Opinion
I’m Here, And I’m No Longer Queer!
September 11, 2008 - 11:00pmThat’s right, I am happy to announce that I will be turning in my alternative lifestyle for something more mainstream: heterosexuality. After spending two long years out of the closet, I have decided to go back to being straight. Transitioning to my original state of nature isn’t going to be easy, and there are definitely things that I will miss about these fabulous two years, but being gay is simply not doing it for me.
Sure, there are the obvious problems with being gay — AIDS, homophobia, being unqualified to donate blood – but there are other more important issues that have solidified my conviction to change. I’m tired of men who wear makeup, I despise our tyranny over the word fabulous, and I think that our cruel domination of the fashion and interior design industries is blatantly unfair. I’m also sick of being associated with the likes of Lindsay and SamRo or Ellen and Portia, or any lesbians for that matter, EWW! (… I mean SWEET! I guess that’s something I’m still working on).
I’ve also considered the many expenses that come with the intense pressures facing gays when it comes to maintaining our flawless appearances: gym memberships, waxing, tanning (at prices up to $20 per session in NYC!), high-end skin and hair products, body glitter, etc. As a hetero, I will probably still need the gym membership, but at least I will be able to afford it with all of the money I expect to save from buying Keystone Light instead of cosmos and lemon drops.
Being gay has turned me into what most people consider a bad person. I can’t go to heaven, I can’t become a Congressman, I’m shallow as hell, and I’m a constant cock block. St. Peter would reject my limp-wristed handshake, but I will soon be able to bro-five Pete as I walk tall and manly through those pearly gates. As for my Congressional future, I guess I’ll always have these gay years marring my record, but I’m just going to brand it as “experimenting during college.” I’m not sure if being straight will make me any less shallow, but I do know that instead of cock-blocking my lady friends, I’ll be trying to sleep with them instead.
As much as I’m looking forward to my exciting return to the straight world, there are certain things about being gay that I will have trouble giving up. I’m going to have to throw away treasured items such as my murse, my pink-spiraled Zac Efron notebook, and the boxes of Crest whitening strips I keep stocked in my bathroom. I will no longer be able to express concern for Britney’s well-being or wear my colorful variety of American Apparel briefs. I’ll miss the flashy gay clubs brimming with drag queens and trannies, where raging male libidos always guarantee a warm body to wake up next to. The thing I will miss most about being gay, however, is my status as a minority. I won’t qualify for affirmative action into law school, I won’t be able to get away with doing and saying unacceptable things, and I will lose my only ticket out of the army. These things I can do without, however, and I am ready to give them up.
I won’t lie and say that I’m not going to miss the furious sex drives that we gay men share, but I’m ready for a relationship with someone who treats me like the gentleman I am. I have no statistics that prove straight women are more chivalrous than gays, but a cursory glance at the personals on Craigslist gives me hope. The ladies in w4m are looking for “people who do not take themselves seriously” or “a Christian man, preferably tall, so I can wear my heels.” The guys in m4m, however, are “seeking tops, avg to hung, to stop by, dump a load and go. 18+ - str8 acting - discreet but horney! Non-smoker preferred! Be prepared to provide full stats and at least a chest or torso shot! I am chubby so you need to be ok with that.” Sorry “horney CU grad,” but I’m a smoker and I don’t have any recent chest or torso shots. I look forward to the subtle courting and gentle embrace of a woman who respects me as a person and who will let me stay and cuddle after I “dump my load.”
From this day forward, I vow to live a long and healthy life as a beer-guzzling, lesbian porn-watching, grandbaby-producing straight man. Step aside fellas, there’s a new heterosexual in these parts: John-David is here, and he’s no longer queer!
John-David is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences. He can be reached at jbrown@cornellsun.com. Country Club Cockfight appears alternate Fridays this semester.
I don't fully understand
I don't fully understand what the point of this article was.
Are you actually "going straight"?
Are you mocking people that think that gays can be turned straight?
Are you criticizing the behavior of the gay community?
Are you criticizing gay stereotypes and/or straight stereotypes?
etc. etc. etc.
I, for one, don't get it.
I just read your latest
I just read your latest article and don't think I've been more disgusted by something in a college daily than what I saw. And I have to put up with the YDN on a daily basis.
Your article is nothing more than a stream of shallow stereotypes and sweeping generalizations that bely your total ignorance of what it means to be gay. Because you know what, John-David, you CAN still get AIDS if you're straight, and you won't EVER be able to donate blood (even if you only had sex with a man one time), and not all of us are screaming queens like you seem to think. We are athletes, we are leaders, we are NORMAL. Not the shallow, cosmo-sipping wusses like you make us out to be.
You imply that gays are incapable of being anything but shallow and effeminate and perpetuate tired stereotypes.
Your flippancy and apparent ease in simply switching sides totally belittle the life-altering and sometimes devastating hardships that truly gay people have to deal with when they come out of the closet. You cannot "miss" anything about being gay because you never were. That you say so is an enormous insult to gays everywhere.
It seems that during your two-year stint of taking it in the ass, you never once paused to think that there might be more to being gay than materialism and promiscuity. There might be, oh I don't know, genuine love and affection, a true sense of community and something at play larger than yourself. You missed out on the best parts of gay life, John-David. You can always change your mind again, though, right?
As a piece of journalism, this article serves no real purpose other than to expose you the typically ignorant and obnoxious hetero that you are. I feel so sorry for you that you can no longer milk a minority status for draft exemption and to improve your chances of getting into any kind of law school. Those "benefits" are available only to those who have gotten where they are through years of struggle for acceptance from themselves and from the people around them.
Your ignorance disgusts me.
Rest assured that I am not the only one to have taken offense to this piece of shit article and am not the last one you'll hear from.
Dear "real gay guy"...
