Recollections of My Nonexistence

by Rebecca Solnit

A man named James Finn, in the course of writing about being assaulted elsewhere for being gay (and, with his powerful husband, winning the battle), noted, “When a homophobic man taunts a gay man, he almost invariably does so by comparing him in unfavorable terms to a woman.” Gay men were despised for being men who had, in the imaginings of homophobes, chosen to be like women. Like women in being penetrated, when being penetrated was seen as being conquered, invaded, humiliated. Like straight women in being subject to men (though nonstraight women who were not subject to men upset them too; they upset easily). Which means that some heterosexual men and for that matter whole societies, notably ours, imagine sex with women is punitive, damaging, adversarial, an act that enhances his status and demolishes hers. In some cultures the man who penetrates anyone or anything, including another man, retains his stature; it’s the man who allows himself to be penetrated who has fallen from the status of a man (which has made it doubly hard for boys and men who are rape victims).