By David Futrelle
We’ve met them before, these mysterious and stinky straight men, who refuse to wipe or wash their asses because they’re afraid that doing so is somehow gay.
We don’t know how many of these men there are; indeed, the only reason we know about them is that their girlfriends and wives have taken to Reddit and elsewhere to tell the world about their horrific discoveries with regards to their significant others’ nether regions.
Yes, this means that at least some of these guys have girlfriends (!) and wives (!!), which adds a whole new layer to the horror.
One of these unfortunate women turned to Reddit’s Relationship_Advice subreddit today for help with her boyfriend, who not only refuses to wipe (and presumably also wash) his ass but who also thinks that touching, much less cleaning, his junk would also give him a case of teh gays.
Let’s hear her tale of woe.
“My (23F) boyfriend (24M) of almost a year doesn’t wash his genitals,” she began
Almost a YEAR and you’re just now discovering this?
So basically, he explained that he doesn’t touch himself there, ever, because it’s “gay”. Therefore he can’t clean the area specifically and just lets it get wet in the shower, that’s it.
Ewwwwww.
Other than this his hygiene is fine.
I question this judgement.
I only became aware of the issue when we started getting more intimate.
I guess True Love Waits, and then when it stops waiting it discovers an exceedingly gross dick.
Yes. You read it right: He thinks washing his penis would be gay. What the hell. In fact he thinks any touching of anything between his legs is gay. This was completely ridiculous and I started asking him what about masturbating? What about wiping after he poops??
If you have to ask, the answer isn’t going to be good.
Well it turns out, the reason he uses a bidet is so he won’t have to wipe. Using a bidet is not a problem to me, and I’ve never experienced a problem with his hygiene in that regard, but the fact he installs a bidet not out of cleanliness preference but to avoid “being gay” by wiping his OWN ASS is just…. I can’t believe that’s a real thing. I asked what about public toilets? He said he never poops anywhere besides his home so it’s not a problem. That’s bullshit, he’s pooped at mine. And I don’t have a bidet. So put two and two together.
What about before he had a bidet? What about when he travels? And since he presumably never washes between poopings, is his ass just poopy until he can return to his home base?
Then as for masturbating, he apparently doesn’t do that either! That’s also “gay.” What the hell. He admitted he used to masturbate when he was younger but it “he felt weird” doing it so he stopped. Uh… I’m not saying he’s required to jerk off or something, I don’t care, it’s again the insane reasoning behind it.
Hey, stinky dude, FYI, if you sit on your own hand until it goes numb, you could always just pretend it’s someone else’s hand.
Or maybe you could just use tongs?
Just trying to be helpful.
He says “any contact a guy has with the male ass or pubic areas is in a gay realm.” I said that makes absolutely no sense when it’s your own body. It’s not GAY to tend to your OWN self, gay involves OTHER people!
He’s also, presumably, got his own tongue in his mouth. Does that mean he’s French kissing himself all the time? That seems gay too. Cut out your tongue, stinky dick boy!
This even extends into our sex life. I found out the reason he didn’t want to try “doggy style” is because that’s a “gay position.” I’M NOT A DUDE, HOW IT IS GAY LMAO. Like this is so fucking ridiculous.
Hey fellas, is fucking your girlfriend gay?
This became an argument because I couldn’t help showing how I felt about this bullshit. Like, is every girl a lesbian now because we wipe after peeing?? And girls who use tampons? Where does his logic end? Of course, he thinks “that’s different” but can’t explain how.
I’m sure the idea that all women are secret lesbians is very titillating to him.
Well what about all the other men who do jerk off, are they all gay too? He said, “I’m just saying you’re dealing with a dick, it’s kind of a gay act.”
EVERYONE IS GAY EXCEPT ME
He got more mad at me the more I tried to reason with him. I just gave up eventually and we haven’t spoken much since, this was yesterday. I can’t talk to him if he’s going to be belligerent.