Dear Mr. "Real Gay Guy"... who is pissed about this odd column. I was kinda with you when you bashed John-David for exploiting stereotypes... UNTILL you call him the "typically ignorant and obnoxious hetero that you are". Awesome dude, way to make your point by using a stereotype yourself. I now think you are just as much a part as the problem as John-David is (that is if John-David was actually being serious, maybe his sarcasm is poorly written. But you, you were totally serious about your stereotyping).
On a more personal opinion note: getting preferential treatment in law school or anything else because as a "minority" you had to get to where you are "through years of struggle for acceptance" is bull crap. So because you are different, you then want to be treated differently in some situations but not others? and only in situations that benefit you? Thats pretty awesome (i.e. backwards) thinking. ."we are equal... except when we want to be unequal" should be your motto. Its a terrible thing when the hand that holds you down is your own. Maybe with time you will grow to be as smart as modern feminists, which welcome total 100% equality and get pissed when a man even opens the door for them (when he would no do so for another man).
Is there not an editor on
Is there not an editor on this paper or someone with some sense of decency that screens this sort of offensive crap from appearing in a major college newspaper? I cannot believe a Cornell student would be ignorant enough to write this. This not freedom of speech -- this is a person of privilege taking the freedom of perpetuating hateful stereotypes that cause violence and discrimination of LGBT people.
Clear IRONY.
As a gay man, I appreciate this very clever article! This is clearly written by an intelligent someone who is deriding the ex-gay myth. He is making fun of the ex-gay crowd by embracing their silly stereotypes and throwing them on their face in order to illustrate their absurdity by presenting them as a factual basis for his "conversion" which actually serves to make them all the more absurd. The only bad thing about the article are the students who gave their opinions in the comments section, in which they call outright for censorship. Whenever a college student says, "You shouldn't be allowed to say/print/think this," and "this isn't free speech", they have become lost. As a progressive, I cringe when liberals say "you can't say that." That, not this funny article, is what is truly disgusting about this entire matter.
Murky Irony
If this article was indeed meant to be ironic, it failed massively. It needs to be clear from the text that it is indeed meant to be ironic. It is not clear at all from this article.
Since you brought up free speech: No, not all speech is acceptable, at least not in a university student publication. Do you think the Sun should print an article advocating violence against an ethnic group? Or an article arguing for a repeal of the 19th amendment (which gives women the right to vote)? These are just a couple of examples of things that a publication at a respectable university should definitely not print.
People can say whatever they want, but newspapers are under no obligation to print hateful speech.
Free Speech?
I agree, not all "speech" is acceptable. The narrow examples you give provide a few of the obvious exceptions. True, a call to violence is not "speech", as it doesn't express a viewpoint, much as yelling fire in a crowded theater is not speech. However, an article which theoretically argues for the repeal of the 19th amendment would indeed be free speech; you cannot object to it and call for its censorship merely based upon the fact that you find the viewpoint offensive. If offensive speech isn't protected, then essentially no speech is.
Your point still sucks
This article was stupid, please stop defending it, or commenting in general. The point of it was to create antagonism because this guy feels righteous when he "bashes" himself and then gets to read other people bash him for real and then claim prejudice. This is a complete ego piece to make him feel important in the world while he still can. But, if it helps you, I'm more than happy to comment on your piece. That's because, unlike you, I see good in the world, and you, unlike me, are a heathen who shall be judged by God - not for your sexual preference, which is for some reason the only thing people like you ever think is wrong with you - but for the life you live. You feel better about yourself now? Perhaps more righteous, no?
Also, the post I'm replying to is insanely awesome. I vote for repealing the 19th amendment. And the 13th, for that matter. Why let non-property-owning-white-men vote when there's already enough of us to run the country as is? Also, we should ban gays forever from our borders, perhaps allow them to find refuge in Nova Scotia or wherever it is that cold gays go, and proceed to ethnically cleanse our streets to provide an image of a happy, wealthy, white society.
Free Speech Forever.
P.S.-Just so that I say it, that last paragraph was fake. OR WAS IT?!?!?!?!?
Get a Grip?
This piece is hilarious. I read it as sarcastic frustration with certain aspects of our own culture. I laughed really hard because as a gay man, i know it’s just so true.
The commenters also give a dose of humor in that they were in such a rush to condemn him that they could not be bothered to read the whole article.
John-David shares the mock with the straights, subtly ridiculing their apparent lack of sophistication as Keystone beer-guzzlers. What gay man would be caught drinking that? Puhleeez.
For the gay commenters, they clearly don’t demonstrate the required level of wit and humor proficiency and should have their gay membership cards shredded forthwith.
To John-David, best of luck with the lesbian porn and inevitable “Str8 guy looking to experiment… for the first time… really…” craigslist ads. By the way, you’ll probably need to do something about that uppity gay name, “John-David”. From now on its going to be “Dave” or “Johnny”. When you leave your revoked gay credentials at the door, hyphenation privileges are gone as well.
so dumb.
this is one of the stupidest things i've ever read. it's not even worth a dignified, well thought-out response.
You could still be a
You could still be a congressmen. For example Barry Frank of Boston. Not only a married gay congressmen but also still sports a lisp.
John David and the Straight Revolution.
I have to admit, when I first read this column, I was truly inspired. If John David could do it, I could too! I wasn't sure if choosing to go straight would be as easy as choosing to be a homo but now, reading this column (as well as the prissy little whiners calling for its censureship), I know, deep down, that I can renounce dick.
Straight is the new gay! Spread the revolution!
Bravo
There is a distinct tradition of queer editorials showing up in papers where they "shouldn't" be published, and walking a fine satirical line. This one is particularly brilliant, not least because it seems to have caused so much consternation.
Who, may I ask, is offended—and why? If only there were no need for this sort of thing.