Found within author Mark Thompson’s text, Gay Body, are marvelously astute descriptions regarding gay identity and the perpetual search. In the opening pages of his report, he described tender efforts to comfort and support his gay brother who was struggling with AIDS and in the final hours of ending his own life. Both brothers bore scars from their disordered family relationships and shared the commonalities of their same-sex- attracted lives. Like twins, they had mutually grappled with that incessant drive, whatever its source, that had so influenced them from earliest beginnings.
Mark wrote also of a chance meeting in a foreign land with an attractive young man. They quickly discovered having much in common. “Both of us, it seemed, had been failed by our fathers. In my case, it was the failure of neglect. But Gary had been outright rejected by his dad to the point of having been regularly beaten for imagined sins. Neither of us had been properly seen and reflected back to ourselves by the primary men in our lives. As a consequence, both Gary and I suffered a damaged self-image. While there had been no mirror held up for me, the mirror of masculinity made available to Gary was deeply marred, even shattered.... We were wanting our manhood...”
Incisively, Mark laid bare the matter: “The gay pride movement has worked hard at rebuking bad fathers: from the sins of the patriarchy to the deficiencies of personal dads who didn't provide the nurturing we needed. Those bad fathers lived within us still, but we’re too shielded against all the rage and pain that poor parenting wrecked to see it. We look for this lost love in others who are similarly wounded and therefore are just as blind only to wonder why it so often doesn't work out. … If my search for the meaning of masculinity has taught me anything, it is this: we queer men must father ourselves.”
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