I really don’t think I can just get over this. Both how he refuses to properly clean himself and also that the way he thinks about it is so irrational. I know it sounds horrible to say this but I almost feel like I’ve lost some respect for him.
Almost!? Some!!??
Before now I always saw him as a very mature intelligent person. Now I’m questioning that but am not sure if it’s fair of me.
Oh it’s fair of you.
Has anyone else had a boyfriend with this issue before? Are there a lot of dudes who think like this? How do I get him to stop doubling down and understand why calling it gay makes no sense?
Somehow I doubt that someone who is happy to walk around with a poopy ass and stinky junk because it means he’s not gay is going to listen to reason.
TL;DR: My boyfriend won’t wash his genitals, among other things, because he believes touching his body there is “gay”. All he did when I pointed out how that doesn’t make any sense is get defensive. I had no clue he was this neurotic about intentionally neglecting his personal hygiene. Which is a problem for obvious reasons. What do you do when your partner persists in believing something crazy?
If it’s something like this, you RUN.
RUN, GIRL, RUN!
H/T — thanks to @Jennifer_deG, who tweeted about this
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@Charlotte
And ideally your viewpoint on whether homophobia is harmful. Homophobia kills.
@Viscaria, @Cyborgette, @David Rose
Homophobia generally arises from some utterly BS idea that homosexuality is icky, or “against nature”, or God doesn’t like it, or it’s somehow “different” so therefore scary, or I-don’t-know what arsehole idiocy and follows on from there. On thinking about about it, while what is being described is way beyond any run-of-the-mill homophobia, to the point where God alone knows what it is, what I hadn’t really considered was that in order for whatever weirdness this is to take hold, this person would have to have started off as a standard-issue arsehole homophobe for whatever-it-is to start to take over him in the first place.
Particularly @David Rose, you’re right – whatever has gone on with this person, and whatever state he may or may not now be in, and whatever now may be needed to get him out of it, it’s pretty plain its arisen from his baseline, definitely inexcusable, abnormal and arsehole-y attitudes about gay people, and snowballed from there.
I still don’t think this can be described as purely extreme homophobia – I still maintain there’s something more to this than that – but I did lose sight of the fact that a hell of a lot of it still is straightforwardly arsehole-y homophobia as well and, yes, it is important to be clear and say so.
@Naglfar
It’s just a guess, based on his youth, the extreme nature of his beliefs, his evident ignorance of his body and the fervour with which he clings to his prejudices.
I might well be wrong, of course. But it seems very much as if someone drilled those ideas into him.
@Amy E
I wasn’t doubting you, sorry if it came across that way. Your theory is plausible. I was mostly just surprised by the idea that fundamentalists wouldn’t wipe their butts—though I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised, seeing how far some of them go.
I take it you never saw this:
The link isn’t active, but luckily enough David did a post about it: https://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2014/10/02/why-pickup-guru-roosh-v-resents-women-for-forcing-him-to-clip-his-fingernails-and-wipe-his-own-ass/
Then please don’t let the door hit you in the place you should be wiping.
@David Rose
Wow armchair diagnosis and trying to make excuses for homophobia? I’m disappointed and actually upset by this. Firstly, we know that this person is not the only person with this belief and actually it is quite common for cis het men to belief this. Secondly, people already said this but I want to say it again STOP ARM CHAIR DIAGNOSIS. Please. It is really offensive to all your friends here who also have mental illness. Especially that some people here are also gay and mentally ill.
But mostly this is just wrong. You are wrong
I hope people don’t mind me using this as an open thread; but we are well on the second page now I guess.
Anyway, I have a bit of an association with something called This Girl Can. It proved really successful when launched; and I thought some folks might be interested in the sort of 2.0 version for 2020…
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2020/jan/11/this-girl-can-female-sporting-activity-taboo-busting
For what it’s worth, I’m queer as fuck, have lost friends in my community to homophobia, and I have been severely mentally ill since birth. So while I don’t need to be told that homophobia kills and decline to revise my stance on mental illness, point very much taken about armchair diagnosing. Clearly I was wrong and I apologize, both for breaking the rules and for devil’s-advocating on behalf of a homophobe. I’m truly sorry to anyone who was upset by my words, I chose them poorly and I will step away from this site for a while to think about where I went wrong and how to do better in the future.
