-mother’s-man), never had a male relative or role model. My natural disposition was “tuned” to be even gayer than it would have been as my world was populated only by women.

Looking back, I wish I had had a father (obviously). As much as I hated hearing it then as I was afraid of men and basically everyone, I did need toughening up. I would have been better off in my adult life if I’d had a masculine example, and men in my life to teach me.

Now at 50, I can see how damaging it is for the sexes to be as blurred and swapped as they have become. No, I don’t want a world where every girl who climbs trees and every boy who plays with a doll gets a beating. I want a society that has room for the natural variation; us outliers are always going to exist. When there’s some room for us, I think things go better.

But it seems as if that’s all there’s room for anymore. Today you get mocked for thinking there’s anything acceptable, let alone redemptive or necessary or useful, about plain old-fashioned masculinity. It seems clear to me that generations of boys, starting with Millennials, have gotten the message.

P.S—Enjoy the Mary Jane Girls.