Hey Man

By Steven F. Dansky

This essay was originally published in Rat, in May 1970. It was later republished in Come Out! and Gay Flames. It was also included in The Stonewall Reader both in print and via Audible.

Every man growing up in this culture is programmed to systematically oppress, dehumanize, objectify, and rape women. A man’s cock, a biological accident, become the modus operandi by which a male child is bestowed with power by this culture. A mere couple of inches of flesh places this male child in a position above half the human race, and there is no man who does not benefit and glorify in the power inherent in this birth right. Every expression of manhood is a reassertion of this cock privilege. All men are male supremacists. Gay men are no exception to the maxim.

The ability to express homosexuality, however, carries with it a severe penalty in our culture because of the nature of the taboo placed upon homosexuality by this male-dominated heterosexual society. Straight men abhor homosexuality because of their inability and inadequacy when it comes to expressing love for another man. Heterosexual men are driven to abuse women because they can’t directly express the love they have for each other. They literally fuck their friends’ women because they are unable to fuck their friend. This observation has been born of the experience of most women in the communal situation in the hip counterculture.

Homosexuality is a manifestation of the breaking down of male roles. This unacceptable affront to conventional manhood forces male straight society up against the wall; so much so that they must suppress, repress and oppress all signs of a life‑giving homosexuality and force it into their warped death‑dealing definitions. Their task, then, becomes a bludgeoning of homosexuality into parodistic expressions within this culture. Gay men are violently driven toward a false goal: the mutation of gay men to fit themselves into a heterosexual ideation of manhood. The gay man is asked to love, emulate, and worship his oppressor. The oppression gay men suffer has shown the validity and absolute necessity for a struggle for gay liberation. We have begun in our struggle for liberation to reject the internalization of this male heterosexual identity. Gay men must examine all forms of their homosexuality and be suspicious of all of them because the ways we express homosexuality have been molded by male supremacy. The gay liberation struggle will not reach beyond the civil libertarian goals of the homophile movement until it can see how deeply ingrained and oppressive this idealization of male heterosexuality within each of us is.

As was suggested by both Robin Morgan and Rita Mae Brown in their RAT articles, Gay Liberation Front men have avoided the questions of male supremacy, as if they were exempt. Indeed, it is the most crucial question relevant to any struggle for gay liberation. Male homosexuality could be the first attempt at the non‑assertion of cultural manhood. It could be the beginning of the process by which we can reach a gender redefinition of Man: the non-man. Homosexuality from this standpoint is the first step in the process of demanning. The men of GLF have instead consistently asserted their manhood resulting in an attempt to stifle the struggle of women to free themselves from the shackles of male domination. What is worse is that GLF men have further used the presence of women to legitimize their homosexuality. An examination of GLF results in the conclusion that the gay men are no less afraid of each other than are straight men without their women. What is pervasive in GLF is a resistance to examining our sexual repression, inhibition, and Puritanism. If sexuality is expressed it is done behind closed doors. GLF men have dutifully continued to use The Man’s exploitative institutions, which are designed to keep us oppressed. To be blunt, we have accepted The Man’s roles and go to him to get laid. One of the goals of GLF is the establishment of a community center. The community center is proposed as an alternative to their exploitative institutions. But haven’t we avoided the alternative which already exists in each of us? We can’t wait for a building as if it, a pile of bricks, was the answer to our oppression. We have been kept in isolation, we have been oppressed, exploited, and our identity has been taken from us. We have been told how to be gay and where to go to express it. It is no accident that we have been forced into the Gay Liberation Front to fight. Our homosexuality can be a revolutionary tool only if we abandon our self‑destructive attempts to fit the warped roles given us by the male heterosexual system. The fear that one might be thought homosexual by another man‑‑this fear is a powerful goad keeping men, both homosexual and heterosexual, in line as the oppressors of women. It is one of the many ways that men hold on to their privileges derived from oppression. Our task lies before us: our goat is stopping the propagation of the male heterosexual ethos by any means necessary.

Another project of Gay Liberation Front is the holding of dances. This is supposed to be an alternative to the bars. At the dances we have used women as pawns, rejoicing in our heterosexual experimentation. We are not proud of the fact that women don’t feel like sex objects around gay men. Our omnipresent male flesh and how we throw it around have made women see the necessity of having separate dances. Gay men, you can fuck women.  It’s male straight society that categorizes you and tells you what you can and cannot do. But that’s not the point. We are sexual being, but at present, male sexuality is the means by which we both fuck and fuck over women. At the dances GLF men have tolerated the presence of straight men who have come with their tongues and cocks dangling, ready to show GLF women that all lesbians need is a good lay. All the pornographic material certainly suggests that heterosexual men, believe it or not, get a charge out of female homosexuality. Playboy even promotes what they call Bisexuality in women‑‑but not in men.