That said, I will absofuckinglutely not be wokescolded after I spent my 16th year in a mental hospital, personally found two (TWO) of my queer friends dead from suicide in the last three years, while I struggle with lifelong psychosis that requires heavy medication, and clinical depression related to these events. While volunteering twice a week for my local LGBTQ+ org. And failing to hold down a job. And trying to keep my best friend alive now that her family has disowned her for transitioning. So respectfully, no, I think my views on homophobia and mental illness are pretty much in line with gritty, dirty, bloody reality. I’m elbow deep in it and it fucking reeks.
Like I said, I’ll be stepping away now to hopefully learn something from this. Again, my sincere apologies to those I’ve foolishly upset. I’ll do better next time.
Well, you’re in violation of the comments policy regardless of whether you believe your comments to be based in reality, so you can either follow the comments policy or we’ll ask for the ban hammer.
For the record, no one made any comments about you or your background, only about your comments and their real-world harm. If you can’t handle being told your words are harmful, maybe it’s best for you to step away for a while examine why that is. Your identity is not a shield against consequences for your words.
That comment makes me so angry becuase suffering doesnt mean you dont harm people, it doesnt mean you get permission to say bad things or belief bigoted things and then dont apologise.
@Charlotte,
“Wokescolded” is a new one to me. Seems needlessly dismissive.
I don’t know what you’re going to decide what to learn from this, but I hope you realize that the problem isn’t with how you chose to word your point, it’s that your point was in error to begin with.
You obviously had good intentions when you decided to write a comment, and I appreciate that. It’s important to be critical of the way we talk about people with problematic behaviors and beliefs. I hope you can realize why your specific argument was not a good argument.
@Kupo,
I like the way you put this.
@Definitely Not Steve
I first heard it a few days ago. This Twitter thread, which I discovered this morning thanks to someone retweeting it, summarizes why it’s not a good phrase to use. I concur that it’s overly dismissive.
@rhuu
Cheers! Oh, to be Patrick…
@Charlotte
I’m sorry if my words made it seem like you, I don’t know, blithely sail through life without a thought to the ramifications of homophobia. I was mostly speaking about my own mindset.
And I admire that you erred on the side of empathy, especially now that you’ve told us your own background. I don’t know if I could be that empathetic toward someone who appears to question my basic humanity. For what it’s worth, I think empathy for another human’s potential suffering is certainly not the worst mistake a person could make. But, as others have pointed out, armchair diagnoses detract from the purpose of this community.
Of course, if I knew the OP in real life and cared about him enough to make the effort, I’d encourage him to get help for issues that could very well be magnified by his toxic mindset. But that’s outside the purview of this blog. Sure, we like to show how misogyny and homophobia hurt the instigator as well as the victim, but the victim is the first priority here.
I’m new to commenting here too (though I’ve been lurking for a while) and I’m sure I’ll step in it someday and get schooled. (Maybe today is that day…) But come back. No need to leave for good.
@Lumipuna
Hey, that saying is here, too!
But without the military part.
Just the “shake it more than three times is playing with yourself” thing.
…I don’t understand what you think people are “wokescolding” you about?
Like, the commentariat objected to you armchair diagnosing this dude and claiming that someone who believes that gay people are so disgusting that he’d rather neglect basic hygiene than be similar to them isn’t necessarily harmful. And you apologized for doing both of those things in your paragraph above, so you seem to understand those objections?
Do you think that the commentariat was accusing you of being “insufficiently woke” or being a bad person or something? We don’t criticize who someone is, we criticize what they do. We don’t know enough about you to make a call on what kind of a person you are, we can only comment on the words that you write. And saying “hey that’s kind of a shitty thing to say” isn’t the same as saying “hey you’re an irredeemably shitty person”. You aren’t required to demonstrate your “marginalization credits” to be cool with the commentariat. We just need you to not violate the comments policy.
Alternatively, were you just being insincere in your apology, and is your post supposed to read as essentially meaning “I’m sorry except not really because I’m queer and mentally ill and I’ve undergone trauma and therefore I am an expert at being able to tell if internet strangers are really homophobic or mentally ill!”?
I don’t really think that second option is the case, your apology seemed sincere enough to me, but I just don’t understand what your second paragraph really has to do with the topic at hand?
content warning: sexual coercion
Some years ago https://www.patheos.com/blogs/nolongerquivering/ had some discussion about a man who a) had terrible personal hygiene and b) insisted that his wife give him blow jobs. And this was quiverful or similar, so she was under tremendous pressure to comply. (Eventually she was desperate enough to go to the elders, who told him that he ought to be nicer and her that she’d go to hell if she didn’t please her husband sexually)
Anyway, I’m now wondering if that guy’s hygiene issues were rooted in extreme homophobia.
It’s funny how easily the “sex is only for procreation” crowd switches to “wives have to sexually please their husbands” when it’s about non-procreative blow jobs. It’s almost as if they’re insincere.
To clarify, my response was only to this:
The last one especially was incredibly hurtful to me, although I do understand where it comes from. On the whole I’m glad there are people out there advocating for a better understanding of homophobia and ableism, so thank you for that. Just because I don’t feel I need to be told that doesn’t mean I’m right about that feeling, or that others won’t need to hear it. I chose to bring this to the comments and that’s fair, that’s on me.
I absolutely do not believe that mental illness somehow causes homophobia and never have. This is 100% wrong and no matter how badly I worded my original comment, that is a fact. I understand that “mental illness” is often trotted out to defend the actions of the worst people. My apology is partially for thoughtlessly sidling up to that implication and causing hurt to those who have had their boundaries and rights violated by this excuse, or have their own health struggles appropriated to lump them in with bad actors. That apology comes from my own lived experience; I know what that feels like and I’m truly sorry for sidling up to those things.
The word “wokescolding” was unnecessarily dismissive and I apologize for having used it. My hurt got the better of me and I shouldn’t have lashed out.
This, however
I would also categorize as unnecessarily dismissive, which I suppose is what put me in a mood.
No, I was absolutely not being insincere. Fact of the matter is that I made a bad post with misguided intent and it was pointed out to me how my words were hurtful. The reason I didn’t go into much detail about what I did wrong and how I plan to fix myself is because I’m still letting it sit until I feel better equipped to understand it. But I didn’t just want to duck out without at least putting my own feelings aside and signaling to the people I’ve hurt that I do plan to learn from this, although I’m not sure how yet, and I don’t want to work it out in realtime and rope everyone here into being my educator.
For clarity, homophobia and mental illness are not mutually exclusive. Homophobia is not a recognized condition in any way. It is a choice that can be influenced by many factors. One does not cause the other in any way, but they can absolutely be comorbid and just because there is no causal link does not mean it’s impossible for one to influence the other. I do not claim to be a certified “expert” but I do have my own lived experiences with the people I knew and befriended during my time in various mental hospitals and the advocacy and training I’ve done since then. I won’t have this very real nuance boiled down to either “one or the other” or “one causes the other” because that directly contradicts what I and others have seen, experienced and combated. I understand the urge to separate the two as far as possible due to the wrong and hurtful links made between the two by bad actors. But not to the point where it distorts the truth. There are types of mental illness that make people more susceptible to wrong and hurtful worldviews, and it is especially hard for those people to shed those views without also addressing their illness. It’s important we recognize that truth, not as an excuse but as an axis of advocacy. I have advocated for someone (I was kinda sorta unofficially made his medical advocate by default, it’s complicated) who believed absolutely vile things that were inspired by his DID comorbid with psychosis. He got help. He got better. He made amends. There are many like him. There is no excuse for the things he said to others (although he was not allowed to act on his beliefs, thank god) but even the most vile of people deserves help if they want and need it. Excuses are trash. Reasons are a way for us to clear a path and welcome the wayward back to the right side of history, if we so choose, and I’ll be damned if I leave anyone who can be saved behind. Even the worst of us are real people and a lot of them can be saved. And mockery is antithetical to compassion. Blame the utilitarian in me.
