I’m currently engaged in a brutal fight to the death on a different message board where one poster has stated that homosexuals can’t be ‘real men’. Utilising one of the traditional definitions of masculinity (military prowess and personal bravery) I was going to cite Audie Murphy as a prime example of someone who was gay and also a ‘real man’, however on doing a little searching I’ve discovered that it may not be as straightforward as that and he may not in fact have been gay.
I’m a little surprised as this is one of those facts I was sure of but may in fact be incorrect.
There really doesn’t seem to be any proof that he was gay. And I think if he was, his name would have come up a lot more in the many, many public debates about gays in the military in recent years.
You’ll notice that one of the people pictured, Marquell Smith, was a Marine. A Marine sergeant to be exact. Maybe you’re friend could try out his “real men” theory on Smith.
He’s not my friend, I only met him the once, we were both a little drunk, and well, one thing led to another…wait, shit, delete, delete, delete! :eek:
Seriously though thanks for the answers everyone, I’m actually reeling a little because I thought the whole Audie Murphy = Gay thing was one of those facts that every fool knows…but apparently I’ve either been misinformed or made it up out of thin air (which has been known to happen…)
I would really advise against using the historical examples of individual brave heroic men who were supposedly gay, just because it happened so long ago it’s damn hard to offer concrete proof of it. You’ll just get accused of speculation and wishful thinking. I think you should really try to stick to examples in the present day, in the world that we live in now.
Most modern examples are not going to be famous, though. They’re only going to be anecdotal which is much less effective than the classical examples.
Of course, the kind of person on the other end of this argument is never going to constantly shift goalposts and never concede an example anyway. The whole concept of “real man” is so nebulous and subjective as to be meaningless.
You could just start singing “We will rock you” or “We are the champions” whenever this comes up. I think Queen has a lot more manly-cred than the Village People.
Billy Sipple, openly gay Marine who saved President Gerald Ford from assassination. There is nothing anecdotal about this. Tackling an armed would-be killer is about as much of a “real man” as you can be.
Mark Bingham, rugby player and hero of Flight 93. Jesus, I can’t believe I’m the first person here to come up with these provable modern-day examples instead of scraping at ancient historical figures.
There is no way in hell the OP’s idiotic debate opponent can refute these guys.
Agreed, I asked him to define what he meant by his usage of the term and he seemed to be using a traditional definition of masculinity which is why I counter-attacked with the example of a homosexual military person, the armed forces being generally held to be a bastion of traditional masculine values.
Though I do realise that the whole topic of what is and is not masculine is opening a whole set of arguments of truly epic proportions.
I’ve never heard gay rumors about Murphy, but believe it or not there were people who questioned his masculinity when he made public his battle with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (aka shell shock, battle fatigue, etc.), an extremely misunderstood condition in the 1960s.
Wiki list of famous openly gay U.S. veterans. It is limited to those who either discussed their homosexuality or otherwise there’s no doubt about it.
But perhaps you might challenge this person’s concept of what makes a “real man.” Someone who is not macho can still be a “real man.” And . . . perhaps we gays are more “real men” than straight guys. After all, our world revolves around other guys, and many of us don’t have a close relationship with anyone female. Perhaps he should consider the possibility that his life has more females in it than mine. So who’s the “real man” here?
