Page 277 - Gay San Francisco: Eyewitness Drummer - Vol. 1

Gay San Francisco: Eyewitness Drummer 257
working men — is no stretch, really, because the very title of Drummer
comes from Emerson’s pal Henry David Thoreau who is quoted on the
masthead of nearly every issue of Drummer: “If a man does not keep pace
with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.
Let him step to the music he hears, however measured or far away.”
That non-aggressive Transcendentalist self-reliance is at the very
heart of self-disciplined homomasculinity. Just as the Marlboro ads never
reference women, homomasculinity is a Whitmanian he-festival, a moment
out of time, place, and politics that allows men to consider their essence
and identity as males in terms of themselves and other men, before they
dare even consider themselves ready or worthy to approach females and
family. Philosophically, homomasculinity is a meditational helix very like
Thomas Aquinas’ consideration of ens qua ens, being as being, masculinity
as masculinity, queer as queer — a defensible intellectual exercise that is
also legitimate emotionally, sexually, and politically on the human level.
Masculinism and feminism both pale beside humanism which includes
them both. That is why the first sentence of the masculine-identified
Some Dance to Remember is very pointedly the tender homo-humanism
of “In the end, he could not deny his human heart.”
BIBLIOGRAPHY

Blake, Roger, The American Dictionary of Adult Sexual Terms, Century
Publishing Company, 1964
Jung, C. G., Aspects of the Masculine, R. F. C. Hull, translator, Bollingen
Series, Princeton University Press, 1989
Legman, Gershon, “The Language of Homosexuality: An American
Glossary ” in George W. Henry, editor, Sex Variants: A Study of
Homosexual Patterns, New York: Hoeber, 1941
Leyland, Winston, editor, Gay Roots: Twenty Years of Gay Sunshine — An
Anthology of Gay History, Sex, Politics & Culture, San Francisco: Gay
Sunshine Press, 1991
Murray, Thomas E., and Murrell, Thomas R., The Language of Sadomas-
ochism: A Glossary and Linguistic Analysis, Westport CT: Greenwood
Press, 1989
Rodgers, Bruce, The Queen’s Vernacular: A Gay Lexicon, San Francisco:
Straight Arrow Books, 1972
Suresha, Ron, Bears on Bears: Interviews and Discussions, Los Angeles:
Alyson Books, 2002
Thompson, Mark, editor, Leatherfolk: Radical Sex, People, Politics, and
Practice, Boston: Alyson Publications, 1991

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