Page 136 - Some Dance to Remember

106 Jack Fritscher

Reaction he wanted. Reaction he got. Not everyone caught the joke.
He wanted to give manly homosexuals some space on Castro. He wanted
masculinism to balance the feminism that had overly converted many gay
men into fellow travelers siding with women at the expense of abandoning
their own masculine gender to labels of absolute chauvinism. Masculin-
ism threatened the sacred cows of militant feminism and radical separatist
lesbianism. Some women thought he wanted masculine gay men to be like
macho redneck straight men. He never pushed macho. He suggested that
masculine gay men, if it was true to their nature, be like the best of mas-
culine straight men. He never said straight was better than gay. A good
man is a good man. He said only that straight and gay were different, and
that masculine homosexuality was closer to the decent attitudes of straight
men, who were humane, than to the Attitude of effeminate gay men who
were sissies out of reaction and not choice. “The person who reacts is not
free. The person who acts is truly liberated. If straights can categorize us
as women, they know they can oppress us the way they oppress women.”
In Chapter One, “Our Fathers, Our Selves,” he sounded to some like
he was siding with the enemy.
In fact, he was attempting a delicate balancing act that defied sexual
gravity.
The Manifesto was, in many ways, a useful examination of gay con-
science. Ryan never said one species of homosexuality was better than
another. He simply articulated the quiet voice of manly queers wanting
to come finally out of the last homosexual closet. For the rest, he hoped
they all could be the best they could be according to whatever lights were
right for them.
He could not divine the effeminate homosexual prejudice against
masculine homosexuals.
He had his sui generis rationale.
If homosexuals were called to be the best, they should be the best.
Much of the Manifesto was tongue-in-chic. It was a joke. A send-up. It was
a broadside of seventies’ Attitude. Ryan wanted to sharpen the cutting
edge of homosexuality. “Who are we all really? What are we besides gay?”
Putting on Attitude, he questioned Attitude. It figured. Kick made Ryan
question everything in his life. But not everyone who bought a copy of the
Manifesto thought it was food for thought, much less funny.
I hardly agreed with everything Ryan wrote in the Manifesto; but
agreement was not the point. Satire was. The Manifesto was Ryan in outra-
geous masculinist drag. Kick encouraged him. The Manifesto was a reduc-
tio ad absurdum argument against the excesses of the effeminate gay and

©Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights Reserved
HOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOK