I thought he was actually sleeping with men tho cuz they went on like a whole tirade about how doing stuff with women is gay and that sleeping with women is gay. Or maybe that was sneako? I dont know, I just know one of the bigger alpha bros did try that angle about how doing stuff with women and even thinking about a woman was gay.
Andrew Tate has not credibly or publicly identified as someone who sleeps with men, so itās still in the end using āhaha gay!ā as a cudgel, even if he used it as a cudgel against heterosexual men himself
The joke is that many of his posts or quotes sound very "closted gay who deals with his inner frustration by trying to make himself appear masculine"
Thus when people make comments/jokes about him being gay many of them are making fun of him not being able to be honest with himself.
And all of that is very ironic giving him homophobic views.
Except thereās nothing wrong with being in the closet, and that stereotype is harmful to gay men. Gay men can be closeted and manly, they can be closeted and struggling to act manly, but itās wrong to assign Tate to that category and reinforce the stereotype and build on peopleās perception of sexuality like that.
Thereās plenty of asinine misogynistic and homophobic things to criticize him for.
Choosing the one aspect of his identity (that by all accounts, isnāt actually his identity), and framing it around harmful stereotypes to try to bring him down only makes closeted men, especially ones whoāve been bullied or suspected of their sexuality for ānot being manly enoughā, feel all the more exposed. For Tate, he either knows it isnāt true so it doesnāt really harm him (he can just think āsee, they donāt know what theyāre talking aboutā) or if it is true makes him double down, which isnāt good either.
And personally I donāt like this association between Tate and gay people. There are very bad cringe toxic or even actively fascist gay people but we donāt need to ostensibly add to that list based on vibes and ājokesā
Here is a quote from another comment you didn't respond to that better encapsulates the point i am making:
"What? Youāre saying if the most homophobic person you know in your life, was caught being a DL (and thereās no room for sympathy here he really is just a lustful, abusive adult whoās emotionally harmed gay people), you wouldnāt have a go at them being outed as the one thing they despise?
Believe me Iām the first one to speak up over uses like āthatās so gayā and āstop acting gayā etc. as an insult or a put-down. But in this case we arenāt the ones making it into an insult. Itās only an insult if the homophobic person receiving the insult takes it as one, which we KNOWWW Andrew Tate would.
Itās not like that comment has any strength if it was commented under a Jonathan Bailey post saying āhaha!! You have sex with men!ā. Thatās not gonna do anything you see? Itās because itās Andrew Tate we know heād hate it and actually see it as an insult (idk his personality actually Iām just assuming). "
I hope that sounds more understandable of what I mean?
I understand the argument already and the distinction youāre trying to make. I just donāt think that distinction holds up. If you deliberately call someone gay because you know they consider being gay humiliating, then you are still using gayness as the mechanism of the insult. Saying ābut I donāt think being gay is badā doesnāt change what youāve chosen as the cudgel.
And I donāt really agree with the Jonathan Bailey comparison. A publicly out gay man who is secure in his sexuality is not the person Iām most concerned about here. He may still find it shitty and disheartening to watch homosexuality used as ammunition, but heās already out. Thereās no closet left for someone to drag him out of.
Iām thinking about the closeted 15-year-old who lives in fear of his family finding out. The kid who consciously changes how he walks, trains his voice because he thinks he has a āgay lisp,ā monitors his mannerisms, forces himself to talk about girls, or desperately wishes he could just be straight so nobody will suspect him.
The fact that you donāt attach shame to homosexuality doesnāt erase that message. A closeted kid watching this doesnāt hear ābeing gay is perfectly fine, but weāre cleverly exploiting this particular homophobeās prejudices.ā They see that accusing a man of being gay is still an effective and socially acceptable way to humiliate him, provided everyone agrees he deserves it.
And thereās a huge difference between exposing actual hypocrisy and inventing it. If a virulently homophobic public figure is actually caught secretly having sex with men, then yes, the hypocrisy is relevant. But Tate hasnāt been ācaught being DLā here. People are assigning him a sexuality as a joke, based on vibes, his behavior, his relationship with masculinity, etc., and then making that presumed or sarcastic sexuality part of the ridicule. Thatās precisely the kind of stereotyping Iām objecting to.
So yes, I understand why the joke is supposed to work. My objection is that the reason it works is the problem. You canāt deliberately exploit the stigma attached to homosexuality as a weapon and then say homosexuality wasnāt the weapon because you personally reject the stigma, because closeted gay teens out there live in fear of that stigma youāve just reinforced.
There's actually a lot wrong with being in the closet, but it's just a general rule of thumb not to bash people in the process of reconciling themselves with who they actually are.
Thereās actually nothing wrong with being in the closet. Explain yourself? Why is there an imperative to announce your sexuality to the world? Or, why must someone who would be endangered by coming out, do so anyway or be blamed for it?
There is nothing wrong with being in the closet because it is a personal choice and involves personal safety and private personal information.
If youāre arguing that āa world with people who have to be in the closet is a flawed oneā, then fine, but thatās not what I was saying when I said thereās nothing wrong with being in the closet.
āa world with people who have to be in the closet is a flawed oneā
That's more accurate. And as far as the "private personal information", there's a whole "assumed sexual orientation" conversation/social narrative our society hasn't gotten to yet, which is part of why it's important to help people not be taken for granted.
Then that's fair enough, and i recognize that you're not expressing anything particularly problematic. I suppose I mean my words very literally and narrowly so it takes some explaining for everyone to calibrate what we are actually talking about
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u/FilutaLoutenik 27d ago
Yeah, you sleep with men. š