My second post was not about establishing my bona fides or something silly like that. I was hoping to describe my actions, my consciously chosen praxis and my reasons for choosing it, not my identity, and only in response to the comments I quoted at the top. Also, I personally get very anxious when someone who I believe is a bad actor simply disappears, presumably to do more harm, and I wanted to reassure anyone who feels the same that I am not out there behaving like I did in my first post. I don’t dispute that I have much to learn, we all do, and I’ll take this opportunity to do it. Being told that “homophobia kills” as if I couldn’t possibly know that is upsetting after all I’ve been through, yes. Telling me to update my views on mental illness as if I haven’t been down here in the trenches is also upsetting. These are not matters of identity. This is how I live my life day in and day out, these are actions I choose to undertake, not things I am.
The person described in the post absolutely struck me as someone who can be helped. But not by me, not in this comment section, and certainly not with the words I chose and who I directed them to. My intent with the first post was simply wrong: I was asking victims to show compassion for a possible offender. I understand that’s not just badly chosen words, that’s wrong from the intent upward. Just because my personal praxis involves compassion and that’s how I choose to cope with it doesn’t mean anyone else is obligated to agree or feel the same way. I should NOT have centered this dude’s life and feelings over those actually reading my words. That I know was wrong.
I hope to be as clear as I possibly can be over the most important part: I won’t apologize for expressing compassion stemming from my own lived experience, because compassion informs my praxis. I will and do apologize for not taking it to David directly and instead opting to take to the comments where vulnerable people could and did get hurt, for choosing my words incredibly poorly, for stepping over those truly hurt by homophobia and ableism to make that point, for centering a homophobe’s feelings instead of those hurt by actions of people like him, for breaking this site’s rules to do it and possibly many other things pending review. In that vein, I am absolutely open to being told how I need to update my views on mental illness. I’m not kidding about that. I’ve been told that what I’ve seen many times with my own eyes isn’t true, or that I have drawn the wrong conclusions, so right now I am struggling trying to figure out what I can learn from this. If nothing else, I’m taking that very seriously. Like I said, I am out there using these beliefs to hopefully help and I’m extremely anxious about the possibility that I’m causing harm instead.
The comments I quoted at the top are asking me to change who I am and how I view the world, not how I choose my words online. There’s a few very different demands being made of me right now and some are conflicting. I absolutely agree that I need to put more thought into what and when I post and whether my contribution helps or hurts. In this case I chose to prioritize the feelings of a faraway possibly fictional homophobe over the feelings of the people who are actually here reading my words and that was unequivocally wrong.
But I don’t really know how I as a person need to change. Which is what has been very explicitly asked of me. I’ve been told by various people on the back of one comment that my theory, praxis and lived experience are invalid which is entirely possible, but I think you’ll agree it’s… a bit much on the back of what was said, wrongheaded though it may have been. I understand it, if all I knew about me was that one comment I wouldn’t have much patience with me either. But I’m struggling to find out where to go from here and what the best path is to make amends.
So, you know, I’m stuck. Do you want me to leave and not let the door hit my poopy crack or do you want me to learn? I’d prefer the latter but I understand if no one has the time or energy. But I promise I am here in good faith and willing to make amends if that’s the way forward for others here.
@Charlotte
I’m sorry if what I said was unnecessarily hurtful. I probably shouldn’t have said what I did in response to you. Ideally, we can learn from this and no one has to leave.
No apology required at all! Lord no. Like I said, if all I knew about me was that one comment I’d be upset too and there’s no reason for you to apologize for the callout. Calling out is good and I appreciate you doing it.
If you’re asking what you should take from this, @Charlotte, @kupo has already told you.