GLF men have subverted the obvious: that is, lesbianism in practice is exclusive of men. That puts men uptight, whether they be gay or straight. GLF men have forced themselves upon lesbians, who because of the oppression they suffer from men, have realized that the only possible means of obtaining equality is in relationship with other women. That is why women, from GLF, from the women’s bars, or the women’s movement, don’t come to our male‑dominated GLF dances‑‑they are overwhelmed by our male presence and either leave at the door or are forced to elbow their way through, attempting to find other women.

GLF men have either avoided or attacked the most important movement in the world today: the struggle for the liberation of women. Any organization which does not recognize this struggle is objectively counter‑revolutionary. We have fought male supremacy in every one of our relationships with men. We should know what women are talking about. In order to join the struggle for women’s liberation, we as gay men must relinquish all power in GLF to the women. We must give them final veto power. Until GLF men join the struggle we will either drive the women out or continue to subvert them, thus becoming the you, hip counterculture version of the Mattachine Society. It is in the interest, however, of GLF to Join this struggle. Combating male supremacy, in ourselves and in other men, is in fact at the very heart‑‑or should be‑‑of our struggle against our oppression.

The commitment needed for a struggle for liberation, carries with it heavy demands. We must begin to make demands on each male GLF member. GLF must demand the complete negation of the use of gay bars, tea rooms, trucks, baths, streets, and other traditional cruising institutions. These are exploitative institutions designed to keep gay men in the roles given to them by a male heterosexual system. The use of these institutions by GLF men must be seen as copping out to The Man’s oppression of homosexuals.

In order that we fight our oppressor, we must band together in living collectives. It will be the task of each Revolutionary Male Homosexual (RMH) collective to examine and confront the romantic notions with which we have been programmed to accept. Each RMH collective will have at least three men but no more than twelve. Within the RMH collective we will reject our parody of male heterosexual society’s pairing off we will instead being to remold our homosexuality by developing a communistic sexuality of sharing, cooperation, selflessness, and total community. Our commitment to fight for gay liberation will be the means by which we can devise the necessary tactics for the destruction of all exploitative gay institutions and of all male supremacist institutions. Our recognition of male heterosexuality as our oppressor will mean that we will have to confront every male heterosexual with whom we come into contact.

The RMH collective will take on the responsibility of adopting and raising male homeless children. We will attempt to raise these children so that they do not acquire the male supremacist ideation of manhood. The RMH collective will fight all brutalizing versions of homosexuality as existed in other cultures, such as Athens or Rome; that now exist in prisons. We will stop the army’s exploitation of homosexuality, natural to men, as a means of making men kill. We will stop the brutalization of gay men by straight trade.

At the GLF dances we have danced the circle dance as a show of community. Our circle dance is the ritual‑‑an orgy of discharged energy‑‑before we enter the struggle. We in our circle dance have felt our sensibilities surge close to the surface. With acute aggressiveness, we have encircled ourselves with protection against our oppressor. The time has now come to move out. Gay people will no longer be oppressed. We are angry at the theft of our identity. We will collective recapture what we know is ours and has been taken from us.  We are backed to the wall. There is no turning back. Our rage will no longer eat at our bowels. We have seen who has done it. We can feel him. Identify him. At the Firehouse, RAT men called a meeting with the community to devise with community support, tactics by which they could sabotage the RAT women’s collective. At the Firehouse I met my oppressor. I men The Man. My so-called brother in the movement. They pleaded: “Don’t be divisive. Work with me for the revolution.” But it is a revolution born of their dis- content: it is a Man revolution. The Man revolution with women to fuck, bear their children, lick their wounds, and cook their meals. Faggots to be put away. They are the same men who put me behind barbed wire in Cuba. They watched me peek out at what I had fought along side of them for; what I had died with them for. They are the same white supremacists who told blacks they had gone too far. They didn’t give up their white skin privileges. Instead, they waited for blacks to come home. But blacks didn’t come home to Mastah Man, and neither will women. That night RAT men called the women fascists and spelt the women’s RAT collective with a K. But RATmen we know you are Amerika. You are not revolutionaries but the capitalist ideal of rugged individualism. Women and gay people will stop your revolution. It is male counter-revolution.

I don’t want your help, understanding or sympathy. I can recognize that, your male supremacist jive. Your love is oppression; it means bondage. I will fight the capitalists, that is inevitable. Capitalism is another word for male supremacy. You, movement heterosexual man. ...Man, you are the ruling class. Hey Man, are you fighting to keep your inherited power. Listen Man, give it up or go under. Your universe is being smashed. Your fantasy is being challenged. My soul won’t be cast-ironed-out by your drunken raps. A timing of barricades will come: on which side will you be?