Let’s face it — even when they’re not wiping their boogers everywhere, straight men can be very confusing. They’ll say they’re very uncomfortable with being hit on by a gay guy but then turn around and drop their pants for ESPN, the sports magazine with enough female fans to make up 17% of their readership. That’s like appearing in Chatelaine because you want to appeal to truck drivers (17%!).
But if “The Body Issue” convinces members of the Edmonton Oilers to pose for shots like this, well, I’m not complaining:
(Lord knows we’ve certainly seen sillier attempts to appeal to the ladies and not-the-gay-men-no-sir-not-at-all: the immortal boyband era is summed up with ’30 Ridiculous Pictures of the Backstreet Boys.’ Does what it says on the tin.)
But for an extreme example of a straight guy wrestling with the divide between respecting human rights vs. his own homophobia. Buju Banton, dancehall reggae star and target of worldwide murder music protests, finally met with gay activists to discuss how not to be a hatemongering thug but still couldn’t agree to a single one of their ideas, probably because he is a hatemongering thug.
Meanwhile, Moscow is home to my favourite example of such schizophrenia — the city is pushing to close its oldest and most popular gay bar in a morals campaign while its homophobic mayor Yury Luzhkov just teamed up with Hillary Clinton to unveil a park statue dedicated to poet Walt Whitman (Whitman!). This from the country that gave us vodka, Tchaikovsky and Nicholay Petrov?
Sometimes such a divide can work though — like in this Guardian UK article that manages to be both an intriguing look at current record industry woes and a bitchy slapdown of Perez Hilton. It can be done!
But in the end, we’re all divided in some way or another. This blog, for instance, loves to celebrate queer Canada but can’t quite bring itself to proclaim Toronto YouTube performer Tonetta the next big thing. Perhaps you won’t be so conflicted:
Why you can trust Xtra