You said something that centered a homophobe over everyone else, and people responded. You then angrily decried us as ‘wokescolds’ for doing so, because you yourself are deep in the trenches.
Your response painted yourself as the only one who has knowlege, here. You don’t know our lived experiences, and i’m not about to play Oppression Olympics to determine who has the most right to an opinion.
Perhaps another thing to examine is why you reacted so strongly to people saying you should re-examine your stance on something important to you?
Moving on…
You have a weird bit in your most recent post about homophobia and mental illness and how since they sometimes manifest together, that means we can never separate them.
No.
I have learned a lot through reading and interacting here, and one thing is that we *have* to separate them.
Otherwise ‘homophobia’ is pushed into ‘something only the mentally ill do’ and ‘i’m not mentally ill, so i can’t be homophobic’ as well as ‘why are all the mentally ill people homophobic!?!?!?!?!’ And ‘why doesn’t the mentally ill community do something about all the homophobia in the world??’
Homophobes, like racists, often know the *word* is bad, and will do homophobic things without labelling the actions or themselves as homophobic. When others point out that X action is obviously homophobic, they twist themselves into knots to deny it, because homophobes are Bad People and they aren’t a Bad Person, and don’t want to be thought of as one.
Mentally ill people are good, bad, and indifferent. They are people, just like everyone else. (I mean, obviously you know this, but go with me here.) If we allow a mingling of “homophobia=mentally ill”, that means “mentally ill = homophobic”, and since “homophobic people = bad people”, that puts mentally ill people into the bad people category.
All mentally ill people are not homophobic, and all homophobic people are not mentally ill. We separate these issues because of the splash damage an already stigmatised portion of our society receives if we do not.
You reacted with compassion, which is admirable… until it prioritises the person doing the damage over the people who have been hurt. It’s difficult to balance compassion for everyone (because they are human and worthy of it) with protecting the marginalised.
Since this is literally a mockery blog, the tone here usually is not compassionate for the people featured here. It seems as if you are posting in good faith, so we’ll see how you feel about continuing here when ‘compassion’ isn’t always the go-to response.
Whatever you decide, good luck.
@Rhuu
Thank you for taking the time to type this out, I’ll definitely take it on board.
(And thanks to any others who might chime in. I won’t be replying but I will be reading.)
IS anyone saying that his homophobia is a result of mental illness or that it is somehow completely separate issue in this dude’s head? I mean, I would think it’d be the other way around. Dude is clearly so rampantly homophobic that he gave himself an OCD. This is not something unusual. There are people who sincerely believe that gay people are out recruiting children into the “gay lifestyle” and that’s willful ignorance at best and straight up delusion at worst. If a dude went around saying that gay people are all reptilians, I don’t think people would think that is sane, but also I’m not sure they would assume that he was a homophobe because he was mentally ill. Homophobia clearly came first in that sort of scenario. Is it tarring mental illness with a broad brush to mention that bigotry can make some people develop OCD or paranoia? Other things do all the time. Terrible parenting gives some people lifelong complexes they need to work through. Some mental illness can be a physiological thing, some mental illness can be a result of trauma or brainwashing or any number of things that go wrong in the software of the mind rather than the hardware. All this is not to say let’s excuse and not point out this specific dude’s behavior because he made himself fixated and ill through terrible conviction. Quite the opposite. He was wrong, so wrong that he became exponentially more wrong. There is no harm in David bringing it up on this blog. The dude is a good example of how homophobia can twist a person and harm them and others. Is the guy a homophobe? Yes. Is he delusional. Absolutely. He’s delusional because he’s homophobic, not the other way around.
Oh noes!!! I put someone in a mood!
Well, to second Kupo, this is what you need to learn:
Given that your response to criticism has been a flood of text attempting to shift the conversation away from what you said to who you are, and to try to make anyone who criticized you responsible for your emotional state after being criticized:
I’m not hopeful.
We’ve all seen this before. You’re not the first person to try this here – you’re not even the first person this week to try this here – and it won’t fly.
That’s up to you.