A Proud Homophobe

Sullivan calls Kaus a proud homophobe.

Since I've been wrongly accused of being a homophobe, I feel as though I'll defend Kaus...although I really just defending myself.

I think a lot of the homophobia you see in places like LA coming from the highly educated crowd is a reaction to a gayafied city - more accurately - a gayafied industry. The entertainment industry has long been homo-friendly and at times been paranoidly assumed to be run by the gay mafia. This is not true, of course, but there is a certain fagginess about the entertainment industry which permeates not only the industry, but the entire Los Angeles upper middle to higher class scene.

It is the in-your-face-gayness of LA that makes the word homo more funny that derogative...even though there is certainly an element of both. But there is also an element of using homo self consciously because anyone using it in LA knows they are opening themselves up to critique. It is in many ways a futile reassertment of a masculinity that we all know no longer exists - the good ole boy no tolerating gays days....as if we actually ever knew them - we didn't. Or at least I didn't.

Faggot is almost always said with some sort of intonation as if to indicate it is not being said with anger, but with some sort of tonal acknowledgment that we're not supposed to be saying it, but it's still fun to say...

Who knows? Is all the gay humor just a disguise for homophobia? I don't know. It seems to me more observation humor than anything else.