On the March 2009 Issue of the Atlantic (Homophobia Alert)
In which The Gay Recluse says fuck yall.
Do you read The Atlantic? If so, be sure to check out this month’s ish, which has “Gay Sex” on the cover for a pull quote that says “Gay people, too, deserve to be wanted sexually,” as if that could ever be enlightening in any context, and then — coup de grace — includes this lovely exchange from Jeffrey Goldberg on the back page “advice column.”
Is life after college really as monotonous and depressing as it looks?
Ben, Manhattan, Kan.
Dear Ben,
No. It’s worse! Just kidding. It’s actually a joy. Except for the prostate exams.
Ha ha — get it? — prostate exams are where the doctor (often a male) puts his finger up your butt, and what could possibly be “worse than”/funnier having something up your butt if you’re another guy!? Omg, that’s s0000 funny! It’s like — wait for it!!!! — when two men “kiss” or “suck each other’s cocks!!!” OMG LMFAO!
We love The Atlantic so much, because they’ve been on the “cutting-edge” of enlightened cultural analysis and “hard-hitting” investigative journalism for at least 1000 years (i.e., the dark ages). We’ll be s0000 sad if they go under in the downturn.
Filed under: Conspiracy, Drivel, Gay, Sickness, Stereotypes | 9 Comments
Tags: Dark Ages, Homophobia, Jeffrey Goldberg, Losers, Olds, The Atlantic
The Gay Recluse 
“Gay people, too, deserve to be wanted sexually.”
Funny how well that kind of condescension pinpoints the whole, fatal twist in the story of Valentines Day and growing up geigh.
You’re reaching w/ the prostate exam comment. I’m straight, not homophobic, but I found my prostate exam uncomfortable. It had nothing to do with the doctor putting his finger in my butt, but simply him pushing on my internal organ. I didn’t feel “violated” or disturbed as if I were undergoing some kind of sodomy, I just felt very physically uncomfortable.
I think you’re one of those people who likes to read homophobic commentary in anything written by a person you suppose to be a heterosexual male. That pretty much puts you in the same class of prejudice you’re accusing a lot of other people of.
Please explain the “humor” of the joke for me, because if it’s rooted in a physical exam being “uncomfortable,” I can think of about 10 million other things he could have picked that don’t have homoerotic/phobic overtones. (And if you don’t think that’s the case, maybe you need to open your eyes a bit.)
For what it’s worth I had the complete opposite reaction to this article. I’m glad the Atlantic is writing about religion and gay sex and says so explicitly on the cover (in a pleasant subversion of the tired “guns, God, and gays”). And I’d be interested to hear more specifically why the pull-quote irritates you; to me it’s pretty workaday, just paraphrasing the subject’s rationale.
Hey Brian, I should begin by saying that I was in a bad mood when I wrote it, lol. But also I was far more annoyed by the prostate-exam joke, which is the kind of dumb locker-room quip that doesn’t belong in the pages of something that is supposed to be “intellectual.” In terms of the gay sex article, though, I understand that I’m freakishly sensitive about this stuff, but I guess I’m just tired of the debate; I think there needs to be a national shift in consciousness where people (or at least those in the intellectual vanguard, who should know better) are like: “you know what, we’re just not going to cover that debate because it’s over,” much the way nobody would give serious treatment to debates about racial inequality. I basically don’t ever want to read about someone who is “justifying” my existence — hey, gheys are ppl 2! — even if they have my supposed best interests at heart, if that makes sense. It might not!
It makes sense! Except I give them a little more credit – I’d say it’s not our best interests the Atlantic and Williams have at heart, but their own (and their constituents).
I’m tired of being wanted sexually. I want to be wanted for my wanting. (I want to be wanted for my wontons.) I want to be wanted for my willingness to tolerate the ridiculousness and cruelty of society’s homophobic ribbing of my “lifestyle choice.”
So here’s your choice little boy, you can either be a family man or a social pariah. OH! I’d choose social pariah over family man any day.
That Goldberg advice column should be “ground into paste and used as” hamster cage lining. It wasn’t his quip about prostate exams that got to me but rather what he said about Sarah Palin being hot. Sarah Palin!? Hot!?
I used to read my mom’s dog-eared issues of The Atlantic (back when it was called The Atlantic Monthly) and it used to be the most liberal-minded magazine on Earth. It laid the seed for my evolving pragmatism which continues to inform my opinions on all things from politics to race to religion. What are the Atlantic people thinking bringing a mook like Goldberg to their hallowed pages? Just another Jew-boy who is seething because an African American currently sits in the White House.
I stopped reading “The Atlantic” after it published the “single women of a certain age should just marry men who don’t hit them and stop whining” article last year. Unfortunately, I forgot that when I was in the airport this weekend and bought the March 2009 issue. Fast-forward a few hours: I’m reading, I’m reading, I’m perplexed by the poorly-written Archbishop of Canterbury article and then — BAM — I hit the prostate exam joke. It wakes me from my melatonin-induced haze and I realize “Wait — I don’t read this magazine anymore!” I was then forced to sit through some awful movie, but I did it in the name of the cause.